Tag: mindfulness meditation

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Born from Life, not into it

“What if, rather than being an intruder into life, we relate to ourself as being born from life, & belonging to Life?”

Dear Integral Meditators,

How we conceive our relationship to life is fundamental to how we experience it. This week’s article looks at how to work with this domain in mindfulness & through contemplation.

Heads up for the the Cultivating your Nirvana, or inner freedom mini retreat on the morning of this Saturday the 12th, & for the Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention workshop on Saturday 26th.


In the spirit of Life,

Toby
 

Born from Life, not into it

One of my main informal objects of meditation for the last few weeks has been the distinction between being born into life and being born from it. There are several significant changes in perception that this invites that I think are worth sharing.   

The challenge of alienation
If our sense of being born is that of being born into life, it is very easy for that to give rise to a sense of separateness from our environment and the place we inhabit. ‘Born into’ can have the connotation of being like an alien or an asteroid landing on the planet, like a foreign entity in a strange world. There is a sense of fundamental unrelatedness to the place we find ourself. This conception then opens us to a feeling of existential anxiety, of being threatened and aggressed by our surroundings, and where we must carve out our space despite of our lack of belonging.   

Being born from
What if, rather than being an intruder into life, we relate to ourself as being born from life, and belonging to and in Life? In terms of the truth of it, there is no question of this. Our body was literally conceived of by our parents, who in turn were born from their parents and their bodies. You can trace this all the way back through the species of animals and plants to life being born in the ocean. As a unit of life we emerged from life, life gives rise to life.

A wave from the ocean
Thinking like this we start to relate to ourself as a natural extension of life, emerging from Life at birth, and returning back to Life at death (Life capital L to denote Life as a principle and underlying energy). Thought of this way life and death are not seen as enemies; we emerge from Life as an expression of Life at birth like a wave from the ocean. When we die our life simply merges back into Life, like a wave back into the ocean. It is a natural, smooth, seamless continuum. Changing our relationship to life like this, we then significantly change our relationship to death.

An apple from a tree
Another way of relating to being born from Life is that we realize our relationship to it is like that of an apple or a leaf to an apple tree. The apple emerges from the Life of the tree itself, not as something separate from the tree. The life of the tree gives rise to the apple. The apple arises from the tree itself, in the same way that the tree came from the life in the apple that it grew from.
You are like the apple being born from the apple tree. The life in you is a part of Life, you are an expression of Life, and Life is you.

No room for impostor syndrome
Relating to yourself as being born from Life, an expression of Life, there is a sense of belonging to Life, being a part of Life, being deeply at home in Life. There is no sense of not belonging where you are, not being appropriate to Life, of somehow being ‘in the wrong place’. You are in fact exactly where you are supposed to be. You belong here as much as anything or anyone else.
The things that you are offered in and by Life you are deserving of, there isn’t even a question of that.

Being born from and (dying) merging back into Life.
A wave arising from and merging back into the ocean.
An apple arising from an apple tree.
You belong absolutely, and you are at home, truly.

Related article: Trees, birds & Octopuses – Achieving harmony by letting be

© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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A Mind of Ease creative imagery Enlightened Flow Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindfulness Presence and being present

Witnessing the witness article (& all sessions & workshops for October)

“Looking outward, the sun of our awareness illuminates our world, looking in on itself, it notices the watcher of the world”

Dear Integral Meditators,

October has a full routine of classes, retreats & workshopsto enjoy, both live & online, starting with the  Mindful Self-Confidence workshop this Saturday 5th, & the Cultivating your Nirvana, or inner freedom mini retreat on the morning of the 12th.
You can find full details of all sessions beneath this weeks article on ‘Witnessing the witness’.

In the spirit of meditation in action,  

Toby

Witnessing the witness – The sun turning in on itself
 
The witness self – your inner sun

One way to center yourself in the present is to focus on a single object in the present moment, such as your body, your breathing, a thought, an image and so on. A second major way to center yourself is to center your attention around the observer within you, and its process of observation. This practice is called witnessing. All you need to do is center in your position as the witnessing observer within your field of awareness.
When you witness, it is important to get the balance right between transcending and including. What I mean by this is the balance of two qualities:

  • Transcending means you observe in a detached manner, treating your observed content as an object
  • Including meaning that you observe your objects inclusively, touching them with care and warmth

In a previous article I compare witnessing to the Sun;

  • The sun shines its life-giving warmth upon us generously
  • At the same time it’s light and warmth are completely impersonal and detached

So, when you witness, good technique transcends and includes the observed object, like the sun shines it’s light on us.

