Tag: inner growth

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Awareness and insight Biographical Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Meditating on the Self Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope

How Much Happiness Are You Prepared to Tolerate?

Dear Integral Meditators,

What if happiness were easier than we think, and the only thing getting in the way was that we often find being happy profoundly uncomfortable?

This weeks integral meditations article is in the form of a series of questions that invites us to look a bit deeper into the real causes of our lack of happiness.

I’m in the process of setting up the rest of the meditation program for the rest of 2013, you can see the dates below, full details will be out by next week.

Yours in the spirit of uncomplicated happiness,

Toby

Upcoming Courses at Integral Meditation Asia:

Starting Sunday October 7th  – Qi Gong for Improving your Health and Energy Levels and Removing Your Inner Stress – A Four Class Series

19th & 24th November – An Introduction to Meditation from the Perspective of Zen Levels 1&2 (full details next week)

October 27th, Dec 1st – Shadow Meditation Levels 1&2 (full details next week)

How Much Happiness Are You Prepared to Tolerate?

What if happiness was easy?

What if the obstacle to happiness was not the fact that it was not available to you each day, but rather the experience of being unconditionally happy was something that you had a very low tolerance level to?

What if being happy actually caused you anxiety on a subtle and unconscious level, life surely could not be this good?

What if you are actually avoiding being happy because a large part of you actually prefers being unhappy, struggling with life?

What if the idea of working towards happiness as a future goal seems attractive to you, but accepting happiness as it exists in the present moment is something that makes you genuinely uncomfortable to the extent of avoidance?

The word meditation and its applied practice really means to ‘ponder deeply upon’, or ‘to look deeply into’. This week your meditation practice is to ask yourself the above questions and the one question below, to ‘penetrate the question’ so to speak.

What if real genuine happiness was available to you right now and the only thing standing in the way of it was your acceptance of it?

© 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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creative imagery Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope One Minute Mindfulness

Are You Going With the Flow or Just Drifting With the Current?

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you have had an interesting and insightful week, and that your life journey has been unfolding smoothly!

This weeks article takes a look at the often quite subtle difference between going with the flow and drifting with the current in life. It is a subtle difference but a crucial one, and I hope the article is able to shed a little light on how to tell the difference…
The article below is a complementary one to last weeks  offering; “When you have to go against the flow”.

Yours in the spirit of the strength of flow,
Toby

Are You Going With the Flow or Just Drifting With the Current?

Going with the flow is seen as a desirable quality; a relaxed leaning into the process of life that enhances our happiness and wellbeing, helps us to achieve more by doing less and allows synchronicity and other larger powers to function more freely in our life.
In contrast, drifting with the current means allowing ourself to drift unconsciously with whatever currents there are in our life without distinguishing whether they are good or bad; we just allow ourself to be moulded by circumstances, habits, fears and so on.

So, what is the difference between going with the flow and drifting with the current? The challenge is that they can look and feel quite similar, and as a result it can be pretty difficult to discern which is which. Let’s take an example:

Drifting with the current
Let’s say I have an issue with my partner that I am feeling emotional about. We sit down to dinner one evening and there comes a natural space in the conversation which would be an ideal place for me to bring up the issue that I wish to talk about. However, because I feel uncomfortable and apprehensive about the subject matter, I simply allow myself to direct the conversation toward another less challenging topic, thus avoiding the discomfort of bringing the issues (that I need to talk about) into the open. This is an example of drifting with the current; I allow my fears and apprehensions to steer me away from that which needs to be said in order to avoid the short term discomfort.

Going with the flow
Now let’s take the same situation; I have an emotional issue that I wish to talk about with my partner. We sit down for dinner, and the flow of the conversation creates a natural space for me to bring up the issue I am concerned about. As this space opens up I feel the discomfort within myself, the fear and resistance to bringing up my emotional vulnerability. However, instead of allowing this discomfort to make me drift away from what needs to be said, I consciously flow with the discomfort and bring up my emotional issue with my partner and we talk it through.

From this we can see that going with the flow does not mean that we avoid the things that make us uncomfortable, rather it means that we flow with what is there, and consciously direct that flow toward a benevolent end.
Going with the flow can be a way of gently confronting the difficult challenges in our life. It is not simply avoiding anything in our way that seems difficult, or allowing our fate to be determined by outer circumstances; that is drifting with the current.

