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Awareness and insight Inner vision Insight Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity mind body connection Mindful Confidence Mindful Self-Leadership Presence and being present spiritual intelligence

Trusting your inner signals

Dear Integral Meditators,

We are being given information and feedback from different levels of our perception and intelligence all the time. If we can learn to trust the ‘inner signals’ that we are receiving, this makes it much easier to navigate our life with confidence, and make difficult decisions with a degree of assurance. Below are a few distinctions that can be used mindfully to give yourself greater trust in your inner signals.

If you enjoy the article, you are welcome to come to this week’s Tuesday or Wednesday class, where this will be the subject of our meditation. 

In the spirit of inner signals, 

Toby

Trusting your inner signals
 
We are being given information and feedback from different levels of our perception and intelligence all the time. If we can learn to trust the ‘inner signals’ that we are receiving, this makes it much easier to navigate our life with confidence, and make difficult decisions with a degree of assurance. Below are a few distinctions that can be used mindfully to give yourself greater trust in your inner signals.
 
What you want to know and what you do not want to know
Firstly, it’s useful to become aware that there are some things that you don’t want to know, even if your inner signals are very strong. For example, if I have a business partner whose body language changes suddenly around a business deal. If I am very attached to the deal, I may ignore the signals that my perception is giving me. Part of trusting your inner signals is learning to respect them, even when the message you are getting is not what you want to hear.
 
Your conscious and unconscious
Following on from the above point, it may or may not be clear where your inner signals are coming from.

  • Sometimes we can choose to remain unconscious about the things we become conscious of (See the business deal scenario above)
  • Sometimes we can be getting a clear signal from within, but we don’t know where it is coming from. We are, for now, unconscious of where it is coming from. This doesn’t mean we should ignore it, rather acknowledge it and keep it in mind
  • Quite often we ‘know more than we think we know’ about a situation. If we trusted our inner signals, we would be listening for them, and not pushing them back into our unconscious when they come and tap us on the shoulder

 
Some sources of your inner signals
 
What your body and instincts are telling you – This is the information you are getting from your biology, primal instincts, and pre-rational intelligence. As we identify more and more with our thinking and cognitive self, its easy to lose touch with our instincts. This is a shame, because they are offering us direct, useful information all the time!
 
What your feelings and emotions are telling you – Our feelings and emotions are telling us about how we are feeling about what is going on, and about the emotional temperature between us and the other people involved in any given situation. Even if they are emotions we don’t like or don’t want to have, we still need to listen to our emotions and honor the messages we are receiving from them if we want to navigate our inner life and relationships effectively.
 
What your thinking mind is telling you – A good distinction here is between your rationality and rationalization. Your rational mind and messages are generally reality oriented and evidence based. Rationalization is when you use thoughts and reasons irrationally to backup what you want to be true. Listening to signals from our inner rationality, not rationalizer is the key here.
 
What your observational intelligence is telling you – Be present (or as present as possible) and look. If you do this your direct perception will offer you plenty of signals around what is going on in the moment.
 
What your intuition is telling you – Beyond your thinking mind lies your higher or post-rational intuition. Your body, instincts and emotions all have an intuitive dimension, but here I am talking about our inner signals that come from a level of our consciousness deeper than the thinking self. If you listen carefully there is a wise one within you offering you insights and perspectives beyond your rational mind. Often these insights prove to be true.
 
So, there are five sources of your inner signals, each one of them can be focused on and listened to in order to become familiar with it, and get to know it. If we do this, then over time we can feel more and more confident around the validity of our own inner signals when they arise.

