Tag: inner growth

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation and Psychology

Your Self-Sense as Your Object of Meditation

Hi Everyone!

Usually when we think of ourself, or reflect on the question “Who am I?” it seems as if there is some form of permanent, fixed, singular self that is there somewhere inside us that remains the same no matter what. However, if we look and observe a little more deeply we start to see that there are many different “selves” that we feel and experience at different times in our daily life according to what is going on, and each of these selves has a very different feel and nuance to it. There are many different ways in which you can begin to categorize these different senses of self, in this article I want to focus on three main ones:

  1. Our personal self-sense, or our “i-self sense”
  2. Our interpersonal self-sense, or “we-self sense”
  3. Our transpersonal self-sense or “I-self sense”

Let’s look at these one at a time:

1. Our personal self-sense or “i-self sense”

This is the many different self-senses that we develop as a person-ality. For example it is that sense of self that we develop when we think  (taking a fictional character “Mark” as an example):

  • “ My name is Mark and I am a corporate strategist”
  • “My name is Mark and I went to X school and collage”
  • “ My name is Mark and I am a extroverted, talkative personality type”
  • “ My name is Mark and I am happy when X happens”
  • My name is Mark and I cannot stand this type of person”

With each of these different statements about himself, Mark will come a different self-sense, a different “I” so to speak, each of them unique.

Like Mark, all of us have many unique self-senses on this level.

2. Our interpersonal self-sense, or “we-self sense”

This is the self-sense that is generated within ourselves whenever we are with someone else. If you observe your self-sense closely, you will see that, with each person you know, there is a unique sense of self that you feel whenever you are with them, and this self-sense is never repeated in exactly the same way with anyone else. It is almost as if a unique self-sense is created within us with every single relationship we have ever had.

To take the example of our fictional character Mark, Mark has a different sense of self when he is with his mother, his father, his siblings, his lovers, his child, his colleagues, his sport and recreation partners and so on.

We generate many, many “we-self senses” in our relationships with others.

3. Our transpersonal self-sense, or “I-self sense”

Our transpersonal self sense I call our “I(capital I)-self sense because it is the sense of self that we develop when we develop a sense of self that is beyond the boundaries of our ordinary self-sense, ego or personality. For example it is the sense of self that we touch on in deeper meditation, when we experience a tangible connection to the Universe and all living beings. Many people have also had “peak-expereinces” or temporary heightened states of consciousness where their sense of self expands to feel as if it is Universal. We can also develop an profound temporary “I-sense” when listening to music, or interacting with beautiful art.

One of the main aims of meditation is to develop a consistent experience of this “Universal Self” or “I-self sense”. Our “I-sense” is one basic way of understanding what our Enlightened Self, or True Self is.

So, what is the use of thinking and reflecting upon all our “self-senses??

“Who am I” is one of the perennial questions that people have been asking in meditation for millennia, some of the benefits of getting practically acquainted with the three types of  self sense mentioned above includes:

  • Understanding that your self-sense is not fixed and permanent. This means that if there is something that you don’t like about the way you view yourself, you can learn to change it for the better
  • You can focus on the self-senses that are positive and beneficial to you, and learn to consciously release and let go of self senses that do not actively serve you and your happiness
  • Each time you reflect on your self-sense you develop more self knowledge
  • You begin to articulate what your True-self or Spiritual self really is.

One minute meditation on the three self-senses

After reading the above article:

Sit down, take a couple of deeper breaths, relax your body and mind.

Let your breathing return to normal. As you breath reflect on how your “i-sense” feels right now, the I you feel as a person-ality.

Then think of a social interaction that you have engaged in, observe for a short while the “we-self sense” that you have developed in relation to another person or people.

Finally let your mind become as open, relaxed and spacious as possible. For a short while observe your “I-sense”, the sense of self that arises when your consciousness is clear, open and expansive.

Finish.

If you do this exercise once a day for the next week, you will begin to get a practical feel for these three I self-senses, and how you can use them for the better in your life.

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Meditation techniques Presence and being present

When You Are Less Distracted, Your Mind Goes Deeper Into Things

We have just cut off our cable TV contract, and so we have no telly at home right now. I have to say I am really enjoying it. It is not that I am vehemently against TV, but the relative silence and absence of easy distraction in the evening has really contributed positively to the quality of my mind.

