Tag: power of mind

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Awareness and insight Integral Awareness Presence and being present

Are You A Seeker Or A Practitioner?

You know when you have become a meditation practitioner when in times of crisis you turn to the states of mind that you have been cultivating in meditation to find stability, calm and clarity. The fact that you are able to use the mind-states that you focus on in meditation to solve actual challenges in your life indicates that your meditation has become a part of you, and that you are a practitioner of the art of meditation.

You are a meditation seeker if you meditate sometimes but, when the S&*#! really hits the fan in your life you basically revert to the old habits and coping strategies (or non-coping strategies!) that you used before you started to meditate. In this sense a meditation seeker is kind of like someone who is window shopping or superficially dabbling in the idea of changing their consciousness, but has not yet really committed to the process of transformation. As a result their meditation practice remains skin deep, and not effective when you really need it to be.

So, which one are you? What is the next step that you need to take to transform yourself from a seeker into a practitioner?

Thanks for reading!

Toby

PS: Click HERE to read Toby’s recent article on “Starbathing Meditation” on his Qi Gong blog

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

Categories
Awareness and insight Enlightened service Integral Awareness Meditation techniques Motivation and scope

Meditating On The Five Levels of Positive Intention, And Learning How To Use Group Consciousness to Support And Enhance Your Own Personal Intention

Here are five levels of positive intention that we can hold, and that we can use as conscious motivators for our meditation and awareness practice, or indeed as full objects of meditation in themselves:

1. The intention to practice non-harmfulness toward ourself and others

2. The intention to heal, nurture our body-mind, and develop it to its fullest potential

3. The intention to contribute in the most meaningful and positive way to our circle of influence, meaning our family, friends, work colleagues and anyone else whom we have a direct, immediate and personal relationship with.

4. The intention to be of active benefit to all of humanity without discrimination

5. The intention to be of active co-operation and benefit to all living beings on the planet, including all members of the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms, as well as all the other classes of living being that there may be.

As you can see, these five levels increase the scope of our intention incrementally. We start with the intention to stop harming ourselves and others (if you can’t help, at least don’t harm), and end with a truly kosmocentric intention to be of benefit to all living beings without exception. This last intention is the most evolved and expansive of all the five, and is really what might be called the loving, fearless and compassionate intention of the Bodhisattva, to borrow the Buddhist expression.

A final note is that each of these intentions is valid and has its own place in our consciousness. For example, just because we may be aiming for the fifth level of intention, we can still hold intentions two and three; to nurture ourself and our circle of influence in a perfectly valid and complementary way.

You might also like to compare and contrast these five levels of positive intention with “The Five Levels of Intention For Effecting Personal Transformation” that I wrote about in a previous article.

Connecting our own five levels of motivation to the corresponding intentions within group consciousness.

It can be very useful to realize that there exists within the group mind of the Planet the collective energy of all these positive intentions. We can learn to leverage on this already existing positive group intention by connecting to it with awareness.

Here is a simple, guided meditation that takes level one, the intention to practice non-harmfulness as an example. Once you understand how to do it with one level of intention, you can easily learn how to do it with the others.

– Sitting comfortably, become aware of the different levels of intention in your mind right now, both “positive” and “negative”.

– Focusing on yourself and your own body-mind, place within you awareness the intention to practice non-harmfulness toward yourself; to stop the self abuse, self hatred, self destructive habits and so on, even if it is just for these few minutes. Sit with this intention for a minute, just holding it gently in your awareness

– Now be aware that you are part of group consciousness that we shall call the planetary mind, or planetary consciousness. This is the collective intelligence of all the living creatures in the world. Be aware that there already exists within the group mind a strong intention to practice non-harmfulness. This energy comes from all the living beings of past, present and future that have held this intention, from the great saints and yogis, to the tiniest animals.

– Feel your mind connecting to this group intention, and feel its energy flowing into your body-mind. If you like for a minute or so you can feel yourself breathing the intention in on the inhalation, and relaxing your awareness deeply into that intention as you breathe out.

Finnish when you are ready. As with all the meditation exercises on this blog this one on intention can be done as a one minute awareness form, or as a more extended meditation according to your time schedule and needs.

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

Categories
Awareness and insight Inner vision Integral Awareness Meditation and Psychology Uncategorized

Four Factors That you Need to Make Your Meditation Awareness Integral And Continually Growing, And A Four Minute Meditation to Start Working With Them

Hi Everyone,

One of the main foundations of meditation practice is the development of awareness, but what exactly is it that we should be developing awareness of? The following is a list of four basic aspects of your awareness and awareness practice  that you need to be working with continually in order to ensure the balanced growth of your being on all levels.

It is based around the four areas identified by the authors if “Integral Life Practice” , which is a book I highly recommend (I use it for both my own personal practice and for coaching with clients). Of course there are many other areas of awareness training, but these four really seem to be a stable “must have” set of building blocks for other forms of awareness training as well as integral inner growth and integral service to the world:

1. Awareness and processing of our shadow self – Our shadow self is any aspect of our self or being that is currently denied, unacknowledged or unexpressed within us. These can be aspects of ourself that we are afraid of, such as powerful negative emotions, but they can also be aspects of ourself that are actually powerful positive potentials which have been denied by us due for example, to lack of confidence or self esteem. These positive hidden elements of our shadow are sometimes called our “golden shadow” as they reflect the potential positive, balanced, dynamic person we could be. Shadow awareness practice is the art of becoming aware of that which is hidden within us and bringing it out into the open either to be healed (in the case of negative shadow elements) or brought to their full potential, as in the case of golden shadow elements

2. Awareness of Mind – This is a big area, but the particular aspect of awareness that I want to highlight with the mind is an ongoing commitment to develop awareness of higher, deeper, more complex perspectives. Right now our perspective is limited, biased, and narrow. To commit each day to seeing new perspectives, learning new ways of working in the world and in our relationships, understanding other people’s points of view, expanding the breadth of our motivation are all activities that expand our mental and intellectual awareness, making it more profound, inclusive and integrated.