A practice: “Am I going with the flow or just drifting with the current?”
Over the next week or so ask yourself this question a couple of times a day, or whenever you face a choice in your life. Are you using the gentle strength of going with the flow to move forward in the direction you want to go, or are you just drifting aimlessly with the currents in your life?

© 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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creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Motivation and scope Uncategorized

When You Have to Go Against the Flow

Dear Integral Meditators,

Life is not so tough when everything is flowing in the direction that you want it to, but what happens when you find yourself having to go against the flow of energy? This weeks article explores that space and how we can use meditation to help.

In the article I use as an image derived from landscape and nature as a main method for developing the ability to go against the flow. In the Dynamic Calm Online Meditation Course  beginning this coming Thursday 19th September I will be using quite a lot of this type of landscape imagery as a way of connecting to the energy of calm, so if you like the article below then this is a course that you might enjoy!

Yours in positively going against the flow,

Toby

Upcoming Classes at Integral Meditation Asia:

Beginning Thursday 19th September – Integrating the Energy of Dynamic Calm Into Your Life – A Four Week Online Meditation Course

  • Would you like to learn how to find a place of calm, centeredness in all circumstances?
  • Would you like to be able to conserve energy that is currently being taken up in stress and anxiety so that you can use it doing the things that you love and enjoy in your life?
  • Are you interested to bring a quality of calm to your life that is not just a place of stillness and peace, but also a source of strength, resilience and dynamism?
  • Are you interested in developing a meditation practice that is flexible and invites you to explore and develop your own wisdom and insight, rather than being rigid and dogmatic?

If the answer is yes to the above questions, then this is a meditation course for you! ClickHERE to read the full details of the course…

When You Have to Go
Against the Flow

Often times in life we find ourself having to go against the flow. For example:

  • We can find ourself going through a phase in a friendship, work or romantic relationship where it all seems like hard work and nothing is flowing easily
  • In our work business can seem slow, and a lot of effort seems to have to go into generating a relatively small success
  • When an idea that we are deeply passionate about is not taken up with interest by others, or they are even judgmental or negative about it

There are infinite numbers of situations we may find ourselves in that require the life skill of going against the flow, particularly if we are working with ideas that are new or pioneering.

How meditation changes our experience of going with the flow
When we practice meditation we are developing the capacity to “go with the flow” and relax more in our life, but a solid meditation practice will also give us the patience and perseverance to keep putting one foot in front of the other (literally or figuratively) in order to accomplish a goal that is important to us but that is difficult to achieve because we are having to go against the flow.

A meditation image for going against the flow
In Asia I have visited several rivers that have rapids in them. What I like to do when I visit such places is to use the rocks in the water to hop upstream, going against the flow of the fast moving water. Standing securely on a rock surrounded by fast flowing water I relax and look for the next rock to leap onto. I jump from one rock to the next, gradually making progress upstream again the current of the water all around me.
Often when I am in a daily situation where I am having to go against the flow, I use this image of hoping up a river on the rocks as a way of keeping patient, persevering and gradually keep moving forward. The image describes perfectly for me the mindset that I am using to prevail.

Questions for your own practice of going against the flow

  • What situations in your life do you find yourself having to go against the flow? As you are reading this article, try and think of two or three concrete situations where you yourself regularly have to go against the flow in your life.
  • What images communicate for you the essence of awakened “going against the flow?” In the above article I have suggested an image from my own experience that you are most welcome to use as a way of developing your own “going against the flow” mindset. However, there may be images from your own direct experience that describe very well to you the patience and perseverance that you need to go against the flow and that will work perfectly for you as an image for this type of meditation.

© 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
creative imagery Essential Spirituality Gods and Goddesses Inner vision Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Meditation techniques Primal Spirituality spiritual intelligence

Is Spirit a Place of Light of Dark?

Dear Integral Meditators,

When you think of the words “deep spirit”, or “deep consciousness” what sort of ideas and images arise in your mind? This weeks article investigates the encounter with deep spirit and what sort of experience it is.

Yours in the transformation power of deep consciousness,

Toby

Is Spirit a Place of Light or Dark? 