For example, I have just finished eating my dinner and doing the washing up. Everyone else has gone to bed. I pick up a pink quartz crystal that has been sitting on our coffee table, the evening is so still and my mind is so clear that I feel as if I can feel everything about the crystal; the energy inside it, the texture of its surface on the pads of my fingers. Holding the crystal is a deeply simple, pleasurable and rewarding experience.

In addition to finding time for meditation, it is also worth regularly cutting down on your distractions. Doing so enables you to experience and look into the simple things in your life with depth, clarity and genuine pleasure.

© Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Concentration Meditation techniques Presence and being present

The Importance of Your Memory as an Object of Meditation

Hi Everyone,

We all know the old saying “You can’t change what has happened in the past”. On an obvious level this carries definite truth, but if we look a little deeper we find that in reality we change the past every time we think about it. To see how this is the case, let us consider a simple example:

Let’s say at work yesterday I made a simple mistake. Today I happen to be feeling generally happy and confident, and so when I remember the mistake I made at work yesterday I find it east to laugh off. When others make fun of me for it, I laugh with them. Life is good, and so my memory of a past mistake and its significance is generally benign and has no power to cause me upset.

Fast forward to tomorrow, I wake up feeling generally out of balance; I sense old fears and agitations in my mind as I go to work. Mid- way through the morning someone mentions the past mistake I made two days ago. Because the general climate of my mind is negative and turbulent, as soon as I remember my mistake mentally I start attacking myself for being so stupid, I feel embarrassed by the mistake. The gravity of my error seems significant enough to knock me further off balance.

In this example we have two different days, two different REMEMBRANCES of the SAME event. Each time we experience the past event in a new way according to our present state of mind. From this we can see that we do indeed have very real power to change the past each time we remember it.

To take our memory as our object of meditation means to be mindful of the power that our mind has to re-invent the past, and to ensure that we are mentally framing past events in a way that is constructive and serving us, rather than a way that is causing us to be trapped in a cycle of misery, pain, discontent and so forth.

Your life is your meditation, and meditating on positive use of memory is an important meditation practice to develop!

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of the journey, 

Toby

PS: All are invited to the new two part meditation class, Tuesday evenings February 22nd and March 1st: “Landscapes Of The Mind: Finding Inner Power and Balance In Your Life Through Meditation on Wild Nature And Landscape” .

If you are not in Singapore, the classes will be available for purchase as recordings.

© Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditation techniques Primal Spirituality

Meditations for Spring Time and the Beginning of the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit

Hi Everyone,

I’m off to Thailand for a week, so this will be my last post for ten days or so. Whilst in Thailand I intend amongst other things, to spend a healthy amount of time simply sitting and attuning to the energies of nature, of the landscape and of the sea.

The turn to February sees the energy of spring starting to manifest in the northern hemisphere. Here are two simple meditations with images that you can work with at this time in the year to attune to the energies of spring and of new beginnings.

The first draws upon traditional Chinese associations of the wood element. The second draws upon traditional images of the Goddess/divine feminine and the child self.

 1. Working with the wood element to heal and energize of physical and energy body, mind and emotions:

In Taoist and Qi gong philosophy the season of spring corresponds to the wood element. Spring sees a re-awakening of the green world and an exponential expansion in the growth of trees and plants. Here are some of the qualities and correspondences of the wood element energy:

Wood element healing colour: Green

Direction: Energy rising upward from the Earth

Direction: East

Actions: Countenance or good posture

Bodily organ: Yin organ – Liver, Yang organ – Gall bladder

Emotions: Positive – Kindness, negative – anger/resentment

Mental Quality: Sensitivity (Integrate vision of Child and goddess into this section)

Senses: Vision/sight

Brief meditation on the wood element:

  • Sit facing east, imagine a fresh spring breeze blowing from the east, refreshing your mind and body.
  • Feel down into the earth beneath you. Sense a vast reservoir of light and energy in the centre of the earth. Sense the colour of this light as gold, white and green. Now see it rising up and filling your body through your feet. Sense this green and gold energy surrounding and infusing your liver and gall bladder. Feel any trapped anger and resentment being stored in these organs being released. Feel the organs being cleansed by the light, and being filled with the energy of kindness and sensitivity.
  • Now feel the energy of kindness and sensitivity spreading out into your whole body. In particular feel it going into your eyes and eye sockets, refreshing the power of your inner and outer vision
  • Feel the green and gold earth energy in your whole body, breathe it in and out of your physical cells for a few breaths, and then just relax in stillness for a while.

