Category: Zen Meditation

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Energy Meditation Life-fullness Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Creating a unified body-mind (No future)

Dear Integral Meditators,

The achievement and experience of a unified body-mind is one of the biggest pleasures of practising mindfulness. It also has huge practical benefits in terms of building our real-time inner strength and resilience. The article below explains a simple method you can start practising yourself….

Final reminder for those in Singapore of the Engaged Mindfulness workshop this Saturday.

In the spirit of wholeness,

Toby

Creating a unified body-mind (No future)

All parts of ourself in the same place
One of the functions of meditation and mindfulness practice is to bring together, or unify our body-heart and mind so that they are all present in the same moment, working to support and strengthen each other. Initially we build this experience in our formal practice, but increasingly as we develop we find that we are able to spend more and more of our time in daily life in a state where our mind, body and heart are in a state of unity or wholeness, rather than fragmentation and division.

Not leaking energy (a boat that does not ship water)
One of the benefits of a unified body-mind is that we leak less energy and we become more resilient. Most people’s minds and energy systems are quite inefficient. When our mind is off worrying about something, our emotions are in another place, and our body is engaged in a third activity, we become like a leaky boat, shipping water as we travel. We find ourselves having to ‘bail water’ a lot of the time, and wonder why. Unifying our body, mind and heart is like making ourselves into a well-made boat, that has no leaks. We find ourself going around in our daily activities feeling whole-er, stronger, more effective, and more capable of love and benevolence. Rather than feeling as if we are leaking energy, we start to feel as if we have energy to give.

Creating boundaries around your mind and energy
To begin to unify our body-mind we need to start creating boundaries that can help contain our energy, and bring our thoughts, emotions and physical energy into one place. There are many different ways in which we can do this, the ‘no-future’ technique I describe below is one.

No future
To practice ‘no future’ simply means that, for the period of time you have set aside, you do not think about, or send your thought energy into the future. You effectively imagine that the future has disappeared, or ceased to exist, and practice the discipline of holding that recognition. You can be aware of what is going in in the present moment around you. Youmay think in a conscious way about the past, although you will also find that erasing the future has the effect of ‘short-circuiting’ your relationship to the past as well, to a certain degree. By gathering your mind away from the future you bring your mental, physical and emotional energy into the present moment, they become more whole, unified, stronger. This can be done as a sitting or walking meditation, or as you are doing an activity, for example traveling home from work.

Building a better relationship to the future
Practising ‘no future’ helps to unify your body-mind, recover your energy, and build resilience that you can use to face whatever the future brings. It also gives you the freedom to choose whether you are going to think about the future or not at any given time. It means that when you do think about the future, you are doing so consciously and volitionally, and that you know that you can put it down at any time.

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 8th October 9.30am-4.30pm – Engaged Mindfulness day workshop/retreat

Saturday 22nd October, 9.30am-12.30pm – Going From Over-whelmed to Over-well: Meditation for Quietening the Mind – a three hour workshop

19th November – One Heart Celebration Day (Joint event)

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

 

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A Mind of Ease Enlightened Flow Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindful Breathing Mindful Self-Leadership Motivation and scope Presence and being present Zen Meditation

Three levels of non-striving

“Step deeply into the feeling of non-striving; learn to move easily and smoothly with whatever it is you find within yourself”

Dear Integral Meditators,

Is it possible by letting go of our striving to then learn how to strive better? That is the topic of this weeks article!

Mindful goals coaching offer ends tomorrow, 8th June.

In the spirit of non-striving,

Toby


Three levels of non-striving

In a previous article on non-striving I defined non-striving as “a refusal to be in conflict with yourself and your life. Put another way, rather than seeing yourself in an adversarial relationship to yourself and your circumstances, you practice accepting and working with what is there”.
What I want to explain here is three levels of non-striving that we can work with in our mindfulness practice. These three stages are:

  1. Noticing your inner conflict and striving
  2. Practising non-striving
  3. Striving better

Noticing your inner conflict
This first stage is simply about awareness. You sit down and notice all of the tension, conflict and striving that you have within yourself at this point in time. Without trying to change it, simply notice the tension you may feel about a conversation you had earlier in the day, an unfinished project, an uncertainty that you can’t control, a mistake that you wish you hadn’t made and wish to rectify, something that you are looking forward to and can’t wait for, something that you are sad about and wish hadn’t happened. Simply breath and be present to all of the different types of conflict and striving you notice. Is there one above all of the others that is stronger and stands out? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Relaxing into non-striving
In this stage the object is to progressively drop the different levels of striving and conflict that you feel within yourself.
Take a few breaths to center yourself, then encourage yourself to move into a state of acceptance of yourself, what you find within you, and whatever circumstances you find yourself in. Alternate for a while between the breathing (to center and focus yourself) and entering into a state of easy, relaxed non-striving. With each round of breathing and relaxing, try and enter one step deeper into the feeling of non-striving; learn to move easily and smoothly with whatever it is you find within yourself. You can stay with stage two for as long as you like, it’s good to really immerse yourself in it deeply when you can.

Striving better
In stage one you practiced mindfully noticing the different types of conflict that you have in your life currently. In the second stage, non-striving, you practiced stepping out of that conflict refusing to be in an adversarial relationship to yourself, going with what you find with acceptance. In the final stage, ‘striving better’ you come back to the conflicts that you notice in stage one and ask yourself the question ‘is there any way I can strive better and more harmoniously in this situation?”

  • You might choose to strive more patiently with the project that is stressing you out
  • You might choose to make good for a mistake made without using the fact that you made it in the first place as a hammer that you keep hitting yourself over the head with
  • You might choose to emphasize being playful in a situation that you have been taking overly seriously

There are infinite potential discoveries that you might make and decide to focus on implementing at this stage, the point is that you are using your mindful intelligence to make the quality of your striving wiser, more ergonomic, more realistic.

By using these three stages we learn not just to relax by practising non-striving, but to combine our striving and non-striving into a mutually strengthening and re-enforcing whole. As always with integral mindfulness its ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’!

© Toby Ouvry 2016, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Saturday 11th June, 10am-5pm – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Shamanism

Saturday June 18th, 2.30-5.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention – An Introduction to Contemporary Meditation Practice

Integral Meditation Asia

Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching *  Meditation Technology

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Enlightened Flow Essential Spirituality Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Zen Meditation

The Absence of Reference Points – The Evolutionary Advantage of the Meditator

Dear Integral Meditators,

Every day we look for reference points, markers in our life that give us security, familiarity, a feeling of safety. The article below explores the process of meditation as learning to get comfortable with an absence of reference points, and the freedom that it gives.

This Saturday afternoon; Meditations for Creating A Mind of Ease Workshop, final reminder. Also, last two days of the special offer on the Online Mindful Resilience Program. Finally, for those interested in using technology and sound to develop your inner resilience, check our the Transformational Resilience Program 1.0 from I-Awake.In the spirit of the journey,Toby

The Absence of Reference Points – The Evolutionary Advantage of the Meditator

Meditation as the absence of reference points
One way of describing meditation is to say that it is about getting comfortable with the absence of reference points. It is about learning to sit in an open, empty space where we temporarily let go of our sense of self, our sense of trying to control, our sense of structure. It is about relaxing deeply into that place of pure awareness that lies beyond our physical body and senses, and beyond our thinking and feeling mind. It is about relaxing into formlessness.

Sometimes people don’t stick with meditation because
Temporarily and for a short time relaxing into the empty space of awareness can be pleasant and relaxing, but if you do it for an extended period of time it starts to shake up your idea of who you think you are, of how your world functions. It exposes you to the exiting possibility and profound discomfort of real personal transformation and change. Sometimes when we stop our meditation practice we tell ourself  it is because we don’t have time or energy, or that it is too much effort. But the real and underlying reason is that we have become uncomfortable with the absence of familiar reference points as we sit in the open space of meditation, and the freedom & responsibility that this absence of reference points gives us.

The increasing absence of static outer markers in our life
In these days of the information age and the impact that it is having on our work and leisure, we can see the world is changing at an ever faster rate. There is an ever receding number of reliable outer reference points around which we can securely base our life.