There is often a pre-conceived idea that the deeper dimensions of consciousness are somehow domains of heavenly light and bliss, but what is it really like when we connect to deeper levels of spirit and consciousness through meditation?
The deeper levels of spirit have been experienced by mediators and spiritual practitioners of all traditions and, rather than being a realm of light (as some of the levels of consciousness BEFORE we reach this deeper level are) the deep primal or causal level of spirit is a domain where light and darkness appear to merge and become paradoxically one. As the Christian poet Henry Vaughan said:

“There is, some say, in God a deep but dazzling darkness”

So, rather than being a realm of light per-se, the deepest level of spirit and consciousness (I’m using these words interchangeably in this article) are a place where light and dark come together as one.
Put another way it is a place that is beyond light or darkness, a place that is beyond the polarity of opposites.

If you are a consistent meditator, then the odds are after a few years you will start connecting to this domain of deeper consciousness in your meditations naturally, but we can accelerate the rate at which we connect and stabilize our experience of this domain by using images, here are three, they are very simple but very powerful:

  1. The Eclipse – Visualize a sun in the space in front of you. Imagine a dark sphere comes across and blocks the sun, as the moon does in an eclipse. So you are now staring at a dark sphere surrounded by an aura of dazzling light. Now imagine that you become that dark sphere that contains within its darkness a dazzling light. Be this union of light and darkness.
  2. The Union of Heaven and Earth – Sit on a chair with your feet squarely on the floor. Visualize dark life energy rising up from the earth through your feet. Visualize bright, white universal energy coming down through your crown from the sky. See the light and the dark energy coming together in the centre of your chest. As you observe the light and dark coming together, sometimes the space in the centre of your chest feels like a bright star, other times it feels and looks like a deep black hole. After a while it becomes a dazzling space of dark light. Allow your mind to relax and absorb into this dazzling dark space of primal spirit in the centre of your chest.
  3.  The Starry Pool – See yourself descending a spiral stairway into the earth. Eventually it opens out into a cavern. In front of you there is a deep pool of water. On the wall on the other side of the cavern there is a small alcove where a candle burns in front of an image or statue that for you represents God/Goddess or Deep Spirit. Gaze into the pool. As you do so from within the deep blackness there emerge stars deep within the darkness. Allow your mind to sink into the inky blackness of the pool where there is deep darkness in combination with the bright lights of the stars. Feel the darkness and starlight becoming one and rest in that space. At the end of this meditation return back up the stairway to the earth’s surface, don’t just snap straight out and walk off!

These images are not about philosophy, psychology or metaphysics. They are images that you can use to create a personal, experiential encounter with deep spirit and allow yourself to be changed by this encounter.

© 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
creative imagery Inner vision Integral Meditation Meditation and Psychology Meditation Recordings Meditation techniques

What is the Quality of Your Calm?

Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope you’ve had a good week, our article this week is a follow on from last weeks “Four Types of Deep, Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power“, and is a continued invitation investigate how you can integrate a deeper sense of calm in your life!

I have posted a 10 minute MP3 recording of the meditation on the three types of calm on the Integral Meditation Asia website. To have a listen and download it go here: Three Types of Calm Free Meditation MP3

Yours in the spirit of inner calm,

Toby

What is the Quality of Your Calm?

This article is mostly a guided meditation to connect you to three types of calm:

  • Mountain like calm, or the type of calmness that is solid and immovable
  • River like calm, or the type of calm that is flowing and flexible
  • Sky like calm, or the type of calm that is open and spacious

Each of these types of calm has its own particular qualities, and each has its own practical strengths, for example:

  • When you are going through emotional turmoil it can be very useful to emphasize flowing, river-like calm as a way of working with the experience
  • When you feel under attack from your outer environment for example socially it can be useful to emphasize the solid and immovable qualities of mountain-like calm.

Images to connect you to the three types of calm:

Mountain–like calm: See yourself as a mountain, solid strong and immovable. You are able to withstand any amount of wind, rain or weather as a consequence of your strength of presence. Imagine wind and rain around you; these are like the challenges of your daily life, you are like the mountain

River-like calm: See yourself as a river, flowing, flexible, and accommodating. Imagine the river rising and flowing faster as if flooding; you as the river can cope with the increase because you are able to ‘go with the flow’. Imagine the water is like the ups and downs of your emotional life and you are like the river; calmly flowing fast or slow as required.