 2. Two further images of spring: The Virgin Goddess and the child

The Goddess or divine feminine in her youthful or virgin aspect is a traditional image symbolizing new birth and spring.

The child, or new human life is another image strongly associated with spring, as childhood is when we are in the “spring” of our life.

 Meditation images for the Virgin Goddess and the child within

  • See yourself in your inner vision sitting in spring landscape (or sit in one physically if you can!). Quietly and intuitively feel yourself attuning to the energy of the season
  • A beautiful young maiden approaches you, she is the virgin goddess, the goddess of spring. As she stands before you, three rays of light radiate from her
  • Light radiates from her brow to filling your mind, brain and head with the energy and light of clarity
  • Light radiates from hear throat to your throat, filling your speech with kindness
  • Light radiates from her heart to your heart, filling it with the light of positive empathy, gladness and joy
  • You notice that the Goddess is holding a newborn baby in her arms. She offers you the baby. Take it your arms, as you hold it, meditate on the seeds of new life, ideas and projects that you can feel beginning to germinate and grow within your being.
  • A young child comes to join you and the Goddess. It is your own inner child. See how s/he appears to you. How easily are you able to relate to her? Try and feel the natural joy and playfulness of your child self as you connect to the child appearing to your imagination.

 3. Meditating on the rabbit as a power animal

Because it is the lunar new year of the rabbit, February/March 2011 is also a good time to meditate with the Rabbit as a power animal. Here is a simple way to integrate it into the second Goddess and child meditation above:

  • Within your spring landscape see the rabbit (could be one or many) appearing. For a while s/he sits and hops gently around the feet of the Goddess, examining you curiously. After a while (in its time not yours) the rabbit approaches you, allowing you to stroke it, perhaps hold it. Feel your mind and energy connecting to the rabbit and commune for a while in silence. What happens or what you see and experience at this time arises from your communion with the spirit of the rabbit.

Thanks for reading!

 Yours in the spirit of Spring,

 Toby

PS: On February 22nd and March first I will be leading two classes entitled “Landscapes Of The Mind: Finding Inner Power and Balance In Your Life Through Meditation on Wild Nature And Landscape” all are welcome, if you are not in Singapore the classes are available for purchase as recordings.

 Article © Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use it, but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology Motivation and scope Presence and being present

The Difficult Decisions That That You Have Made in Your Life as Objects of Meditation, And How I Avoided Feelings of Bitterness and Envy Toward my Friends and Peer Group When I Left my Life as a Monk.

Hi Everyone,

Last week I looked at how it can be very useful and fulfilling to identify some of the Compelling Moments in Your Life and use them as objects of contemplation and meditation. This week I want to focus on the difficult or challenging decisions that we have made in our life and why it is important to integrate these into our meditation and awareness training.

When we make a difficult or challenging decision, generally we do so with an awareness that there will be consequences that we will have to deal with. However, having made the decision it is easy to then forget that we made the decision and start blaming other people or circumstances for our problems. Here are a couple of examples:

  • If we make a decision to be a care provider for a family member who has a long-term illness, initially we may do so willingly as we are clear about why we chose to care for them (out of love). However, as the months and years go by, and we have to make one sacrifice after another for this person, it can be easy to forget that it was our choice to care for the person and instead we start blaming the person for the troubles and sacrifices that we are making in our life.
  • You decide not to go for a job that pays substantially more than your present one, but you choose not to because you have ethical concerns about what it may ask of you. A friend or colleague of yours applies for a similar job, and soon you see him/her driving around in a nicer car than you, taking their family on exotic holidays and so on. Seeing this it is easy to forget the reasons you did not go for the job, and simply feel regretful or jealous of your peers newfound resources.

In both of the above cases the person has made a GOOD decision for the RIGHT reason. However, s/he will have to remain mindful of the choice s/he has made and renew it EVERY DAY in order to avoid feelings of bitterness, resentment, envy and so on.

