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Finding the center of the wheel

Dear Integral Meditators,

Do you have to still your mind to experience inner stillness and centeredness? The article below explores how to mindfully sustain the experience of stillness amidst all the busyness and activity of your mind and daily life….

In the spirit of mindful spinning,

Toby

Finding the center of the wheel

The image of the wheel and hub is found in various traditional (Buddhist and Hindu) meditation traditions as a way of describing the meditative process. It can be useful to work with this image in your own practice as a way of finding your inner center faster and more effectively, even when under duress.
Imagine the emotional, mental, relational and logistical activity of your life as being like a wheel spinning in motion. If you are stuck in the rim of the wheel, then you find yourself spinning at a fast pace, running to keep up, feeling dizzy and generally having to work quite hard! If, however you are sitting in the center of the wheel, then you can simply stay still and watch all of the activity spinning around you whilst remaining comfortable and at ease.
In our own lives, we tend to spend a lot of time being identified with the movement in our mind, chasing after it or being chased by it, like being stuck on the rim of the spinning wheel. If we can learn to dis-engage with the contents of our consciousness, then we can move ourself toward the ‘hub’ of the wheel of our mind, watching the movement rather than being pulled around by it.

Resting in the hub as a meditation
Imagine the busyness of your mind and life as like a wheel spinning on a horizontal axis around you. Imagine yourself as sitting on or in the stationary hub or axis in the center. You are able to relax and remain still as the motion and activity spins around you. You don’t need to get rid of the activity and busyness in your mind, you just need to find your center and let the activity ‘spin’ around you. In physical terms you might think of your body and breathing as the hub of the wheel; find your breathing and focus on the central area of your torso (perhaps around the chest level). You are in the middle, in the hub, the thoughts, emotions and activity are spinning around you. Focus upon and relax into this experience for as long as you wish.

Keeping the image in mind in your daily life.
Out of meditation we can continue to bear this image in mind as we go about our daily life, using it as a way of bringing ourself back to our center when we feel ourselves getting pulled out of shape by the events of our life and our reactions to them.

Practising with different emotions.
In both formal mindfulness meditations and informally as you go about your daily life you can practice with different emotions and circumstances:

  • When anxious or stressed
  • When excited or experiencing pleasure
  • When playing your sport
  • When you are dealing with sadness or depression

After practising this technique for a while you will develop a certain amount of equanimity about what you are experiencing. For example, you might be experiencing fear, but you don’t have a problem with experiencing fear; you are in the center of the hub, the fear simply spins around you like the rim of the wheel!

Enhancing your enjoyment and participation in the movement
Practising this technique doesn’t mean that you become permanently detached from your life, in fact it means that you can actually enjoy the movement, emotion, excitement and challenge of your life more fully, because you have a place you can go to which gives you a way of controlling your response to your experience, enabling you to appreciate it more, even when it is not all bliss and rainbows!

Related article: Detached mindfulness – Engaged mindfulness

© 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 (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

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Practical Rapture (On rapture, beauty and mindfulness)

Dear Integral Meditators,

Rapture is a state of mind and body that we all experience sometimes, the article below explores how we can build our experience of it through mindfulness, and then start putting it to use…

In the spirit of rapture,

Toby

Practical Rapture (On rapture, beauty and mindfulness)

Rapture –  a state or emotion of wonderment, bliss and heightened perception. A state of feeling deeply and primally connected to life and aliveness felt not just in the mind and heart, but in the body.

Peak rapture


We are all familiar to a greater or lesser degree with times when we have had a peak experience of rapture; when listening to music or contemplating art, in moments of new love or romance, in powerful landscape, when we are in a highly creative state, enthused by an idea or an ideal, the temporary peaks we dip into in good meditations. What are the moments in your life where you have felt most closely connected to a state of rapture? Memories like this are important for us to be mindful of as often they are powerful enough to re-trigger a little bit of that peak rapture in the moment we are in right now.

Everyday rapture


If we are mindful, we also start to notice that there are quiet invitations to rapture all around us; in the wind through trees, in the sight or a flower or cloudscape in the sky, in the feeling of comfort on our skin as we sit in a comfy chair. Rapture almost seems like the ‘hum’ of life that you can connect to anytime that you dip your awareness beneath the surface of your mind and what you are experiencing in the moment. To be in touch with your life and the feeling of being alive is to feel slightly blissful, slightly rapturous.