The evolutionary and creative advantage of the meditation
A meditator who is making a little bit of effort each day to get comfortable courageously sitting in an inner space without reference points is naturally going to start feeling more comfortable with the reality of outer change in their life. We can start to get comfortable with the continuous change that surrounds us, to enter into the flow of it, to embrace it, and take advantage of the opportunities that arise from it. This gives the meditator a creative advantage over others, both in terms of his/her personal happiness, but also in terms of the other aspects of their life, such as when going through relationship changes, or in professional or business development.

Practicum
Try sitting for a while each day and deliberately connect to that part of your mind that is open, spacious and without reference points. You don’t have to get rid of your thoughts, or even close your eyes. This open spacious place is present in the here and now, whether your mind is full of thoughts or not. Relax into that open space, allow yourself to get lost for a while, forget who you are, forget where you come from. Get comfortable with that part of you that is and always has been liberated from the limitation of reference points.

Related article: Six Kinds of Loneliness by Pema Chodron

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com 

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Concentration Energy Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation techniques mind body connection Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence Zen Meditation

Locating Your Deep Centre

Dear Integral Meditators,

If you are in the centre of the energy of your life, then you are general going to be and feel in control. If you are on the edge of the energy in your life, being pushed around and buffeted by its currents, then things can really feel like a struggle. This weeks article explores a practical exercise in how to find your centre and stay there!

Yours in the spirit of deep centring,
Toby

Locating Your Deep Centre

The following is an exercise that you can do at the beginning of a meditation, or anytime you want to balance and centre your body-mind. It can also be done over a slightly longer period of time as a meditation in and of itself.
It can be done when you feel upset or out of balance, or as a method for finding deep stillness.
In general the energy that occupies your bodies centre or core is the energy that will be running your life. This exercise helps you to bring conscious awareness and balanced energy into the core of your being, thus giving you greater autonomy, choice and control over your body, mind and life.

Step 1: Aligning your body – Sit comfortably with your hips, abdomen, chest/shoulders, neck and head stacked one on top of the other like a pile of bricks. This allows the weight of your upper body to travel comfortably down your torso into the hips with minimal effort needed to sustain a vertical sitting posture.

Step 2: Finding your vertical core – Visualize a line of light and energy coming down from the sky through the dead centre of your crown, brain, neck, chest, abdomen and hips, exiting through the perineum (mid-point between the legs) and continuing down into the centre of the earth. This line of energy is your body’s vertical core.

Step 3: Balancing the front and back of your body – Now with small movements of only a centimetre or two, rock your body backwards and forwards. As you do so feel the front and back halves of your body coming into alignment with each other around the vertical line of light in the centre of your body.

Step 4: Balancing the left and right halves of the body- Now rock your body sideways with small movements. As you do so, feel the left and right halves of your torso and body coming into alignment with each other. With the completion of steps 3&4 you now feel that the front and back halves and the left and right halves of your body in a state of balance and harmony with each other around your bodies vertical core.

Step 5: Finding the deep centre of your body – Now look for the deep centre of your torso and body. This will be along the vertical core of your body, somewhere between the chest and solar plexus level. Note you are not trying to find a chakra or anything like that, you are trying to find the literal ‘dead-centre’ or bulls-eye of your body – its middle point.
Once you have found it, visualize it as a ball of light about the size of a golf ball. As you breathe in breathe your awareness into the deep centre of your body, as you breathe out feel light and energy from your deep centre expanding out into your body-mind, bringing stability, poise, balance and harmony to it.

Optional Step 6: Going cosmic – If you want to prod the enlightenment experience a little with this exercise (and why not?) as you breathe into your deep centre feel yourself connecting to the centre of your spiritual self, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. As you breathe out feel your awareness expanding out from your deep centre into a space of eternity and infinity.

Rest in the awareness of your deep centre for a while, when you feel ready you can return to your daily life aligned and re-centred!

© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Audio Serenity

Special 1 week offer, get 25% off!

Go on 61minutes of pure and deep relaxation. Enjoy a drug free vacation from stress and anxiety”.

Click on the link, to listen to a free sample.  Just type in NEWSMAY25OFF into the coupon code section of the purchase section to get the discount.