Difficult choices are difficult because they have very real consequences that may not be easy to accept. Difficult choices are often made with higher or deeper motivations in mind, and so in order to avoid suffering as a result of making these choices, we need to REMEMBER WHY WE MADE THEM!

How I avoided feelings of envy and bitterness toward my friends and peers upon leaving my life as a Buddhist Monk

Somewhere in the middle of my University Fine-Art Degree in the early 90’s I made a definite choice to dedicate ten or so years of my life to the serious investigation of meditation and spirituality. After leaving University this choice took me deep into meditation practice and ended up with five years as a Buddhist monk, making absolutely no money, but acquiring a lot of spiritual knowledge and experience.

Ten years down the line in the Christmas of 2002 I found myself in Singapore having left my life as monk with about fifty bucks in my pocket, and cheap hotel accommodation for a week. As I moved back into secular life, I started to reconnect to my friends and peers. All of them had more money than me, many had a home and family, some had exiting and fulfilling careers. Outwardly it looked like I was WAY behind all these guys and I could feel feelings of bitterness at my situation, envy, thoughts of being a “worthless nobody” all coming up in my mind.

One of the found to be most helpful at that time is just to think back and realize that where I was now was 100% a result of my choices ten years before. I had made a choice at University to follow the “spiritual rabbit hole” as far as it would take me, and that I did. So, there was a price that I paid for this, which was the development of my secular life, monetary wealth, security and status (and let’s not talk about the amount of potential good sex that I gave up please!). I had chosen to give that up, there was no one else to blame. Was it worth it? When I thought about why I had made the choice, and the inner wealth that I had acquired as a consequence it was a no brainer OF COURSE IT WAS WORTH IT!

By remembering my difficult choice I was able to overcome my insecurity, bitterness, envy and all of the other unpleasant emotions that I was having, and this is why remembering your difficult, existential choices is important!

So, what are the difficult choices that you have had to make in your life, and that you now need to remember in order to avoid suffering and pain now?

If after reading this article you can note down two or three of your own difficult choices, and make the effort to remember why they were worth making, then this article will have served its purpose!

Thanks for reading,

Toby

 

Article © Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Motivation and scope Uncategorized

Your Life’s Compelling Moments as Meditation: The Moment When I Realized That I was no Longer Going to be a Buddhist Monk

There are certain moments in each person’s life that have a compelling meaning, moments of personal significance where something happens that causes a paradigm shift in our minds, and our life is somehow never the same again. Sometimes these moments can be experiences of bliss and radiance, but equally (and perhaps more often) they can be moments where we are challenged, and experience difficulty or stress. Whether pleasant or unpleasant for us, our life’s compelling moments are moments of power for us, moments that when we recall or remember them we immediately connect to a powerful guiding force or emotion within us.

To give an example of this, I can remember one of the moments when I understood very clearly that my life as a Buddhist Monk was going to change, that I would be moving back to lay life before too long.

The event happened in a coffee bar in Los Angeles. I was sitting with a long time teacher and mentor of mine. I had been a monk for about five years, but in the six months or so prior to that meeting I had been struggling with certain aspects of being an ordained monk, and with the direction that it was taking my life. Essentially I felt I had reached a learning threshold and did not know how to make progress to the next level, or at least the level beyond the challenges that I was facing.

So, I decided to try and talk to my mentor about these issues, which made me feel quite venerable, but nevertheless I persisted. During the course of my attempts to explain how I was feeling, I mentioned to my mentor that I had been talking to a life coach and getting some feedback from him on what I was experiencing. As soon as I mentioned this her (my mentor’s) manner immediately seemed to change. She asked me if this life coach had any connection to the Buddhist tradition that we belonged to. I replied that no, he did not, and that I had wanted to talk to someone outside of the tradition to get some objective feedback. My mentor responded that she did not think that it was good idea for me to have talked to anyone outside of our tradition, as the feedback would not be appropriate.