Things to witness

One of the great things about witnessing is exactly the way it turns subjects of consciousness into objects of consciousness. It is much easier to work with and master an object of consciousness compared to something that you are deeply identified with. So, what I like to do regularly is to take as my object of witnessing awareness the things that are bothering or triggering me that day. For example:

  • If I’m feeling anxious about something such as a meeting
  • If I’m feeling the need to be right with someone, and the past conversation keeps replaying
  • If I’m feeling grumpy or distressed about physical pain
  • If I’m feeling sad

…or attached to something/someone, and sometimes if I am feeling good about something, and I can tell I’m really identified with that feeling.

What you do is take your experience as the object of sun-like witnessing, and make it into an object of consciousness rather than a subject of consciousness. At a certain point you will feel the subjective power of that experience fading. It is still there, maybe even still feeling strong, but it is an object, rather than a subject of consciousness. This changes the experience, making it much easier to adapt to and work with.

The sun turning in on itself

Another core practice that you can build once you get used to witnessing, is witnessing the witness. If you were to imagine the light of the sun, which normally shines outwards, turns and shines inwards, this is the essential movement of witnessing the witness. This is a different form of witnessing because:

  • Witnessing consciousness itself has no form, it is just formless, timeless awareness. So there is nothing to ‘see’
  • Secondly, the witness is the absolute subject of consciousness. As such it cannot know itself in the same way as looking at an object from the outside. When you witness the witness, you simply notice the feeling of being the witness, and take that sense of formless timeless ‘being’ as your object of meditation

If you imagine the sun as your basic image for witnessing, and then imagine the sun turning it’s light and shining in on itself, this is a useful analogy and image for meditation to use to gradually access direct experience of the ‘witnessing the witness’ practice.

Structuring your witnessing practice

If I do a 20-minute witnessing meditation for example, quite often I will split the time;

  • 5minutes witnessing an object
  • 5minutes witnessing the witness
  • x2

Putting them together creates a powerful one-two punch for the practice!

Related article: Witnessing like the sun

Witnessing – Being that which is not

Bodies within bodies – Witnessing with your energy bodies

Bare attention – Your inner bird-watcher
 
© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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 meditation sessions & workshops with Toby 

Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes

Ongoing, Tuesday/Wednesday evening’s, 7.30-8.30pm – Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course

Saturday 5th October, 9.30am-12.30pm – Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop

Saturday 12th October, 9-11.30am – Integral meditation deep dive mini-retreat – Cultivating your Nirvana, or inner freedom

Saturday 26th October, 9.30am-12.30pm – Meditation & Mindfulness for Creating a Mind of Ease, Relaxed Concentration and Positive Intention

Saturday October 26th, 5-6pm Singapore time – Engaged mindfulness & meditation online class : What is self-awareness?

Tuesday 29th & Wednesday 30th Oct, 7.30-8.30 – Deepavali Meditation – Connecting to your inner light

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Integral Meditation Asia

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A Mind of Ease Awareness and insight Enlightened Flow Inner vision Insight Meditation Integral Meditation Integrating Ego, Soul and Spirit Life-fullness Meditation techniques mind body connection Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Nirvana

“Drop into your Nirvana to regenerate, & re-establish your inner freedom when you want to”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Nirvana may sound or feel like an abstraction, unrelated to your life & workplace experience, in the article below I try and make the idea of Nirvana accessible, & offer some ways to start making it experientially real for you…

Two sessions this week: 
Tues & Weds 17th & 18th September, 7.30-8.30pm – Autumn equinox balancing & renewing meditation
Sat September 21st, 5-6pm Singapore time – Engaged mindfulness & meditation online class : The dance of relaxation & alertness

You are invited!

In the spirit of Nirvana, 

Toby

 


Nirvana – Finding your Ground
 
Where is Nirvana?
 
If you sit quietly in meditation for a while, you will start to notice the presence of spaces and silences between all the sensory, mental and emotional movement. When you notice these spaces, you start to discover what is called “Causal” consciousness, or the formless, timeless consciousness that acts as the ‘ground’ or basis of our being and experience. Dropping deeper into this Causal consciousness, we start to notice that, when we relax into these spaces we touch a sense of freedom, a liberation from all of the discomfort and ‘spikiness’ of our everyday life.
Developing and growing our contact with this causal level of consciousness, the “Ground” of our being gives us the basis for what in original Buddhism is called Nirvana. Nirvana is a Sanskrit word that is part of a numbner of “Nir” words. “Nir” basically means “without,” “not,” “none”.