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Biographical Gods and Goddesses Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation techniques Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence Zen Meditation

Does God Exist? A Meditators Perspective (and what to tell your kids)

Dear Integral Meditators,

Many spiritual paths and religions and  take “God-realization” as their object of attainment, but what if you can’t find God? This weeks article takes both a playful and serious look at this issue. Complementary reading would be  the article on “The Four Less-nesses of Enlightenment” that I wrote a few weeks back.

Yours in the spirit of the God beyond God,
Toby

Upcoming Meditation Classes and Workshops at Integral Meditation Asia 

Coming soon
 

Does God Exist?  A Meditators Perspective (and what to tell your kids)

A couple of weeks ago my daughter Sasha (8yrs) asked me “Does God really exist? After all you can’t really see him or prove he does”. This is a classic response from a child developing her rational faculties and for whom the previous concept of a creator in the sky, a little like a big father or mother, becomes obviously and patently untrue.
For many of us as we move into adulthood it seems like we are faced with a dilemma; either we accept an unseen, unknowable God on faith, or we decide that he does not exist and that there is no God.

The path of meditation offers a second, non-philosophical perspective on the existence or not of God which is put succinctly in the modern day Zen saying:
“There is no-God and he is your creator”

The way I answered to my daughter was as follows:

  • God exists in a place called no-thing, and no-thing is the place where everything comes from, so you can find God in everything.
  • God lives in a place called no-where, and no-where is the place where somewhere comes from. So because God is no-where he is the only person you can find everywhere.
  • Gods’ identity is in a place called no-self, which is the place where all selves arise. So at the heart of every self there is no-self, which is where you find God.

So, the idea with these three sentences is that they invite a person enquiring after the existence of God to go beyond the world of ideas, philosophy or theology and move instead into a space of experiential, non-conceptual investigation and curiosity.
With these sentences you just need to read them, and then ‘drop-in’ to the space that they invite you into and to be with that space, to be present to something that lies beyond your mind, beyond rationality, beyond ideas.

  • God is un-findable in the world of things, so if you drop into a space of no-thing, that is where she will be, although of course that would be non-be
  • There is no place where God ‘lives’, so if you go to nowhere, that is where you will find him
  • God does not have a self, so if you let go of your own self completely, then you will find God there

To the cynic this can just sound like word games, but as I say the idea is to use the words to go beyond the words to a non-conceptual, living experience that you then hold and rest in.

After finishing this article I then asked my daughter “So what did you think of those definitions of God that I gave you?”
“Good” she said, not looking up from her book.
“Really I said? Stop reading and come here for a moment”
She stood up and came over to me. I asked her the same question
“So what did you think of those definitions of God that I gave you?”
She looks at me, smiles and said “Excellent!”
Then she rolls her eyes, puts on her most ironic face, then sits down to read again.

I think that is what you call approving non-approval.
© Toby Ouvry 2014, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Support for you Meditation Practice 

If you enjoyed the article above, and are interested in sound technology that can help you more easily get into deeper states of meditation, the following two tracks work well with cultivating formless, timeless meditations:

Beginners Mind

Audio Serenity

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Mindfulness Zen Meditation

Four Zen Meditations

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article focuses on practical Zen exercises based around more or less well known quotes that are in the spirit of Zen. The nice thing about all of them is that they are great simplifiers of the mind, and realeasers of our natural intelligence.

Yours in the spirit of Zen,

Toby

Four Zen Meditations

This article is simply a set of four quotes in the spirit of Zen (note, not all from Zen sources, but nevertheless in the spirit of Zen practice), together with a focused contemplation to go with each.

“Knowledge is learning something every day, wisdom is letting go of something every day” – Zen Proverb
We all know that feeling of being overwhelmed by the amount of information coming our way in modern day life. Whilst we definitely need to keep increasing our knowledge, in order to make sure that our wisdom also increases in proportion to our knowledge we also need to spend time dropping our knowledge and resting in a state of simplicity and conscious ‘forgetting’. This means not just once every few months, but once a day!

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God whilst one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes”- Alan Watts
Pick one or two activities each day where you are focused on a non-conceptual experience of the activity itself, with the amount of conceptual thought kept to a minimum.