At this point in the conversation something ‘clicked’ in my mind. At that moment I realized that there was no way that my mentor or anyone else within the mainstream of my present spiritual group was ever going to recommend anything for my challenges other than do more of the same spiritual practices that I had already been doing for many years. I knew at that moment that my path had moved outside, or beyond what was going to be acceptable from their spiritually conservative point of view. I knew that this meant that I was going to have to leave my life as a monk, and as a teacher within that tradition. Within the space of a short conversation, and a short exchange within that conversation, the path of my life had changed irreversibly and I knew it. With this knowing came conflicting feelings, a sense of fear of the unknown, a sense of resentment toward my mentor and the narrow mindset she represented, a sense of being mis-understood. But within all the conflict and uncertainty I could also feel a shift in my sense of inner power. I knew that I was going to have to be more self reliant from now on than I had dared to be in the past. I knew that I could not look to my past teachers to show me the way forward in my life anymore. There was a new and deeply felt sense of personal empowerment.

It is this sense of personal empowerment that, when I remember that conversation in the Los Angeles coffee bar I immediately feel re-connected to. It was a compelling moment in my life that changed me forever, and has been fuelling my path of personal growth since.

What are your life’s compelling moments? The moments and events that, when you recall them cause you to reconnect to your deepest sense of inner empowerment, spiritual connection and transformation? They are worth remembering and re-connecting to on a regular basis!

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of a compelling life,

Toby

PS: Here are the meditation class details for February:

Tuesday February 8th: Charity Meditation: Welcoming in the Spring and Lunar New Year of the Rabbit at Sanctuary on the Hill

Tuesdays February 22nd and March 8th –  Landscapes Of the Mind: Finding Inner Power and Balance In Your Life Through Meditation on Wild Nature And Landscape

© Toby Ouvry 2011. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s pemission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditation and Psychology

Different Levels Of The Mind; Comparing The Problem Solving Capabilities Of Meditation And Conventional Psychology, And Understanding Why It Is Important Not To Mistake the Two!

Hi Everyone,

Before I begin an quick reminder for those in Singapore: This Sunday 16th January, 9.30-11.30am sees the first of 2011’s Meditation Intensives. In this intensive we will be doing simple meditations based around the principles outlined in my article on “Meditating with the Tao” …If you can make it I hope to see you there!

I was recently sent an article by a friend written in the Guardian newspaper on how mindfulness meditation is proving to be useful for developing overall mental wellbeing, and proving to be effective in helping prevent relapses in psychological disorders such as depression. Anyone who has tried meditation will know how effective it can be for calming the mind, reducing stress and making life altogether more manageable and enjoyable. However, it needs to be clearly understood I think that meditation in and of itself will never be able to replace the ability of good conventional psychology and psychoanalysis to solve many mental and emotional problems. One fundamental reason for this is that the traditional purpose of meditation, and therefore its fundamental technique and outlook, are fundamentally different from that of conventional psychology and psycho analysis.

  • The main purpose and function of meditation is mainly to magnetize our consciousness toward its next higher, or deeper level of development. In this sense it is fundamentally evolutionary and developmental in nature. It definitely has therapeutic side effects, but really it is a science and an art form (see my previous article on “Is Your Meditation Therapy, Artform or Spiritual Practice?” ). Anyone who has interfaced with any spiritual community where meditation is practiced will know first had that it is perfectly possible for a person to be quite a highly realized meditator and fundamentally psychologically dysfunctional!
  • The main purpose of good conventional psychology and psychoanalysis is to fix the parts of our consciousness and mind that have already developed, but have become dysfunctional. The fundamental job of psychology (psyche meaning “soul”) is to fix the ailments of the soul. This means to fix the dysfunctions that we experience in our sensori-motor and emotional beings (psychoses), as well as the dysfunctions and repressions of our cognitive or thinking nature (neuroses). From this definition we can see that the fundamental job of psychoanalysis is therapeutic.

As I mentioned above, meditation does have many therapeutic qualities, but fundamentally its impulse is to magnetize our consciousness to its next level of depth and capacity. It is NOT designed to fix that which is already in the mind but broken. This is the job of psychology. One particular area where meditation will not help, and may make the issue worse, is repression. Meditation may help you live with repression, but it won’t help you see it, dig it out of your consciousness and fix it! This is why people who have been meditating for twenty years often come to the painful realization that they still suffer from anxiety, depression and other issues, and simply doing more meditation is not the solution…

I am aware that there is some cross over between meditation and psychology, for example:

  • Cognitive psychology and positive psychology can stimulate a person’s mind toward the next level of inner growth
  • The great world spiritualities are often accompanied by a quite complex psychological outlook. For example in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition that I received my meditative education in there was a lot of studying the inner dynamics of the mind, and our psychological self. However, this is not the same as conventional therapeutic psychology, and does not contain techniques or insights for a lot of fundamental psychological malaise, the most obvious example being repression.