  • Nirvana means “A state without grasping or desire”
  • Nirvakalpa means “Without thought forms”
  • Nirguna means “Without qualities”
  • Nirodh means “Pure extinction, total cessation”

 
They all point to variations of a completely Empty, Formless, Unqualifiable reality that lies underneath our experience of inner and outer forms. So, to build our own Nirvana, we look to cultivate this state in meditation (and later integrate it into daily life), a state in which we are:

  • relaxed, free from grasping or desire
  • free from thinking (without thought forms)
  • free from moods, emotions, personality traits (without qualities)
  • resting in a state of radical, free emptiness (extinction, total cessation)

To cultivate this state is to cultivate your Nirvana, your inner freedom, your liberation, resting in the formless, timeless emptiness that is the ground of being.
Don’t worry, if you do this you won’t become a ‘nobody’ in the everyday world! But you will experience yourself differently, and you will be able to drop into your Nirvana to regenerate and re-establish your inner freedom when you want to, now that you have access to it.
 
Nirvana and the Witness
Within your Nirvana, your formless timeless freedom, you will notice there is a Witness, an observer self. It has no qualities than the capacity to watch, notice, to be conscious of. You can use your Witness to build your Nirvana, and you can use your Nirvana to build your Witness. Building your competency in both, you build two major dimensions of a qualified meditation practice. Here are a few ways to start this. You can begin these exercises in sitting meditation, but with time you will be increasingly able to do them informally in daily life:

  • Use your Witness self to observe your desires and passions. After a while then gently drop your passions and Witness Nirvana, the state of freedom from grasping or desire
  • Use your Witness self to observe your thoughts and thinking. After a while then gently drop your thinking and Witness Nirvakalpa, the state of freedom from thoughtforms
  • Use your Witness self to observe your personality traits, moods, and other qualities. After a while then gently drop your thinking and Witness Nirguna, the state of freedom from qualities, a “person-less person”
  • The above three exercises give you a sound basis for developing your “Nirodh” your state of “Pure extinction, total cessation”, your state of radical, free emptiness, which you can then use to notice and rest in your Witness, the formless, timeless observer self.

Resting in this Witness then radically improves your capacity to deepen your states of Nirvana, Nirguna, Nirvakalpa and Nirodh. Which is another way of saying you re becoming a Free man or Free woman, resting in your own Nirvana!
 
Related articles: Eternal life (& where to find it)
The path of no-escape


Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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
 


Saturday 28th September, 9.30am-12.30pm –Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop

In a sentence: Learn how you can develop greater self confidence in express it in your life using specific mindfulness practices.

Overview: How many things in your life would you be doing differently if you were thinking and acting from a place of deep self confidence?

This is a 3hour workshop where you will be taught practices that are designed to make a tangible difference to your levels of everyday confidence and inner wellbeing…read full details

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

Integral Meditation Asia

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Awareness and insight Energy Meditation Enlightened Flow Inner vision Life-fullness Meditation techniques mind body connection Mindful Breathing Mindful Resilience Presence and being present Tree of Life

Anchoring & moving from center

“Breathe into the fullness of your attention and intention. Breathe out relax into the freedom of awareness. At the bottom of the breath rest in stillness”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article focuses on centering as a theme, & outlines a practice that you can do to help you center effectively in a number of key ways…
If you enjoy the article, you can explore aspects of it at this weeks Tuesday or Wednesday class, live or online.
And heads up for anyone who may be interested in the Developing Your Self-Confidence Through Mindfulness Workshop on the 28th September.