“The way out is through the door. Why is it that no one will use this method?” – Confucius
It’s very easy to over think and over-complexify when it comes to the things that we need to do in our life, and the motivations with which we do them. Practise pairing down and simplifying your actions so that they are simple, direct and appropriate responses to the demands of the moment. Don’t over think it!

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing” – Meister Eckhart
Ultimate truth is a non-conceptual phenomenon. The only way you can get to it is though direct observation, penetration and experience of what is right in front of you. Practice erasing your thoughts and just looking at what is there.

A little further practical Zen tid-bit:

“The only Zen that you find on top of a mountain is the Zen that you bring with you” – Robert M Pirsig

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Zen Meditation

Zen Meditation – Seeing Without Naming

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article explains a Zen meditation technique that I teach in my Zen walking meditation workshops, the next of which is coming up next Sunday May 19th May, so if you like what you read, there is a chance to get out and practice it then if you like!

On the walking meditation theme, I have scheduled in a new walking meditation workshop Walking Meditations for Connecting to the Energy of Nature  in the 3rd week in June, which will be another opportunity to walk your way to peace of mind…

Yours in the spirit of clear seeing,

Toby

Upcoming Classes at Integral Meditation Asia:

Click on event titles for full details

MAY
Saturday 11th May, 9.30am-5pm: Uncovering the Hidden Power of Your Shadow Self – A One Day Workshop

Sunday 19th May, 8-1030am – Zen Walking Meditation 2.5 Hour Morning Workshop

JUNE
Saturday 15th June, 9.30am -12.30pm – Living Life From Your Inner Center – Meditations for Going With the Flow of the Present Moment

Sunday June 23rd, 8.00-10.30am – Walking Meditations for Connecting to the Energy of Nature 

Zen Meditation – Seeing Without Naming 

You know that you have a busy mind, you’ve heard about meditation, but find that focusing on the breathing is (in the beginning at least) quite a tough and laborious technique for slowing down your mind; sometimes it works well, but other times you feel as if you are fighting against the tide of your mind as it motors along regardless of your efforts to calm it down!
The Zen meditation form “Seeing without naming” is a meditation form that I have come up with myself (thus it is “in the spirit of Zen”, rather than being one that I received from a Zen teacher or got from a book). With this technique you don’t try and stop the mind per-se, rather you approach the moment to moment experience of your mind using atechnique of observation that enables you to encounter your world in a different way, with a heightened sense of awareness.
It is designed to temporarily bamboozle the usual automatic conceptual processes in your mind, and by doing this you can temporarily achieve a calm and insightful space in your life.

Some of the possible results of this meditation are:

  1. The ability to reduce the amount of conceptual thought in your mind and achieve greater clarity
  2. An enhanced, renewed and sharpened relationship to your process of thinking and labeling what is going on in your life
  3. A greater appreciation of whatever you are experiencing right now in the present moment
  4. A renewed sense of wonder in your life
  5. The ability to be in the midst of a busy mind without getting stressed-out about it

Seeing without naming outer forms.
Seeing without naming means to encounter the various physical forms and sensual experiences that you see, hear or feel whilst you are sitting in meditation, or walking, or just going about your daily life without labeling what you see or experience conceptually.
For example if you are walking past a tree, you really try and observe and experience the tree ”as it is”, without placing a mental label on it.
The object is to try to get yourself into a space where you feel as if you are experiencing the outer world for the first time, and everything that you are encountering is new and fresh, as if you have never seen it before. You are seeking in this exercise the classic Zen “beginners mind”.
One of the reasons why life sometimes seems stale and lacking in vibrancy is that we become trapped in a conceptual world where our mind assumes that it knows what it is seeing, and stops really looking at it and encountering it. By engaging in a process of ”looking without naming” you try and take away these conceptual assumptions/filters and place yourself fully back in touch with your living world as you encounter it in each moment, moment by moment.

