care – Toby Ouvry Meditation

“Be present to &pay attention to things, feel the basic, rudimentary love. Let it feed you & your life. Imagine it is easier than you think!”

Article: The easy way to love more

Two parts of awareness

If you look at your experience of awareness, you may notice that you can kind of divide it into two parts:

The part that can observe, that can register or be aware the object that it looks at
The feeling that comes with the awareness like a ‘touching’ or ‘embracing’. This part is almost sensory

You might basically say that there is a ‘watching’ and a ‘feeling’ dimension to each moment of our awareness.

Love as the basic feeling or emotion

Continuing with our train of thought here, you could regard the ‘watching’ dimension of awareness as the basis of our mind and thoughts. With regard to the second, ‘feeling’ dimension of awareness, this then acts as the basis of our emotions and feelings. Awareness divides up into these two dimensions of mind (thought) and emotion/feeling.
When we value something that we meet or see, our awareness pays attention to it, we ‘give it’ our attention. You might say that this giving of attention is the basic emotion, love. Because we give somebody or something a value, we pay attention to it. That attention is basic love.
You will know this from your own experience, when someone else listens to you, pays attention to you, considers you, acknowledges you, then you feel valued by them, which is a really simple way of feeling loved.

Loving is easy

Sometimes it can feel like it is difficult or hard to love. Sometimes we feel exhausted by the demands of others and the world. We don’t feel we have the capacity to love. Sometimes (maybe often?) this is because we are trying to hard to love, we think it is something more difficult than it is. If we understand that all you need to do to love something is to rest your attention upon it, we discover it is not as difficult as we thought, in fact it is easy!

Different domains of practice

To discover experientially how easy loving is in this basic sense, we need to practice. Becoming basically present, perhaps smiling very gently, practice bringing attention to, and therefore extending love towards:

Yourself, or a part of your inner-self
Your body, or a specific part of the body
Other people, those you know, like, dislike, don’t know
Things in nature, plants, animals, trees, the ocean
In-animate objects, paintings, ceramics, anything you like

Don’t over think it!

On way in which we can sabotage ourself here is by trying too hard. We think we must have to pay attention and think a certain way, or really try and feel affectionate. By doing this we can miss the total simplicity of what is going on here.

Attention = valuing = love

That’s really it! And it is a wonderful gift that you can give to yourself, your body, other people and the world around you. One thing to understand is that, in this context, love is the thing that happens before you think about it. Sure, sometimes we love others after we have developed a way of thinking about them and what they are/do/stand for, but attentional love is more basic, more simple, easier than that.

Sit/stand/walk. Be present to/pay attention to things, feel the basic, rudimentary love. Let it feed you and your life. Imagine it is easier than you think!

Related reading: Lazy compassion (compassion & care through awareness)

© Toby Ouvry 2026, 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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Three concepts that describe three states of perception:

Paranoia – When we see a world that is attacking us and out to get us. This perception arises from a mind that is seeing the world from the perspective of its own fear, anger, jealousy and other negative mindsets
Pronoia – When we see a world filled with love and with people, places and things that are worthy of that love. This perception arises within us when our own hearts and minds are filled with love, kindness and care
Transnoia – When we see a world where everything is a manifestation of the divine or transcendent, and everything that happens to us is helping us to awaken and grow in the light of this truth. This perception arises from a condition of faith in a higher power than us that is good, but also from wisdom, the ability to see that the challenges we have to face in our life conform to a meaningful pattern that, if we have the presence of mind to face up to will help us grow, evolve and eventually reach our enlightenment.

One way of viewing the path to enlightenment could be a journey from the nightmare world of paranoia to the “heavenly” states of mind of pronoia and transnoia.

Meditation for introducing pronoia and transnoia into the heart of our paranoia.

Using your breathing as an anchor for your awareness. Recall times or conditions in your life when you have felt deeply surrounded by your own paranoia. Feel into those times and states as realistically as you can without losing your sense of centre.

Having done this, now introduce the perspective of pronoia into the meditation. See the circumstance and yourself though the eyes of love, kindness and compassion. Observe how this perspective starts to alter your view and perception of the situation.

Finally introduce the perspective of transnoia – See what is happening as a part of a larger plan created by a benevolent higher power (call it God, Buddha, the Tao or word of your choice) that is helping you to develop and refine your character, and move toward your own eventual enlightenment and fully awakened state. Observe how this perspective changes your experience of the situation.

This is a simple exercise that you can do either in a formal sitting meditation or in a more casual, contemplative way when you have a few moments. The main thing is to start seeing how you can work with them in a practical way to alter your experience of your life.