Accessing rapture through mindfulness


Mindfulness meditation by its nature invites us to dip below the surface of our attention, moving to deeper states of awareness that naturally contain some rapture. For example, within the forest monk tradition of breathing meditation there is a stage called ‘the beautiful breathing’. At this stage, which comes after achieving a certain level of competency focusing attention upon the breathing, the body starts to feel effortlessly comfortable, the breathing becomes smooth and even, and the mind moves toward a state of calm rapture. Once this is achieved, then we become able to access a feeling of quiet, everyday rapture at will, or at least more and more often in our daily life.

Thinking and acting from a place of rapture


You can cultivate your experience of rapture then by:

  • Being mindful of your past experiences of peak rapture, and the ones that come up for you in your daily life.
  • Noticing the everyday moments of rapture that are available to you whenever you take the time to notice them.
  • Cultivate a daily practice of mindfulness, where to learn to consciously dip into sustained states of calm rapture regularly.

One fun thing that you can then try doing is thinking and acting from a place of rapture, which is to say:

  • A place that is creative, playful and a little wild.
  • A place that is fulfilled in the moment.
  • A place that contains natural compassion.

Within the boundaries of what feels appropriate, try bringing your rapture mindfully into your everyday life, relationships and tasks. What might start to change in your life today if you did??

© 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 (next class August 10th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

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The yoga of limitation and choice

Dear Integral Meditation,

Is choice always a good thing for us? How can we use limitation to our advantage? The article below looks at how we can use mindfulness to approach both choice and limitation with confidence…

In the spirit of the journey,

Toby

The yoga of limitation and choice

The yoga of limitation and choice are two types of mindfulness practice centered around the process of decision making. In situations where our choices are very limited and where we have multiple choices there are both:

  • Opportunities for specific types of inner growth, happiness and wellbeing.
  • Challenges to our peace of mind and factors trying to sabotage our sense of inner wellbeing

Allowing ourselves to be disciplined by limitation
When I was a monk I deliberately chose to limit my options in life:

  • A very minimal income
  • No sexual or romantic relationships
  • No intoxicants (except the odd expresso!)

Because of this my choices became very limited, which meant I had to practice ‘the discipline of limitation’ living within my means and boundaries. My limitations also enabled me to focus and accomplish the goal of becoming a meditation and mindfulness expert, but even without that I observed that simply having fewer choices makes your life clear and simple; the limitations of your choice give rise to a certain amount of peace if you are able to accept them.
So, to practise the yoga of limitation simply means to be content and accepting of the limitations of your life as you find them each day. This doesn’t mean that you don’t make plans to increase your choices and opportunities in life; it just means you are take advantage of the limitations you find each day, and are not made unhappy by them.

The discipline of choice
Now that I am a layperson in the middle stages of my life I have many choices and options

  • Which personal and business relationships do I pursue?
  • How best to spend and save my money?
  • Am I insured enough?
  • Private or public education for my child?
  • Where to go on holiday?
  • Where to live?

Endless choices, and the more wealth I have, the more choices are born from that…
The interesting thing that I note as I observe my own experience of choice (and many of the people that surround me) is that having all these options can give rise to a lot of anxiety and unhappiness (what if this is the wrong choice? Someone tell me what to do!) In order not to be made unhappy and over anxious by my many choices, I have to be disciplined, decisive and mindful.  When you no longer have the luxury of limitation, mindful, conscious decision making really comes at a premium.

What are the circumstances in your life right now where you need to practice the yoga of limitation; allowing yourself to be disciplined by and content with your absence of choices?
What are the circumstances where you need to practice the yoga of choice; managing the anxiety of having options, and making choices consciously, responsibly and positively?

If you are a mindfulness practitioner, you will know how to take advantage of both types of situation, and have an ongoing experiential grasp of the saying that the time to be happy (in whatever form you understand that) is always now.

© 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 (next class July 6th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Integral Meditation Asia

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Going beyond the mind (The spaces between your thoughts)

Dear Integral Meditators,


How can you use meditation and mindfulness to go beyond your mind? This is the subject of this weeks article!