Seeing without naming inner forms:
This meditation form is similar to the first except, rather than focusing on your outer and sensual environment we focus on the inner world of thoughts and feelings. It is a little more subtle than the first exercise, and you may find that at first it is best to do as a contemplation whilst sitting down and focusing. With familiarity however you will find that you can do it anywhere.
As you sit focus your attention on the thoughts, feelings and images arising in your mind. As they arise  simply try to accept them as they are without naming or labeling them as good, bad, or otherwise placing value judgments upon them. Imagine that you are experiencing thoughts and feelings for the first time, and allow yourselves to develop a sense of wonder and appreciation that you are able to have the miraculous experience of being a living, thinking, feeling human being.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
A Mind of Ease Presence and being present The Essential Meditation of the Buddha Zen Meditation

The Pattern of Meditation

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article on the pattern of meditation is really a summary of one of the big themes that has come out of the last two meditation workshops that I have done in January. I think if we understand this basic principle then it really helps to gain clarity on the what and the why of meditation.

Yours in the spirit of healthy patterns of consciousness,

Toby
     

The Pattern of Meditation

Each of us has three different facets of our fundamental, moment to moment experience:
1.       Our experience of physical or sensory awareness, and the objects within it.
2.      Our experience of mental awareness, and the thoughts, images, feelings and emotions within it.
3.      Our experience of awareness itself and the experience of inner spaciousness that it gives rise to.

If you think about your mental and sensory worlds as being like clouds, and the experience of spacious awareness itself being like the open sky, then this gives you a good image to work with.
If you think about your spacious awareness as being the water in a huge ocean, and the physical and mental appearances as being like the waves on the surface of that ocean, then that gives you another good image. One of the interesting things about this second image is that the waves are made of the same substance as the ocean. In terms of our analogy this hints that the mental and physical appearances to our mind arise from the ocean of conscious awareness itself, rather than being something separate.

For a non-meditating person, their consciousness tends to move to and fro between the first two types of awareness. It goes from attention to body to mind, from physical awareness to mental awareness, from thinking to doing. The only time that such a person really rests deeply in their experience of spacious awareness is when they are asleep, which they can’t remember, and so it is not much use to them!*(see note at bottom) As a result of this basic pattern of consciousness, most people remain totally identified with their body and mind as their ‘self’, and are unable to enjoy, rest in and leverage upon the third type of consciousness; spacious awareness.

The fundamental task of someone who meditates is to change the pattern of their consciousness so that it no longer goes only from body to mind, body to mind, body to mind, but rather alternates evenly from body to mind, to spacious awareness in equal amounts. The integration of spacious awareness into the consciousness pattern of a meditator enables them (amongst other things) to:

  • Relax regularly and deeply even when in the midst of busyness and stress
  • Overcome neurotic over-identification with their body and mind (or thinking and doing)
  • Become responsive to life rather than reactive
  • Become much more spontaneous and creative in their life, and think outside of the societal programming that they have been brought up with

Beginning to Integrate Inner Space into Your Life
To begin integrating spacious awareness into your life all you need to start doing is to notice that in each moment of your awareness there are three things available to you; what appears to your physical senses, what appears in your mental awareness, and the spacious awareness that surrounds and contains the first two. Just for short, regular periods of your day pay attention to this and, rather than focusing upon your body and thoughts, just rest in the experience of spacious awareness, focus on the sky itself, rather than the clouds.

*Long term meditation practice does include developing conscious awareness during sleep, and thus leveraging on the natural deep spacious awareness of the sleep state.

© Toby Ouvry 2013, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mind body connection Presence and being present spiritual intelligence Zen Meditation

Zen Meditation on the Body Within the Body (Within the Body)

Hi Everyone,

This weeks meditation article focuses on the Zen meditation on the body within the body. The first part of the meditation, separating our actual body from our conceptual image of our body is a traditional Zen technique. The second part, dropping the body and resting in the pure awareness body is my own addition that I use when I teach the meditation to classes. So it is my own “invention” so to speak, but it is entirely within the spirit and intention of Zen practice.

Yours in the spirit of clear perception,

Toby

Article of the Week:

Zen Meditation on the Body Within the Body (Within the Body)

Our Three Bodies and the Three Dimensions of Existence Highlighted By Zen

All the great wisdom traditions of the world point out that our world is a multi-dimensional one, with these different dimensions  coming together in communion to form the totality of our being and experience.
In the Zen meditation on the body within the body, three of these dimensions are emphasized as objects of meditation, each of these bodies in turn corresponding to a particular dimension of reality.
The Three bodies are:

  1. Our conceptual body, or the conceptual image that we hold in our mind of our physical body
  2. Our actual physical body as it is in the sensory world
  3. Our formless energy body or  body of consciousness

These three bodies in turn correspond to three fundamental dimensions of our reality and moment to moment experience:

  1. The conceptual or intellectual dimension of our existence
  2. The non-conceptual dimension of our existence
  3. The spiritual or formless dimension of our existence that forms the ground or basis of dimensions one and two.