Sky-like calm: See yourself as a vast open sky, spacious and calm. The clouds in the sky are like the different challenges in your life; they are in the sky but they do not affect its fundamental spaciousness or openness. Be that spacious, open calm in the midst of the clouds of your life!

As you work with these images you will find that you probably relate to one more than the others. Work practically with the one you relate to primarily first, and then try integrating the other two when you feel you would like a change.

To have a listen to this meditation now go here: Three Types of Calm Free Meditation MP3

© 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
Insight Meditation Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Mindfulness Uncategorized

Four Types of Deep Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power

Dear Integral Meditators,

What do you think of when you think “calm”? This weeks article looks at how calmness is not just a passive relaxational activity, but a type of dynamic inner power that we can build in our mind and life each day.

Yours in the transformative power of inner calm,

Toby

 

Four Types of Deep
Calm, Four Types of Dynamic Power

Sometimes the impression that we have of calmness is that it is a passive, purely relaxational experience that we can use to escape and gain relief from the trials and tribulations of our daily life.
If we are a little more serious about investigating the potential of calm however, we discover that contained within the experience of calm there is the experience of an inner dynamic power which adds a new dimension of strength that we can bring into the centre of our most difficult life circumstances.
We can use this inner power to direct and transform such situations in a practical and beneficial way.
In meditation we can think of the co-development of inner calm and power as having four basic types:

The calm of solidity
This is the calm presence that comes from being deeply embedded in awareness of our physical body and our physical world. It leads to a calm power that is mountain, stone or earth like in nature; it is able to remain very solid, stable and fixed in the midst of changing and difficult circumstances.

The calm of flow
This is a type of emotional calm that arises from the ability to let your emotions flow in an open and healthy manner, which in turn gives you the confidence to direct the natural power inherent within emotion toward positive ends in your life.

The calm of structure
This is a type of mental calm that comes from having a well structured and ordered mind. A well structured mind is like a good plumbing or electrical system in a house; it enables you to access and direct the power of your mind to the task at hand efficiently, without ‘leaking’ energy.

The calm of no-mind
This is a type of spiritual or existential calm that comes from developing the ability to suspend your thoughts and rest in the inner space that lies beyond them. Resting in the space of no-mind or no-thoughts gives access to deep calm even when in the midst of mental, emotional and physical turmoil, and facilitates the development of the trans-rational powers of mind that lie beyond the intellect

Integral meditation training involves the complementary development of all four types of calm power. Each can be looked at in depth, but here is a short exercise you can try to get a feel for it. Stay with each stage of the breathing for as long as you like:

As you breathe in be aware of the solidity and stability of your physical body,
As you breathe out relax into that stability.
As you breathe in allow your emotional being to open and flow,
As you breathe out relax into the power of that flow.
As you breathe in tune into the positive thought structures of your mind,
As you breathe out feel their power to contain and direct your mental energy.
As you breathe in be aware of the space beyond your thoughts,
As you breathe out relax into the power of that which lies beyond the mind.

© 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 Integral Meditation Meditation techniques Mindfulness Presence and being present

Small Focused Mind, Big Open Mind

Dear Integral Meditators,

There are two easy things that you can do to start supporting your meditation practice whilst engaged in your daily life. This weeks article outlines what they are and how you can start implementing them.

I have created another three minute video this week entitled “When is a problem really a problem; the liberating power of perspective” , click the link if you want to have a view!

Yours in the spirit of focused spaciousness,

Toby

Small Focused Mind, Big Open Mind 

With meditation two of the essential skills that you are trying to develop are the ability to keep your attention focused on a single object over an extended period of time and the ability to keep your mind relaxed, open and spacious.