In the spirit of centered-ness, 

Toby

 


Anchoring & moving from center
 
In this article I want to bring together a few techniques into a ‘Form’. A form basically means a practice that is quite simple, and can be done at the level of the person doing it, beginner or more advanced. The characteristic of a form is that it grows with the abilty of the practitioner, thus remaining relevant to us as we grow. The three domains we bring together in this form are:

  • Physical and energetic centering
  • The ‘holy trinity’ of integral mindfulness; intention, attention and awareness
  • Our foundational freedom, fullness, and stillness

 
Centering

Imagine a line of light coming down from the sky. Imagine it descending through the crown of your head, and down through the dead-center of your body, brain, neck, chest, abdomen hips. It then leaves through your perineum and descends into the earth moving through the center of the Earth’s core. Feel this line of light to be in the middle of the front and back, left and right halves of your body. As you breathe in, breathe your energy into this ‘vertical core’ of your body, as you breathe out, feel yourself relaxing from center, from the core to the periphery of your body.**
After few breaths, locate the mid-point of your vertical core between your crown and your perineum. This is the mid-point of your torso, the absolute physical centre. Imagine this as a point of light, somewhere between your heart-centre and solar-plexus. Breathe into this mid-point, gathering your energy & power there. Breathe out, relax from your mid-point. Feel the inner balance that this practice starts to give rise to.
 
Aligning your mindfulness with your center

Now imagine that the three foundations of mindfulness, your intention, attention and awareness (IAA) are all focused within your vertical core, and particularly your mid-point/center. If you like, imagine your mid-point becomes like a little sun, shining your intention, attention and awareness out from your centre in a balanced, powerful and harmonious manner. Initially you can keep this a general feeling around your IAA, but then if you like you can make it into a practice around a specific domain of your life, reflecting upon particular intentions, and ways of directing your attention and awareness in this situation. Just centring your IAA and then holding a situation in mind, seeing if from this balanced point of center can be a surprisingly powerful and useful practice.
 
Relaxing into freedom, fullness and stillness

As you breathe in, imagine the sun-like fullness of your balanced intention glowing brightly. As you breathe out, imagine it shining out into the freedom of your sky-like awareness. Enjoy this feeling of freedom and fullness. If you like. As you reach the end of your exhalation, pause briefly, and relax into the physical and mental stillness in that pause. So, then we have:

  • Breathing into the fullness of attention and intention
  • Breathing out relaxing into the freedom of awareness
  • At the bottom of the breath resting in stillness

There is a lot in this form, but I hope you can see that the basic elements are really quite simple. The felt benefits are fairly immediate, and as your practice deepens, so will your experience of the form!
 
**When people start to meditate, quite often they notice that they feel ‘lop-sided’ with one side of the body feeling full of energy and the opposite side feeling empty or without feeling. Centering practice can really help with the re-balancing of this.
 
Related reading: Locating your deep centre
The holy trinity of mindfulness
Sky & sun, freedom & fullness

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram

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The sky of freedom, the fullness of the sun

“Meditative presence – The fullness of our whole being combined with a sense of inner spaciousness and freedom”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Next week is the start of the Autumn meditation series Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course. One of the foundational intentions that we will be working with is the intention to awaken. This weeks article looks at what we are awakening to in meditation, whether we are a beginner or more advanced!

In the spirit of freedom & fullness, 

Toby
 


Sky & sun, freedom & fullness
 
Meditative presence might be thought of as having two basic qualities; freedom and fullness. There are many levels or ‘octaves’ of this experience, ranging from the foundational experience of the beginner, to the deep awakening of more experienced practitioners. The nice thing about relating to meditative presence in this way is that we can experience it on the level that we are at, and grow it as the days, months and years go by. This month I have experienced a tangible deepening of my own experience of this. I have been practising for thirty years, I don’t expect it to be the last time, it’s a process that really has no edges to it!
 
So, what do we mean freedom and fullness? In a previous article I described meditative presence as being:
Full, not empty – When we sit in awareness of the present moment, we start to feel a sense of fullness in that moment. We can then turn up to life with this feeling of fullness, which helps counterbalance the feeling of emptiness that many people feel when they think about themselves and their life.
Empty, not full – Sitting with awareness in the present moment enables us to empty of all the complex thinking and inner noise that our mind is overburdened or overfilled with. We access a sense of ‘empty’ pleasurable inner spaciousness.

Meditation enables us to connect to the fullness of our own presence, and the sense of completeness or wholeness that that gives us. It also enables us to empty our mind of busy thoughts, also and empty our body of excessive tension, giving rise to a sense of inner spaciousness and freedom. In meditative presence there is a chance to step into a deep sense of inner fullness and freedom, starting to relate to ourselves as being fundamentally, in essence that way; full, whole, free, liberated. Starting to relate to ourselves in this way as we go about daily life, we may also start noticing changes in our behaviour and how we experience things. We feel less oppressed and trapped, and more creative, spontaneous, and playful.
 