Related articlePro-activity in the face of life

© Toby Ouvry 2023, 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


All upcoming classes and workshops at IMA:

Ongoing – Weekly Tuesday, Wednesday Online class schedule

Ongoing on Wednesday’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Wednesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby (Bukit Timah)

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation for stress transformation and positive energy with Toby  (East Coast)

Ongoing, Tues/Weds evening 7.30-8.30pm– Becoming a self-determining entity – A six-week course in Mindful Self-Leadership

Saturday July 15th, 9.30-11.30am – Monthly Qi Gong & Taoist Breathwork Clinic & Mini-retreat


Integral Meditation Asia

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

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Awareness and insight creative imagery Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques mindful dreaming Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

The web of time & the intuitive present

Dear Integral Meditators,

We normally think about time as being in a straight line, running from past to present to future. but what it it were more like a web? The article below investigates how we can begin to meditate on the web of time, and the intuitive present that is its gateway.

In the spirit of intuition,

Toby

PS:  For those in Singapore, you can catch a class on the intuitive present tomorrow, Wednesday at 7.30pm. This Saturday 16th is the Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop, & do checkout the One Heart Open Day that my and the crew at Oneheart will be putting on on Saturday 30th September!


The web of time & the intuitive present

According to our concrete, logical, linear mind, time unfolds in a sequence, from past to present to future. Time looks like a straight line.
If you look at the way in which we experience time from moment to moment, you can start to see that we experience time in other ways too. From the point of view of our intuitive, or non-linear mind time can be more like a web, with the present moment in time like being in the center of that web. In each moment we are receiving images, ideas, impressions, feelings and so on from these intuitive dimensions of our being and time.

You might think of your intuitive mind as the non-logical, non-rational part of your mind that includes areas such as the subconscious, the creative and imaginative, as well as the higher, trans-rational mind, our ancestral consciousness and dream states. These parts of our mind do not experience time ‘in a straight line’. The past and the future, things that have happened, things that have not happened all appear in a seemingly jumbled up, but often meaningful sequence.

Some of the information we receive in this way can be quite random and not very useful. However, some of it can be very worthwhile and valuable. Indeed, some of it can be more valuable than the information we receive from our logical mind, as our intuitive mind is connected to sources of information that are beyond the reach of our everyday sequential thinking and thoughts.

Sitting in the web of time as the ‘spider of the intuitive present’
Imagine you are sitting in the ‘web of intuitive time’, with threads all around you connecting you to different parts of time and areas of your consciousness. Imagine you are the ‘spider of the intuitive present’, sitting in the middle of your web, waiting, watching and observing. You are very still, feeling the vibrations coming along the threads around you, receiving different impressions, images and information from your intuitive mind. You simply watch, observe and sift through the information distinguishing that which is worthwhile and interesting from that which is probably not useful.
You can do this as a meditation form in and of itself anytime to attune yourself to the web of time and the intuitive, or non-linear present moment.

A personal example: The Buddha & his coat of many colours
A lot of the information I tend to receive from the intuitive present tends to be in the form of images. For example, a few months ago, I started seeing in my meditations a fat, Buddha like figure (a Maitreya figure for those of you who may know him as the popular Chinese laughing Buddha), wearing a coat of many coloured cloths and colours. He was sitting on a pile of gold coins, and seemed to be radiating abundance and wellbeing. Observing and experiencing this I had a feeling that my business was going to take a turn for the better (financially) over the coming months. Sure enough all sorts of business opportunities started coming in. It isn’t that I would not have had the business if I had not seen the image, but the image was an intuitive guide for me to the landscape of my business for the subsequent few months, which was very useful, and complementary to my ‘hard-nosed’, linear and rational methods of planning my work and income!

© Toby Ouvry 2017, 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

Ongoing on Tuesday evenings, 7.30-8.30pm – Tuesday Meditation Classes at One Heart with Toby (East coast)

Starting Tues/Wed September 5th/6th – September & October Five Class Meditation Series: Cultivating Deep Experience of the Present Moment

September 19th/20th: Autumn Equinox balancing & renewing meditation

Saturday September 16th, 10am-5pm –  Shamanic mandala meditation & art workshop

Saturday September 30th, 10am-4.30pm – One Heart Open Day!


Integral Meditation Asia

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