For a meditation practice to be effective at this it can be done for as little as ten minutes a day, but it will be many times more effective if you can find ways of supporting the development of these two qualities when you are out of meditation and engaged in daily life. Here are two principles that I use to do this:

  1. When at work or do my daily tasks I try for at least some of the time to mono-task, and do only one thing at a time. Whilst I am focusing on that one thing I keep my mind present, not thinking about other things. I just relax into the immediacy, simplicity and ‘smallness’ of the task. This type of activity improves my ability to focus my attention singularly and, like a formal meditation it gives rise to a sense of peace and tranquillity that is a side-effect of the focused attention.
  2. When I am out of doors I make my awareness big, as big at least as the immediate horizon around me, the sky above me and a sense of the large mass of the Earth below me. Of course if I am walking around I have to be aware of things like traffic and basic safety, but within those limitations I make expand my mind into the environment, making it naturally big and spacious. This bigness and spaciousness is very relaxing, but it also helps me to keep perspective, maintain appropriate detachment from the events of my life, and gives rise to a certain sense of mystical communion/relationship with the landscape which I find very rewarding.

At present I have a habit of going for an early evening walk with my daughter which I take as a special time to expand my mind into the surrounding landscape, make it big and spacious and let go of my daily concerns. It is useful to have a specific activity that you do each day that is specifically focused on making your mind spacious in this way.

So there you go, two ways of supporting the development of your meditation practice;

  • When at work or doing daily activities spend at least some time mono-tasking
  • When outside relax your awareness into the environment, making it big and spacious

© 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
creative imagery Enlightened love and loving Integral Awareness Mindfulness Presence and being present

Trusting the Random

Dear Integral Meditators,

This weeks article focuses on my own experience of meaningful co-incidence over the past few days. A lot of our most important sources of life-lesson are happening right under our nose in the present moment, so its important to keep alert for them!

I’ve also this recently created a short video on ‘How to start transforming and re-directing your anger‘ in which I talk about this potentially tricky but very meaningful and useful subject.

Enjoy the article!

Yours in the spirit of the random universe,

Toby         

Trusting the Random  

In today’s chaotic world where there seem to be many things happening to us that are outside of our control it can oftentimes feel difficult to trust in the flow of things and allow our mind to rest in that trust. It can help to develop this ‘trust in the flow’ by noting our own experiences of how sometimes seemingly random events in our life turn out to be acts of random meaning and even kindness to us from the universe. Here are two examples from my last week in London:

  • I had just seen my brother and sister (very nobly) going into the cinema to see the Smurfs movie with our collective children (all six of them under 7yrs). I had two hours to myself with which I really felt I needed to relax and get some space. I walked out of the O2 shopping centre and, having no idea where I was going turned left on Finchley Road up a hill. After walking for about 15 minutes I found the Camden Arts Centre, a beautiful place with an art gallery, a café and a garden totally uncrowded and peaceful. I took in the art exhibition, had a great and inexpensive lunch at the café and relaxed with coffee in the garden. I could not have imagined finding a better place to rest and rejuvenate my spirits that I found, or was guided to by seeming random coincidence.
  • Coming out of the northern line tube with my daughter, she announced that she needed the toilet. My heart sank as I new from previous experience that the nearest toilet was MILES away, and I could not even remember which direction it was in. Taking a random tunnel we walked for quite some time with heavy bags with still no sign of a toilet. The sign indicated we were now under Kings Cross station. In exasperation I asked a police officer where the nearest toilet was. “Up the stairs to the main station and straight ahead”…up we go, straight ahead to the toilet. To the right of the toilet it just so happens there is the Harry Potter “Platform 9 and three quarters shop” which upon seeing it my daughter goes into fits of ecstasy, being a complete Potter fan and having read most of the books with me at bedtime. Another very meaningful and fun seeming random co-incidence marked by my seven year old getting a chocolate frog, a wizarding card and seeing the fancy wands of all the main characters in the Harry Potter movies!

So, really the object of meditation or awareness here for me is simply the persistence of meaningful, humorous and even deeply kind co-incidence that the universe seems to hand out to us all even amidst all the seeming stress, seriousness and chaos of our human life. I think if we can hold onto this ‘trust in the random’ then it has real power to make the quality of our life lighter, more playful, more meaningful, and more fun!
I find it particularly useful when I feel ‘cornered’ by my circumstances, when seemingly there is no way out. Generally there is, and the door comes sometimes in ways we would never have imagined.
© 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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Biographical creative imagery Inner vision Meditating on the Self Meditation class and workshop updates Presence and being present spiritual intelligence Uncategorized

No Name (Meditation Spaghetti Western Style)

 Dear Integral Meditators,

I hope this message finds you well, I’m currently back in the UK and enjoying my time re-connecting to the summer landscape with all the woods plants and greenery that surrounds my family home!