The sky of freedom, the fullness of the sun

One image that can be useful and powerful to meditate on is your inner fullness being like the sun, and your freedom being like the sky. If when in meditation you imagine the fullness of your being as like a beautiful sun within your heart-space, surrounded by a clear, open sky, which is the natural freedom of your awareness. As you breathe in, feel your energy gathering into the fullness of the sun at your heart, feel the natural wholeness & completeness of it. As you breathe out, let go of tension in your body and thoughts in your mind, relaxing into the sky-like freedom of your own awareness.

If you work with this image, you may find that it helps you connect more profoundly and quickly to your natural state of freedom and fullness. If after a while you feel you have a real sense of the actual state of freedom and fullness, then you can drop the sun and sky image and simply rest in the experience of your natural freedom and fullness. If you find yourself loosing that sense, then you can return to the image as a way of re-connecting.

Another way of doing this is by positioning yourself in front of a window, or sitting outside or walking where you have clear sight of the actual sun and sky. You can use mindful awareness of the actual sun and sky as a way of connecting to freedom and fullness. As always, these things need to be done to be understood fully. Simply reading it on a page won’t reveal it’s potential!

Related article: Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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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Concentration Inner vision Life-fullness meditation and creativity Meditation and Psychology Mindful Self-Leadership Mindfulness Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Staying with intention

“What is a useful intention that I can center around and stay with in this situation?”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

Good to see all of you who came to the online Engaged Mindfulness class last Saturday! The next one will be 21st September, on ‘the dance of relaxation & alertness’, see you there!

One week to go before the start of the Autumn meditation weekly series Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course, this week’s article looks at how to be playful, flexible & creative with your intention through mindfulness…

In the spirit of intention, 

Toby

Staying with intention
 
When we are unable to do what we want in a situation, what do we do? This article explores a way of working with our intention where the intention itself becomes a type of action, enabling us to stay resilient, generous and strong in situations where we might feel discouraged, distracted or inclined to give up and walk away. I explore this in the form of examples. The examples themselves are invitations for you to start exploring how ‘staying with intention’ can be mindfully explored in your own life.
 
Hearing about the grief of another – the other day I had a conversation with a friend who had a family member fallen sick, with no easy cure in sight. Other than offer my sympathy, there really wasn’t a lot that I could ‘do’ about what had happened. In this type of situation, the feeling of helplessness can make us want to turn our attention (consciously or unconsciously) away. Noticing this within myself, I made the choice simply to stay with a caring and compassionate intention, sending that energy toward the people involved when they came into my mind over the next day or so. Simply holding this benevolent intention was the action, the practise. Doing it I felt empowered and more positive.
 
Making a business pitch – my work involves quite often making pitches to organizations, with no certainty around the result. One way that I have found to keep myself even-minded is simply to set my intention; to turn up in order to benefit them, and also to develop my own skill around pitching. Turning up with these intentions, and centering around them has my ‘inner action’ that sets the stage for the meeting, encouraging a good result whether I ‘get the gig’ or not.
 
Finding meaning in your life – ‘What is the meaning in my life’ can be an intimidating question, and the answers so ambiguous that we drop the question thinking it’s too big and what’s the point? The intention to look for meaning in life in my next interaction, in however small a way is something that I stay with, whether the answer is clear today or not. Having the intention is meaningful in itself, and encourages us to notice the opportunity for meaning when it presents itself!
 
Being productive in the day – Sometimes productivity and creativity feels easy, sometimes it feels difficult. If I am having a difficult day getting what I want to get done done, rather than fighting too hard with the conditions, I simply stay with the intention to be productive, and then in a state of curiosity work to achieve what is possible in the circumstances. That is then enough.
 
Developing a skill – Like productivity, sometimes the skills that I want to grow feels easy, but often quite difficult and imperfect. Simply setting the intention to practice and improve (my meditation, my squash game etc…) and then staying with the process enables me to be consistent in my practice, whether I seem to be making progress or not.
 
Not being too intentional – Being over-structured around intentions, and rigid with them can sometimes be very unhelpful. When I notice this happening with myself, I adjust my intention, making it an ‘intention to be unintentional’, or to be spontaneous, relaxed and flowing.
 
I hope these few examples enable you to get a flavour of the practice of mindfully staying with your intention. In any given situation the essential question is ‘What is a useful intention that I can center around and stay with here?’