The meditation is called the body within the body, because our non-conceptual body is concealed or hidden by our conceptual body, or body image, and our  body of consciousness is hidden behind the sensory perception of our non-conceptual body. Hence through meditation we discover different bodies behind or within what we thought was just one body.

The Purpose of the Meditation on the Body Within the Body

The purpose of this meditation is to help us develop awareness of what in Buddhism is called dualistic appearance, which is the appearance of an object (such as our physical body) together with the projected mental image of that object (in this case the body). According to the Buddha, all of our suffering and pain arises from the confusion that dualistic appearance creates in our mind.
To take a simple example, an anorexic person with a very skinny body observes his/her body and projects the mental image an unacceptably fat body on their actual body. As a result they continue to starve their physical body even though it desperately needs nutrients. In such a person their idea of their body and their actual body are completely confused, and so as a result they cause themselves suffering and harm.
The above example is an extreme one, but in reality all of us experience this type of confusion more or less all of the time, our idea of reality and the actuality of our reality do not match each other and so as a result we experience confusion, delusion and suffering.
The first point of the meditation on the body within the body takes our physical body (initially) as its object, and shows us how we can become mindful of the difference between our actual body our conceptual image of our body so that we no longer confuse the two in harmful ways.
The second point of the meditation is to cultivate the skill of dropping all appearances, conceptual and non-conceptual, and learning to rest our mind in the natural, open state of pure awareness that is our body of consciousness.

The Meditation

Stage 1: Meditating of the conceptual image of your body
Sitting comfortably in meditation, start to examine times in your life when you have had different experiences of your body, times when you may have hated it, times when you have been proud of it, ashamed of it, embarrassed by it. Try to observe how in each case the way in which you experience your body at those times is actually in large part dominated by a conceptual image of the body, rather than the body itself as you are experiencing it from moment to moment. Try and observe how your conceptual mind projects its imagined image of a body onto your body.

Stage 2: Meditating on the non-conceptual experience of your body
In the second stage of the meditation simply focus on the sensory experience of your body and breathing as they are in the present moment. Using the body and the breathing as an anchor, try and drop all conceptual thoughts as completely as you can, and just experience the physical body as it is, free from your idea of what it is. Try and become as familiar as you can with this non-conceptual experience of your sensory body as you experience it in the here and now.
This experience of the body as it is is called “the body within the body” because it is the body that we “discover” when we drop our conceptual image of our body. Our mental image of our body normally hides our actual body from us (!)

Stage 3: Meditating on your body of consciousness
In the final stage of the meditation simply try and let go of all conceptual and sensory experiences altogether, and allow your mind to rest in the “pure awareness body” or subtle formless energy body that acts as the ground from which arises both our conceptual and sensory experience.  Try and gently sustain your experience of this formless or “spiritual” dimension of existence for the remainder of the meditation.
This third meditation stage and third “body” is called “the body within the body, within the body” because it is the body that is normally hidden behind the mask of the phenomenal world, or the body of form. When we drop our body of form, the body of consciousness appears, or is revealed.

Practice When Going About Our Daily Life

  1. During your daily life try and remain consciously aware of the different images and perceptions that your mind is projecting upon your body, accept the images that are useful and helpful, but do not buy into images that are destructive, deluded or unhelpful. Be mindful not to be fooled by them!
  2. Try and come back to your basic sensory or non conceptual experience of your body by regularly dropping your conceptual thoughts and focusing for short periods on the sensory body and the breathing.
  3. Regard both your conceptual and non-conceptual worlds as appearances arising from the ground of your (Universal) or body of consciousness, like a dream arising from the clarity of deep sleep, or clouds arising within and clear sky.