In the spirit of the spaces in between your thoughts,

Toby

Going beyond the mind (The spaces between your thoughts)

I was taking a mindfulness class the other day and one of the participants was relating a story about how relieved she was to discover that practising mindfulness did not require you to stop your thoughts (which she, like many of us considered a near impossible goal); to be mindful she just had to focus on the breathing or watch the thoughts as they came and went. This was a relief to her, and gave her both heart and confidence pursuing her practice.

Going beyond the mind as a goal
Whilst it is true that you don’t need to stop your thoughts when you practice mindfulness meditation, it is also true that one of the capacities that we are trying to develop in the medium and long term is to become able to create and sustain states of mindful awareness where we do actually go beyond or ‘behind’ the thinking mind. We can then start to explore this open space of silence and regeneration that is unknown to the vast majority of people, and leverage upon the developmental potential that it offers us. Below is a technique to begin learning to do this now, starting small and building consistently.

The practice: Watching the spaces between the thoughts

Stage 1: Begin by focusing on your breathing for three breaths, then for the next 10-30seconds mindfully watch your thoughts coming and going as a witness and observer. Then go back to another three breaths to center yourself, after which you then return to watching your thoughts. Alternate between the breath and the watching of your thoughts for a while.
Stage 2: Continue to come back to the breathing for three breaths, but now in the 10-30second gaps in between, rather than watching your thoughts, pay attention to the spaces in between your thoughts, and gently try and extend them for a moment or two longer each time one appears.
Stage 3: Once you get a feel for stage 2, you can start to use the three breaths in a slightly different way; as you breathe in feel yourself opening to the spaces in between your thoughts, and as you breathe out feel yourself relaxing into them as deeply as you can. This way each time you come back to the breathing you use it to deepen your ability to relax into the spaces between the thoughts.

Building comfort in the space beyond or behind the mind
The practice above is designed to be a simple way of gradually building your familiarity and comfort with the inner space in your mind that surrounds, interpenetrates and contains your thoughts. Your thoughts are like clouds, your mind itself (or your consciousness) is like the sky. You are learning to relax into your inner sky, and become comfortable in the space beyond your thoughts.

Leveraging on fatigue and exhaustion to go beyond the mind
Another space you can use to go beyond your mind is when you are really tired. Let’s say you are commuting back from work after a long day, mentally and physically exhausted; to exhausted even to think. Consciously ‘give up’ thinking for a while as you sit or stand in the carriage – let your mind become an open thoughtless space, do absolutely as little as possible, almost as if you were falling asleep (which you may do!) Relaxing into this experience will give you some insight into a state of consciousness ‘beyond the thinking mind’ as well as giving you a bit of a rest!

© 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 (next class July 6th) – Wednesday Meditation Classes at Basic Essence with Toby

Integral Meditation Asia

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Mindful Mobility – Stepping in and out of the river

Dear Toby,

Building inner flexibility and mobility are really core parts of an integrated mindfulness practice, in the article below I explain two core practices for building mindful mobility.

In the spirit of mindful perspective taking,

Toby

Mindful Mobility – Stepping in and out of the river (& from self to other)

One of the fundamental skills that we are trying to develop as mindfulness practitioners is to be able to shift consciously from one perspective to another, and use these perspectives appropriately. In this article we will be exploring how to shift between subjective and objective perspectives, and between self and other.

Moving from subjective to objective; Stepping in and out of the river of your consciousness
Imagine your mind is like a river, with the stream of thoughts, images, memories and sensory impressions being like the water. Spend some time in the river ‘being the water’; as thoughts, emotions and feelings come up experience yourself as them; be the thought, feel the emotion as if you are the emotion, let your attention absorb into the senses. This is experiencing your mind subjectively, from the inside.
After a while imagine yourself ‘stepping out’ of the river of your consciousness onto the river bank. Spend some time watching your mind as an observer, as a witness; watching the river flow by with a clear gap between yourself and the ‘water’ of the thoughts, images, feelings and senses in your mind. Watch your mind like a scientist; this is mindfully watching your mind objectively, from the outside.
The aim of doing this practice is to be able to consciously shift ‘at will’ from observer to subject, from subject to observer. This then enables us to:

  • Enjoy our emotions, thoughts, feelings, memories, senses (etc…) fully by entering into them and ‘owning’ them
  • Detach from our experiences when we need to so that we can see them more clearly and make more objective decisions and rational choices

Moving from self to other and extending care
In this second exercise you imagine yourself with another person, or a group of people. It might be a situation where there is a little tension between yourself and the others for whatever reason.
Stage 1: The eyes of self – See yourself in the situation and view it through your eyes, from your subjective point of view. Experience what your point of view feels and sounds like. If you do this mindfully you may well become aware of aspects of your experience that you had not been aware of before!
Stage 2: Become a fly on the wall – Look at the situation and group from the outside for a while, as if you were a fly on the wall. This is like ‘stepping out of the river’ from the previous exercise; it gives you an objective, witnessing perspective.
Stage 3: Becoming other – Enter into the shoes and see through the eyes of the other person, or group or people. See the situation from their point of view, what do they see? How are they feeling? Why are they acting the way they act? Use your imagination to mindfully understand as far as possible where they are coming from.
Stage 4: Go back, extend care – At the end of this exercise, go back to seeing through the eyes of self (stage 1) and spend a while extending care to the other person/people based on the understanding of then you have gained in stage 3, ‘becoming other’. Back in ‘your shoes’ extend care, compassion and understanding to them.

These two exercises are ‘mindful mobility exercises’ that, if practiced regularly will greatly increase your mental flexibility and ‘range of motion’ as you go about your daily life, as well as having the basic side effect or most mindfulness practices; greater peace of mind and centered-ness.

© 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

July details out soon!

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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

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Mindfulness of feelings – The principle of flow

Dear Integral Meditators,

In my writings on mindfulness I speak quite a lot about the principle of flow. In the article below I explore it with regard to mindfulness of our feelings, and how to create a healthy, self-cleansing emotional body by using a simple image and exercise.

In the spirit of the flowing river,

Toby

Mindfulness of feelings – The principle of flow

Picture a flowing river. Now imagine that some pollution gets dumped in that river. In the short term this will make the river dirty but, as long as the water keeps on flowing, then eventually the river will self-cleanse. Imagine that same pollution gets placed in a pond. In the case of the pond the pollution has nowhere to go because the water is not flowing, and so the water in the pond simply stays filthy.
It’s the same with your emotions; if you are mindfully feeling and experiencing your emotions every day, then you are allowing them to flow so that, even if some of those feelings are negative, then it doesn’t matter too much because they will be washed along and away by the flow without too much bother. If however you repress or stifle or numb your emotions, then this is like making them into a stagnant pond, they get stuck in your body and mind, unable to flow naturally. In this situation, whenever a difficult or negative emotion gets generated within you it will tend to get ‘stuck’ and just circulate within your emotional being for an unnatural time because it has nowhere to go; it cannot ‘flow’.

The flowing river
Imagine yourself by a deep, flowing river, allow your attention to dwell upon and within the river so that you can start to feel its flow within your emotional being. Allow yourself to feel and flow like the river, letting whatever emotions come up to arise and then flow downstream; don’t try and control or dictate what emotions arise. Allow your emotional self to become a moment to moment flow, gradually becoming a smooth, clear flow of pure feeling-ness; relax mindfully into that and dwell on it for as long as you wish.
You can even take particular emotions that you know you struggle with or tend to repress, and do this exercise specifically with them in mind.

Dealing with surges
When there is a lot of rain, a river swells and the flow increases, but as long as the flow is not blocked, then the surge eventually returns to a normal flow. It’s the same when we have a surge of emotions, as long as you don’t try and block or prevent the flow of the emotion, then after a while it will subside quite naturally. Again the principle here is to work on allowing the energy of the emotion to flow in a conscious, directed way.

© 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

Mindful Goals Coaching Special Offer: 15% off from May 25th – June 8th

For two weeks starting May 25th & ending June 8th I am offering a special 15% discount on my mindful goals coaching service. For a three session package that is a saving of Sing$90.
‘To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it is still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble’ – Bill Watterson
Click the link above to find out more about the Mindful Goals Coaching Service!

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

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Mindful concentration in an age of distraction

“If you keep dripping water in a jug, then eventually it will fill. If for every day of the year you concentrate on a small number of mindful breaths each day, you will find the effects are far reaching!”