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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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The dance of conscious & unconscious intention

“Our intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article follows on from last week’s article on on intention, further drawing out the power of intention, and some practices to start being mindful around it!
If you enjoy the article, do check out the upcoming course on  Meditating with the power of intention – An eleven module course. It can be participated in live or online, and is starting at the beginning of September. 

In the spirit of intention, 

Toby
 


The dance of conscious & unconscious intention
 
You always have an intention
Intention occupies the ‘why’ space within our consciousness; the reason we are motivated to do things. There is a ‘why’ reason for all our actions or non-actions. The art noticing or being mindful around intention is three-fold:

  1. Noticing intentions that you have that are harmful or destructive, working against your wellbeing and those of others. Once detected we can work on understanding where they come from and what we can do to reduce and re-direct them
  2. Noticing the positive intentions that we have that are helpful, empowering and creative, then continuing to nurture and strengthen them
  3. Opening to new benevolent or creative intentions that we may not have often at the moment, but that we can see the value in developing them and making them a regular part of our life

Intentions are like tuning forks, they tend to attract particular types of things and experiences into our life, and also determine the way in which we experience them. Dancing with our intentions deliberately can radically shift our life-experience quite quickly, sometimes immediately.
 
You don’t always know that you have an intention
Although we almost always have an intention, we aren’t always aware of the intentions that we have.

  • You might have naturally caring intentions regularly toward your family members, but you might not notice it because it’s just a (positive) habit. If you notice this positive intention that arises regularly within you, you can generate it more often consciously, and you can widen the group or type of people that you generate it towards. Making this intention conscious can improve your relationships significantly
  • You might not be aware of the judgements that you have about yourself, and the harmful intentions that come from them. By making these intentions toward yourself conscious, you can see them more clearly, gently starting to ‘de-couple’ yourself from them, reducing, even eliminating the harmful effects that they are having upon you
  • You may not have noticed that your short, medium and long term goals and intentions are contradicting each other in significant ways. By consciously aligning your short, medium and long term intentions and making them a team, you can significantly increase the power of each

 
Practice points – Creating intentions around intention
 
The intention to live intentionally – the first practice point here is to build the power of your intention to live intentionally, on purpose and consciously. This is a mindfulness power-practice 101, building the power of your intentionality.
 
The dance of conscious & unconscious intention – Practice point two is to notice which of the intentions that you generate are deliberate or conscious, and which are instinctual, unconscious and spontaneous. The idea here is to ‘dance’ with both, creating a harmony between them in your life through your intention to align your conscious & unconscious intentions.
 
Related reading: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention
Intention, dedication, meditation
Fourteen levels of mindful intention

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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

Watch Toby’s video on mindful intention:

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Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of mindful intention

“Your intention determines your trajectory – choose to be more conscious and intentional during the day. Life your life ‘on purpose’!”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article & video explores the concept that ‘intention determines trajectory’ & looks at practical ways you can start to explore it mindfully in your daily life.

If you enjoy the article, then do check out the upcoming course that will be starting in September on  Meditating with the power of intention.

In the spirit of the intentional, 

Toby

 

Watch Toby’s video on Mindful intention:


Article: Intention determines trajectory – Aspects of integrated mindful intention
 
Intention is one of what I call the ‘three pillars’ or ‘holy trinity’ of integral mindfulness: awareness, attention and intention. These three are what I call pre-skills, meaning skills that, if you develop them, they will help you to develop any other skill or capacity that you want to in life. The better you become at them, the more confident you will feel in the face of life’s challenges.
 
Intention determines trajectory
The statement ‘Intention is destiny’ might not be true in the absolute sense of the word, but it holds true on many levels in the sense that our intentions determine our motivations and actions in life. The intentions that we hold in our mind consistently are continually influencing what we do, where we go, what we say, what we choose. Its not difficult to see for example that someone who’s conscious intention is to contribute to society and make it a better place is going to have a very different life path from someone whose intention is simply to fit in with the prevailing norm, and not look too dumb. Given this understanding, the intention to make your intentions in life conscious is a good place to start!
 