© Toby Ouvry 2012, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Essential Spirituality Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Presence and being present Uncategorized Zen Meditation

The Eternal Present and the Four Types of Time

Dear Integral Meditators,

How do you think of time? It is one of three major aspects of our experience (the other two being space and energy). Often as not we think of time as being just one thing, but in reality it is much more than that. In the article below I outline four major aspects of time and give a few thoughts about them within the context of how we can learn to rest in the eternal present.

Yours in the spirit of timeless time,
   
Toby

Article of the Week:

The Eternal Present and the Four Types of Time

The eternal present is the spiritual dimension of time, awareness and realization of which is a major goal within all of the great wisdom traditions of the world. The paradoxical thing about the eternal present is that it is always present with us, so it is not something that you can “achieve” as such. Rather it is more like something that you can become aware of and use that awareness to inform your day to day existence.

From a meditative perspective, the way to meditate upon the eternal present is to recognize it and then rest your awareness in it for extended periods. This gives you a basic platform for starting to integrate the eternal present into your daily life. However in the long term your ability to integrate the eternal present into your daily life will also depend upon the relationship that you have to three aspects of “temporal time” that we also have to deal with. These three I call clock time, biological time and psychological time. What I intend to do in the rest of this article is to outline these different types of time and indicate few simple things that we need to master with each one if we really want to integrate the eternal present into our life.

  1. Clock Time– We all know this one, it is the division of our time into seconds, minutes, days, weeks, months and years. From a meditational perspective we need to be well organized enough with regard to our clock time to integrate regular periods of meditative activity into our day, where we can rest in the eternal present. Without this organizational ability we find ourself continually chasing after clock time, feeling flustered and disorganized.
  2. Biological/Seasonal Time– This is the time that our body is attuned to, and that reflects the wider cycles of time and the seasons on the planet. Animals have attunement to this form of time naturally, and act accordingly and appropriately. However we humans often as not seem to find ourself out of touch with our “biological clock”, mentally overriding it, not listening to our physical body when it needs some down time, and being totally unaware of the natural cycles occurring on our immediate environment. Mastery of biological time essentially means re-allowing our biological and seasonal intelligence to communicate with us and factor consideration of it into our daily activities. You could also call biological time “cyclical time”, as it moves in cycles and circles, rather than in a linear way.
  3. Psychological time– Psychological time is the time that we experience in our mind. You could also call this linear time in the sense that psychological time feels like it is moving from one point to the next, to the next, to the next in a straight line (unlike the cycles/circles of biological time). However psychological time can be fickle in the sense that sometimes a short amount of clock time can feel like an eternity, and a long period of time can feel very short, for example if we are really enjoying ourselves. Psychological time is extremely subjective, with periods of time in our day and life that we “dread” and periods that we look forward to. Psychological time is also interesting in the sense that for example if we look back upon our days activities there may be just one thing that our mind focuses on, as if it was the only thing that happened in the day. The essential point is that our experience of psychological time is defined most often by the way in which we frame our experience with our thoughts, so taking care of our thoughts, and making sure that we are mentally framing our daily experience in as optimal a way as possible is a major aspect of mastering psychological time.
  4. Spiritual time– Spiritual time is the time beyond both cyclical biological time and linear psychological time, and is most often referred to as the eternal present, or the eternal now. It embraces and contains all the other expressions of time like a mother embracing a child.  As mentioned at the beginning of this article, awareness and realization of it is a major goal of all the world’s great wisdom traditions. Quite often when people first hear about the eternal present they think of it as a high realization that is far away from where they are in their own path right now. However in reality the eternal present is in many ways the simplest and most accessible of experiences. In order to access it you simply have to “drop time” and allow your mind to rest in a natural, non-conceptual state. As soon as you do this you immediately begin to enter into the subjective experience of the eternal present moment. As such we can turn to the eternal present for support whether we are a very highly realized spiritual being, or a relative beginner.

In order to begin leveraging on the support and happiness that we can receive from spiritual time/ the eternal present the major thing that we need to do is to simply create time for a little stillness in our routine, and then recognize the eternal present within that quiet space, allowing our mind ad body to rest in the experience as fully as possible!

For other articles by Toby on the eternal present, please read “The Four Types of Present Moment”, and “Your Ego as Resistance to What is Present”. 

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com