Dear Integral Meditators,

How can we build our mindful concentration when oftentimes we find ourselves in environments that encourage us to do the opposite? The article below offers a structure for us to get started!

In the spirit of mindful concentration,

Toby

Mindful concentration in an age of distraction

In an age where we are surrounded more distractions than ever before, the skill of being able to focus our mind in a single pointed manner has never been more important. Concentration (here meaning simply the ability to keep your mind and attention focused upon one object for an extended period of time) offers many benefits, amongst others:

  • Increased mental peace
  • The ability to get things done more effectively and with greater quality execution
  • Greater benevolent control of our mind, body and feelings

Concentration is also central to the practice of mindful meditation. If you can’t keep your mind focused, then it’s really impossible to achieve lasting results from your mindfulness practice, so building good concentration technique is a really essential for good mindfulness.
What I want to explain in this article is a daily mindful concentration practice that you can do as a complete beginner in order to build mindful concentration.
It is also a practice that you can do if you are a more advanced practitioner, but want to have a very short exercise daily exclusively related to concentration. One thing I notice is that it is very easy for our basic concentration technique to degrade over time unless we renew it daily.

Day of the month mindful concentration
The object of this exercise is very simple; keep your mind focused on the breathing. Each day of the month has a number, from 1-30/31. Every day your job is to sit down at least once and focus your mind on the breathing for the number of breaths that relate to that date. So for example today is May 21st, so my job today is simply to sit down at some point and focus on my breathing for 21 breaths without getting distracted. If whilst I am doing the exercise I get distracted, the I have to start again. The rules are I have to do 21 without distraction on the 21st of the month.
This will go on, increasing by one breath at a time until the 31st of May, when I do 31 breaths. So then on 1st June I go back to just one mindful breath(!), building up to 30 breaths on 30th June. On the days of the month that are small numbers, then of course you can take more than one mindful breath, but the point is if, every day of the year you spend between 10seconds and 5 minutes practice, your capacity for mindful concentration is going to increase with only a very small amount of effort on your part.

Drops of water in a jug
This practice relies upon consistency. If you keep dripping water in a jug, then eventually it will fill. If for every day of the year you concentrate on a small number of mindful breaths each day, you will find the effects are far reaching!

© 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 May 28th, 2.30-5.30pm – Finding Liberation Through the Witness Self – Connecting to Peace, Abundance and Creative Freedom Though Mindfulness Practice

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

Starts Thursday June 9th – Thursday Evening Integral Meditation Classes @ Bencoolen Street

Integral Meditation Asia

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Witnessing – Being That Which is Not

Dear Integral Meditators,

What does it really mean to ‘be the mindful witness?’ and why is it useful to us? This weeks article seeks to answer these questions in a practical way.
For those in Singapore, last call for the upcoming workshop: Saturday April 30th, 2.30-5.30pm – Mindful Self Confidence: Developing your self-confidence, self-belief & self-trust through mindfulness & meditation

In the spirit of the witness,

Toby

Witnessing – Being That Which is Not

Really the first basic ‘position’ that you are being asked to take with your mindfulness practice is that of the witness self. Other ways of describing this is to say we are trying to:

  • Become the observer self
  • Strengthen our capacity for taking and keeping a 3rd person, detached perspective
  • To dis-identify with that which we observe arising within our mind, body and environment. To watch but not to engage

Dropping all that is not the witness
Then the question may arise if I am becoming the observer of my mind, body and environment, who am I? Who is the observer? One way to clarify this is to carefully and systematically note that the witness self is:

  • Not any element of your environment or senses
  • Not your body or any part of it
  • Not your feelings or emotions
  • Not any part of your mind

If you drop all of these one by one, what you are left with is awareness itself; that which is conscious and observes. It has no form, and because it has no form it exists out of time in the eternal NOW. The witness is present at all times in your mind, as it is the basis of your consciousness itself. However most of the time it is invisible to us, or in the background of our awareness, hidden by our identification with the activity of our body, mind and senses.

Getting started with witnessing
To become the mindful witness then, simply do the exercise above, stripping away all that is not the witness, and then practice recognizing and resting in that which is aware, that which is witnessing; pure awareness or consciousness itself. As the witness you can then start to observe in a detached manner the contents of your consciousness, body and senses, simply be that which is the watcher rather than identify with what is being observed.