You always have an intention
Something else about intention is that you always have one. It can be a conscious intention such as the intention to act to achieve a goal, or it can be an unconscious or instinctual intention, such as the impulse to eat an attractive food, or say something in a moment or reactivity. So, a second practice around intention is to start to notice and be mindful around the intentions that you are having thru-out the day. Notice them coming and going. Notice the ones that are deliberate. Notice intentions that you tend to hide from yourself, or suppress awareness around. “What is my intention for doing this?” is a question that helps you both to become aware of existing intentions, and for clarifying your intention, aligning yourself with the best intentions that you can muster.
 
Three levels or octaves of intention
Three ball park intentions that I practice on are simple and as follows:

  • The intention to be of benefit toward myself today
  • The intention to turn up well for my close circle, friends, family, colleagues
  • The intention (Partly by doing intentions 1&2 well) to be of benefit to humanity and the Planet

I call these ball park intentions, because they hold space well for the other more specific intentions that I may focus on in the day. They create a benevolent intentional space for my activities, and clarify the way in which I direct my energy. I often start a meditation with these three intentions, but they are equally important for:

  • Family interaction
  • Business transactions
  • Social activity

And so on…One thing to notice about these three levels is that we are aiming to create a harmonic between them, get them working together as a team. By benefiting myself I can become stronger, which helps me to turn up better for my close circle, and the enhanced interaction with my close circle ripples out into the world. You get the idea!

Practice points around mindful intention:

  • Be curious about the intentions, conscious and unconscious that you have during the day, witnessing them and noticing patterns
  • Choose to be more conscious and intentional during the day. Life your life ‘on purpose’!
  • Notice how your intentions determine your trajectory in life, both in the short, medium, and long terms
  • Generate and center around the three levels or octaves of intention regularly. Practice motivating yourself from these powerful, core intentions

Related reading: Intention, dedication, meditation
Fourteen levels of mindful intention

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com

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Three levels of mindful intuition

“Teaming up our intuition & rationality helps us trust our natural inner guidance and signals”

Dear Integral Meditators, 

This week’s article offers some ways of making distinctions around different type of intuition, & beginning to work with them in daily life. If you enjoy it, feel free to join us for the Tuesday or Wednesday meditation class, where it will be a focus point of the meditation. 

In the spirit of intuition,

Toby
 


Three levels of mindful intuition
 
What is intuition?
 
For this piece, I’m going to define intuition as a way of experiencing and processing our life in a way that is almost instantaneous, often pre, or trans-rational, meaning preceding logical or systematic thought. Here are a couple of mainstream definitions from the internet that are complementary to mine:

  • Oxford languages: Intuition – using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive; “his intuitive understanding of the readers’ real needs”
  • Cambridge dictionary: Intuition – able to know or understand something because of feelings rather than facts or proof

 
Why is it useful to develop?
 
Reliable intuition is a wonderful capacity to develop, as it enables us to navigate life confidently, experientially, and more successfully. It is a capacity that is complementary to our reasoning, and analytical capacity, rather than in competition with it. If we can make our intuition and reasoning a team, then they can help us to verify choices, navigate confusion and so forth. Teaming up our rationality and intuition helps us trust our natural inner guidance and signals.
 
Three levels of intuition
 
Most often I think about intuition as having three levels; instinctual, mental and spiritual:

Instinctual intuition comes from our biological intelligence. It is the capacity that we share with animals. It is pre-rational, often sensual and sensory. If you quieten the mind and attune to your body-intelligence, then you’ll start to notice this level of your intuition providing you signals and feedback thru-out the day. When you are out in nature, you may notice this level of intuition really coming to the foreground of your awareness, as your animal nature attunes to its environment.

Mental or intellectual intuition is the capacity of our mind to compute answers based on the sum total of our knowledge and experience, before our conscious mind can do it in a linear way. For example, if we are an experienced chess or tennis player, our intuitive sense of the next move or shot will often come intuitively and instantaneously. This ‘feeling’ comes from the capacity of our intellect to make trans-rational calculations based on the totality of our knowledge and experience in this domain.

Spiritual intuition is that dimension of our intelligence that lies beyond both our instinct and our intellect. The intuition that comes from this level is distinct, sometimes characterised as a ‘still small voice within’. In a previous article I describe this intuitive voice as follows:
“What you are looking for is a quieter voice within you coming from a deeper level of your consciousness. Its nature is to be kind, and quiet, strong and wise. It’s easily drowned out by the louder voices of the everyday mind, which is why you need to listen for it closely, in a relaxed frame of mind”
Sometimes referred to as the Higher Self, Soul Self or Spiritual Self, spiritual intuition often feels as if it’s perspective comes literally from an ariel point of view, a ‘big picture’ perspective.
 