So the basic message of the above is that meditation and good modern psychology need to go together to createbalanced, integrated personal growth (which is one reason why I offer two types of coaching; meditation coaching and transpersonal (as in transpersonal psychology) coaching).

A final point I want to end with is that, although meditation does not solve all our mental problems per se, one thing that is does do is activate our minds natural capacity for self-healing, and in and of itself this IS powerful medicine.

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of integration,

Toby 

PS: I’ll finish off the second part of the “Meeting your needs through meditation” next week.

PPS: If you are not aware already, I have a Mental Fitness blog where I tend to write most of my psychologically based and positive thinking articles. Feel free to check it out!

© Toby Ouvry 2011, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Enlightened service Inner vision Motivation and scope Presence and being present

On meditation and miracle powers

Hi Everyone,

As a meditation teacher I am regularly asked by enthusiastic beginners whether if they meditate they are going to develop miracle powers like telepathy, clairvoyance and the like. In the course of the conversation it quite often also comes out that these people are also struggling mightily to deal with stress and anxiety in their life. So, with this in mind here are a few things to think about:

1)      Before you have got on top of your daily stress and anxiety, the main objective of your meditation should be to manage that stress and anxiety effectively, and thus to develop a happier, more grounded and centred life. This is the basis upon which you can be of greater service both to yourself and others.

If you think your life is stressful now, try adding the additional stress, energy and information overload of any kind of any substantial inner power, and you will just find a new, possibly dangerous level of stress.

2)      You are not going to develop startling new inner powers before you become fully aware of the way in which telepathy, synchronicity and other inner powers are ALREADY operating in your life.

Start to notice what is already there by learning to observe and listen to the dynamics of each moment of your life closely and attentively. When you become more conscious of what inner powers are already under your nose, then that conscious awareness will help you grow them carefully and consistently.

3)      Don’t think the development of inner powers is going to make your life any easier. They bring challenges and complexities. This is why you need to focus on point 1 above, and not hope for too much too soon.

4)      Be prepared to work very thoroughly on your psychological baggage. Psychosis, neurosis, or existential crisis plus greater inner powers generally equals bigger psychosis, bigger neurosis and bigger existential crisis! You need to be working to:

a)       Have a right relationship to yourself, and

b)      Becoming stabler, saner and increasingly loving/compassionately motivated to effectively use any powers you might develop.

5)      Inner powers are real, but they are frankly only really useful to a psychologically stable, developmentally mature person. The best advice is to work on a disciplined daily meditation practice, and on your strength and modesty of character. Then let your inner powers find you in their own time!

Yours in the spirit of the journey,

Toby

PS: If you are in Singapore on the evening of Tuesday 21st December, please feel free to join us for the Winter Solstice Charity Meditation!

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Enlightened love and loving Inner vision Motivation and scope spiritual intelligence Uncategorized

Bridging the gap between loving self and loving others; the three levels of self-love

Like the other posts in the series of articles on spiritual intelligence (where I have divided other topic or practices into three), in this article I want to outline three levels of self-love. One of the points in doing this is to illustrate how the practice of self-love goes through developmental stages as our consciousness evolves.

For self-love I am going to call these three stages the following; the first stage moves us from the “topdog undedog” mentality to self-acceptance. The second stage sees a movement from self-acceptance to self-love. The third stage sees a movement to transcendent or transpersonal levels of self love that I call “Love for self-as-the-World”.

Stage 1: From the “top dog underdog” mentality to self-acceptance – Actually, to get to the “top dog underdog” stage you have to have developed beyond the very low levels of relationship to self and life which are basically, “I suck” and “life sucks”!

When you get to the topdog underdog stage, basically you are continuously comparing yourself to others; If you are better than them (let’s say richer) then you feel good about yourself. If you are worse than them (let’s say poorer or less expensive car), then you feel bad about yourself, the worthless underdog. Life is spent see-sawing between feeling ‘better than’ others or ‘worse than’ others, self-loathing manifests easily, insecurity abounds. Make a mistake or do something dumb, and you will attack yourself big time!