 

Wishing you all the very best in your meditation practice,

Toby

No Name (Meditation Spaghetti Western Style)

The man or woman of no rank is a nice practice found within various meditation traditions. Essentially the idea is that, when in meditation you can temporarily drop all the labels that you normally attach to yourself and just be.
During our daily life we build our sense of who we are around labels;

  • I am an architect, manager, artist, teacher, saleswoman
  • I am this type of son, wife, father, daughter
  • My friends think of me as this type of person
  • Etc…

When we set these labels aside we become free to be, to be “ourself” and to connect with our “ true” or essential self; the self that lies beyond the labels we stick upon ourselves.

As a longtime fan of the Spaghetti Western and the man with no name, I often do this meditation with a visualization that looks something like this:

  • I am sitting on a bench outside an empty bar/hotel in a western (as in wild western) town that has long since been deserted by its inhabitants
  • There is the creaking of an old signboard above me, a gusting breeze, a big sky. A few of those rolling bushes are going by in the street, the town is surrounded by desert scrub, no one is around.
  • In this space I simply imagine myself sitting thinking of nothing, dropping any memory of who I am.
  • Progressively I become just a man, then a human being (genderless), then just a being, I just be, allowing myself to merge with the vastness of the landscape around me. I relax deeply.

Returning to your identity
The idea of regularly dropping your identity is to gain freedom from our normal automatic over-identification with the labels that we allow to consciously and/or unconsciously dominate our identity. By doing this we develop the capacity to live a life that is psychologically free from these labels, but that enables us to use these labels wisely and appropriately when necessary.
For example I’m Clint Eastwood, the world famous western actor. Oh no sorry forgot, I’m Toby Ouvry the meditation teacher, or at least I was before I started this article, and I think he’s still there!

© 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
creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Art Meditation techniques

Getting Wet in the Rain (Meditation and Images)

Dear Integral Meditators,

We all know the expression “A picture paints a thousand words”, sometimes this can be particularly true when trying to explain meditation as it is fundamentally an inner state of mind that cannot be seen or described directly. This weeks meditation article describes one such image that I have been working with this week in my own practice.

I am sending this weeks newsletter out a day early because on Sunday evening at 7pm the price for the upcoming online course: Get Yours Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Class Ever will be going up from Sing$30 to Sing $60. So, if you want to get this course at the very reasonable price of $30, you have until Sunday evening Singapore time!
For those participating in the course, you will be sent a link and password to the course content on the 18th of July, and then you can listen to and download the course content onto your computer anytime you want. As well as the 45 min course itself there are 4 short studio meditation recordings for you to use on a daily basis.

Yours in the spirit of peace and flow,
Toby

Upcoming Classes at Integral Meditation Asia:

Get Yours Meditation Practice Started Now – The Shortest and Most Time Effective Meditation Class Ever

Getting Wet in the Rain (Meditation and Images)

We all know the expression “A picture paints a thousand words”, sometimes this can be particularly true when trying to explain meditation as it is fundamentally an inner state of mind that cannot be seen or described directly.
One of the images that I have been using this week as a way of connecting to a peaceful and flowing state of mind whilst being busy with many things is that of raindrops. I was walking down the street a few days ago and it started raining lightly. As it did so I thought about how each drop of rain falling on me and around me was like a task in my life, and how there seem to be getting more and more of them, like gradually heavier and heavier rain.
I then thought about how trying to get everything done when life is busy is like trying to catch each of the raindrops in a cup before they fall on me; I am constantly moving, adjusting, looking, catching. This is ok up to a point, but then after a while it gets tiring and confusing.
So then I thought about the act of meditating as being like temporarily stopping to try and catch all the raindrops, and just let them fall. Let them fall on me and let them fall around me, just relax and “get wet”.
I would then sit with this image for a while as a way of putting down all the activity and movement in my life, rest in this state of peace and flow for a while, and then when I felt refreshed I would then pick up the next task that I had to do and carry on.

The next time you are feeling super busy and feeling a bit confused by all the activity, you may like to use this image as a way of taking small breaks to rest, recharge and deal with the challenge in a more peaceful and centred way. Spend short periods of time just letting yourself get wet!

© 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