If you sit quietly, and recall a particular situation in your life, you can try gently to identify these three voices, attuning to the different information and perspectives they are giving you. Sometimes they will be in broad agreement, sometimes they will be saying different, even contradictory things to each other. It is your job as the conscious self to:

  • Identify these three voices of your intuitive guidance
  • Collate and assess them together, making a decision that you feel is best for you and the situation at hand, all things considered

Identifying and listening to these three levels of your intuition is a part of what I call learning to trust your inner guidance, or ‘inner guru’. Everyone has all three of these, it’s just a matter of putting in a little patient practice to start building your competency!
 
Related articles: Trusting your inner guru
Four ways of working with your inner voice

Article & content © Toby Ouvry 2024, 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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Effortless wholeness – The ocean & it’s wave; not one, not two

“Experience yourself as a wave on the ocean, emerging from and subsiding back into the sea, separate from but at the same time one with the ocean, not one, not two”

Dear Toby, 

This week’s article focuses on a technique to deepen the simple feeling of awareness, making it into a communion between yourself as an individual, and yourself as the One or Universal Self. If you like it, you might like to come along too this week’s Wednesday class, where it will be the subject of the  session!

And head’s up for this Saturday 27th July, 5-6pm – Mantra yoga meditation class: Healing meditation with the Medicine Buddha. If you are interested in meditation & healing, you will enjoy this class.

In the spirit of not one, not two,

Toby

 


Effortless wholeness – The ocean & it’s wave; not one, not two
 
In my previous article, Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology I outlined five ways in which simply sitting in a state of mindful presence starts to activate a feeling of wholeness or completeness. Sitting presently in this way we start to feel:
 

  1. Full, not empty
  2. Empty, not full 
  3. Enough, not not -enough 
  4. Strong, not weak 
  5. Free, not limited

 
To our ‘doing’ mind this can seem a little bit too good to be true, there must be something that we have to do or achieve in order to a state of deep meditation and get all these benefits? Here is a short story from Anthony De Mello’s One minute wisdom entitled ‘Identity’ that is designed to further undermine our addiction to striving:
 
IDENTITY
“How does one seek union with God?”
“The harder you seek, the more distance you create between Him and you.”
“So, what does one do about the distance?”
“Understand that it isn’t there.”
“Does that mean that God and I are one?”
“Not one. Not two.”
“How is that possible?”
“The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song—not one. Not
two.”
 
The useful thing about this story is it helps us to see that we can be at the same time one with the universe, and at the same time different, individual and separate. It is not one, not two, not neither, not both & something beyond neither and both.
 
The story gives the image of the sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, and the singer and his/her song. To explore this, first cultivate basic mindful presence; not lost in thought, not falling asleep, present to the moment, and aware of yourself being present. Then take one of the following as your object of meditation:

  • Imagine yourself as an individual lightray, separate from but at the same time one with the sun. Not one, not two
  • Or as a wave on the ocean, emerging from and subsiding back into the sea, separate from but at the same time one with the ocean. Not one, not two
  • Or as a singer singing a song (perhaps when you actually sang a song), separate from, but at the same time merged with the sound and the song itself. Not one, not two

 
Using one of these images, explore relaxing as effortlessly as you can into the feeling of being not one with the universe, or separate from it, but paradoxically both at the same time. Intellectually it sounds a bit bamboozling, but experientially and using the image, you will find that the experience comes naturally, and without needing to try too hard. It is a nice way to enhance and deepen the simple feeling of awareness and mindful presence, making it into a communion between yourself as an individual, and yourself as the One or Universal Self!
 
Related reading: Mindfulness – Liberation through pre-psychology
Your thoughts as light rays, your mind as the sun
 

​© Toby Ouvry 2024, 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


In case you missed it in last week’s newsletter: The remembrance, positivity & mindful questioning training page

This first training page for the Engaged mindfulness book & project focuses on three practices, or mindful positions:

  1. Practical learning from life – Asking & learning from mindful questions
  2. Meditation – orienting around the positive
  3. Mindfulness – improving your conscious remembrance of what you are doing

Reference in the Engaged mindfulness book: Page 4-6, An Introduction to the Art of Mindfulness (Download free PDF, or order hardcopy here)


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