So, the first level of self-loving sees a journey from this roller coaster ride of the topdog underdog mentality to a stable state of relationship to self. We are able to accept ourself as we are, without comparing ourself to others or giving ourself an overly hard time when our behaviour does not match our expectations.

This is NOT to say that we do not have goals and expectations for ourself, just that we do not easily move into states of self-criticism and self-loathing when those goals are sometimes not met. Actually self-acceptance when practiced rightly enables us to enhance our ability to achieve our goals and change our behaviours for the better.

Stage 2: From self-acceptance to self-love – This second stage sees the movement within our relationship to ourself from simplay accepting who we are to actively LIKING who we are. There is a big difference. Self-acceptance implies a tolerance which is obviously a good thing, and much better than getting caught in self loathing all the time. Liking ourself means that there is a sense of warmth, enjoyment, rejoicing and enthusiasm that we feel in our relationship to ourself. We become our own best friend, which is a tremendous asset as we are the person that we have to spend 24 hours of our day with!

Stage 3: Love for self-as-the-World – This stage actually looks at how our self-sense itself transforms as we evolve, and particularly as we meditate and spend time with and in expanded states of consciousness.

At this stage our self-sense has expanded to the degree that our idea of our “body” is actually Planet Earth, our sense of “mind and spirit” are the mind and spirit of Gaia, and all the living creatures contained within her (the Planets) consciousness.

As this stage self interest and the good of others are no longer in conflict. The self that we think of when we think “I love myself” is actually the Planetary Being, as opposed to the small self encased within the skin of this one small body. This third stage is what you might call the transcendent, transpersonal or enlightened stage of self-love, the end goal of the practise itself.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article,  but you must seek Toby’s permission first. Contact info@tobyouvry.com

Categories
Awareness and insight Motivation and scope Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Understanding three different levels of spiritual intelligence and wisdom

In general you could say that our spiritual intelligence is a line of development in ourselves like any other (such as cognitive or emotional) that starts at zero (no spiritual intelligence) and matures as we grow as a person. In this context you could say that spiritual intelligence is that part of our self that addresses the question “What is of ultimate importance or meaning in my life?”

You can also define spiritual intelligence as a is a high level of intelligence or wisdom that we are trying to bring all of our other intelligences up to as we grow. If you define it this way you can measure the growth of spiritual intelligence in three stages as follows:

Pre-individuation – This is a stage of life and education where the focus is on receiving wisdom, knowledge and understanding that from our ancestors and elders, from both conventional and non-conventional sources. At this stage we have not really distinguished ourselves as a fully developed individual, we are very much at the stage of absorbing and assimilating information.

Individuation – This second stage of growth is where we sift through th information and knowledge that we have received from stage one, choosing to accept some of it and reject other aspects of it. This process of consciously deciding that which we accept and that which we reject and articulating it in our life and personal philosophy makes us into an individual, hopefully a considered and well rounded one (!)

Trans-individuation – When we reach this stage our intelligence and wisdom have matured to a spiritual level. At this level we no longer experience ourself as the owner of a personal wisdom and intelligence, rather the wisdom and intelligence of the Universe or God moves through us. at this stage we transcend ourself as an individual. Our mind and body become a vehicle for the wisdom and transcendent loving intelligence of the divine, which manifests on the Earthly plane through us.

So, in summary the journey to true spiritual intelligence involves:

1. Digesting the wisdom and knowledge of our ancestors

2. Fully articulating ourself as an individual

3. Going beyond our individual ego and becoming a vehicle through which transcendent wisdom and intelligence can function in as uninhibited a manner as possible.

A final point here which is worth reflecting on; when we get to level three, trans-individuation, this does not mean that we loose our uniqueness or individuality (which is a common mis-conception), rather that our individuality is transcended and then subsequently included within a much larger and more expansive sense of self. Indeed, as we continue to go beyond our individuality, ideally our individuality will continue to grow, expand and develop in a holistic and healthy way. What I am saying here is a little bit different from the traditional view of enlightenment, where often the individuality is viewed as “obsolete” or meaningless once enlightenment has been attained.

If you found this article interesting, you might consider attending the upcoming series “Meditation techniques for developing your spiritual wisdom and intelligence” that I will be starting this coming Tuesday 24th August, available as recordings for those not able to attend in person.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST seek Toby’s permission first.