The benefits of mindfully being the witness self

  • It is relaxing and calming
  • It gives you more objective perspectives on your experiences, both the good and the bad
  • It gives you a deeper experience of who you are, and answer to the question ‘Who am I?’
  • It gradually liberates you from the attachment, clinging and consequent fear and anxiety that comes from being over identified with the contents of your mind, your body and senses.

An image: The Watchman
I sometimes think of the witness self as like being a soldier on guard duty. As s/he stands on guard his job is simply to watch and scan his environment, to witness it with awareness and alertness. If he should see something that needs action then he is ready, but the vast majority of his time is spend simply being the watcher, the observer, the witness or watchman. Practice being the Watchman; that which observes and witnesses with alertness and discipline.

© 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

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Inner vision Integral Awareness Integral Meditation Life-fullness Meditation and Psychology Meditation techniques Mindfulness

Making Objects of Your Subjects

Dear Integral Meditators,

How does mindfulness help you grow and develop your mind? This weeks article considers this question from the perspective of subjects and objects, and offers a simple practice to start focusing upon.

In the spirit of inner growth,

Toby

Making Objects of Your Subjects

Mindfulness essentially is about learning to watch and observe your inner life objectively, like a witness.
One of the ways in personal growth can be explained is this: What previously we used to identify with absolutely at one stage of our growth becomes an object that we can dis-identify with and consider objectively when we move onto the next level.
Here are two quotes from developmental psychologists that explain this idea, the first is from Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan: “I know of no better way to describe development than that the subject of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject of the next stage.” The second is from Jean Gebser “The self of one stage (of development) becomes the tool of the next (stage of development)”.

Two examples:
When I was a baby, I was completely subjectively identified with my body. Thus when my body was hungry ‘I’ was hungry, and there was no self, other than the I that was hungry. Thus if I was hungry I had no choice than to be upset because my ‘I’ was completely identified with the hunger. As I grew up, I learned to distinguish my ‘self’ from my body, and thus I can recognize ‘My body is hungry’, and separate my sense of I-ness from the hunger. This enables me to exert self-control so that I can be hungry but not upset.
At a relatively low level of development I may be completely identified with my emotions. When my emotions are angry ‘I’ am angry, and I have no choice but to be angry because I completely identify with my emotions as being self. As I move to the next level of my inner growth I develop the capacity to detach from my emotions, so that when I experience anger I am able to separate ‘me’ from my anger. By doing this the anger becomes an object of my awareness rather than the subject, which in turn gives me the choice as to how I am going to deal with it; the anger is in my mind, but it is not ‘me’.

Mindfulness as the stimulator of inner growth
So, mindfulness works as a tool of inner growth simply by encouraging us to make objects of our subjects; to take the aspects of our body and senses, mind and emotions that we are currently very identified with, and simply learn to observe them as objects.

Videotaping
One image that I got from Ken Wilber’s new book Integral Meditation (highly recommended!) is that the process if mindfully turning subjects into objects is like videotaping; you simply watch an aspect of your mind or self that you are currently very identified with. Imagine you are behind a camera videotaping it; just watch, observe and film, don’t get involved.

‘People are so stupid’
Over the last day or so I have been caught up in a certain view of some people that is essentially very frustrated with their (perceived) stupidity, I notice that ‘I’ am very identified with this frustration with this sense of their laziness, lack of drive, lack of curiosity. So I chose this as my object of ‘mindful videotaping’ sitting down, acknowledging it and them simply watching it, witnessing it, videotaping it. As the observer I note:

  • The frustration feels like this, in this area of my body
  • The inner dialogue or conversation in my mind around stupid people sounds like this
  • The outer events in my life giving rise to the frustration and judgment are this, this and this

As I continue to watch my frustration and judgment, gradually it ceases to become ‘me’ and becomes instead an object of my awareness. It is in my mind but it is not me. This in turn enables me to make conscious choices about what I am going to do with the emotion, which is mostly just let go of it, and make a conscious choice about what, if anything I am going to do about the situation.
Like most other aspects of mindfulness, the aim of turning subjects into objects is to give us greater inner freedom and intelligence and take empowered control of our life choices and experience.

© 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

Integral Meditation Asia

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