3. Awareness of Body – Here awareness of body means awareness of your THREE bodies, gross, subtle and causal:

  • Gross physical body training involves physical trainings such as weights, stretching, sports and all forms of gross body fitness training.
  • Subtle body awareness training involves subtle body practices such as qi-gong, tai-chi, prajnayama (breathwork), certain yoga trainings, and so forth.
  • Causal, or stillness body training involves getting in touch with our formless, expansive, universal spiritual body. We contact and develop awareness of this primarily through meditation practices that still and focus our consciousness.

4. Awareness of Spirit – We can develop an awareness of spirit in many ways, but here are three, based around a way of relating to spirit in first, second and third person:

  • Spirit as I (first person) – Developing awareness of the spirit that lives within you (Spirit as “I”) through stillness meditation
  • Spirit as “ Thou” or “you” (second person) – Developing awareness of spirit as something or someone that we pray to for help, guidance, inner healing and communion
  • Spirit as “It” – Developing a sense of wonder and mysticism in our contemplation of the structure and beauty of the Universe. For example when we stand in awae of a beautiful sunset, or a starry sky.

Four Minute Meditation on these four aspects of integral awareness

So, I realize that the above may all seem  bit abstract, so here is a very simple, practical way of starting to experience them all within a short four minute meditation, I think even if you read through it now, slowly and mindfully you will start to get a feel for it:

Minute 1 – Working with your shadow:

Sit quietly and follow your breathing. As you do so, be aware of the feelings and images arising inside your mind. Without either pushing them away or getting totally absorbed by them, be aware of any fears and anxieties that may be running beneath the surface of your awareness. Sit with them.

Minute 2 – Working with the perspectives in your mind:

Continuing to use your breathing as an anchor for your awareness, bring to mind a situation that you are experiencing in your life right now. Within the space of one minute, try and consider it from as many perspectives as you can. See your own personal perspective. Try to see and understand the perspective of another who is participating in the action. What would someone who has no involvement in the situation think? What is the big picture? How would an enlightened being view the situation? What is the significance of it likely to be looking back in a year, 2 years, 10 years?

Minute 3 – Working with your body:

For the third minute, try and focus on relaxing physical tension in your body. Then try and sense or feel the subtle currents of energy flowing through your subtle body. Somewhere within the centre of your torso there is a point of stillness, can you find it?

Minute 4 – Working with Spirit:

For the final minute simply try and let your mind be a still and tranquil as you can, use the breathing if you feel you need a point of physical focus, but otherwise go as deep within the core of your being as you can.

End with a prayer that the energies of your meditation may be a cause for the happiness and wellbeing of all creatures.

Thanks for reading!

Yours in the spirit of integrated awareness,

Toby

PS: Final reminder regarding new meditation classes starting this Tuesday 15th March on “Finding Calmness, Order and Purpose in the Complexity of Modern Life; Meditations for Developing a Fully Integral Awareness” I’m quite excited about it. Do feel free to click on the link for details, if you are not in Singapore but are interested in it, the course will be available as MP3 recordings, so just let me know if you would like copies!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Awareness and insight Concentration Meditation techniques Presence and being present

The Importance of Your Memory as an Object of Meditation

Hi Everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading,

Yours in the spirit of the journey, 

Toby

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

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

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

Categories
Concentration Meditation techniques Motivation and scope Presence and being present

Two things that you need to do before you sit down and start to meditate

Firstly, before you do the two things, you need to actually set aside the time to meditate, and, when the appointed time comes you need to sit yourself down and get on with it!

There seems to be a never ending stream of excuses that our distracted mind uses to avoid the things that will make us most happy, like meditation, so take a NO EXCUSES APPROACH!

Having done this and sat down, here is what you need to do:

1)      Create a safe space – Decide that for the next 5, 10, 15 minutes, or however long you have set aside, you are in a safe space where you can relax. Draw the boundary around your meditation time. After you arise from meditation, the world may indeed come to an end, or your worst fears may be realized. Alternatively, when you get up from meditation you may win the lottery, or get asked for a date by George Cluny, Yelena Isinbeyeva (or insert God/Goddess of choice). The point is that for the time you have allocated for your meditation is down time, relaxation time, YOUR time, time to be present with yourself and not worry about the past or future.

2)      Make a strong decision to focus! – Beyond relaxation, meditation is also about building the strength and focus of your mind. It is like inner weight training or fitness training where your mind is building muscle and stamina. If you start your meditation wishy-washy, then you are probably going to continue that way, so it is really important to get focused and stay focused during the short period of time you have set aside for your meditation practice.

Two life skills that you will develop from this:

If you practice like this at the beginning of your meditations you will learn

1)      That it is possible to create a “safe space” at many times in your day, not just when you are meditating

2)      How to FOCUS. Now, there are many more things that could be said about focus, but for now let’s just reflect on the fact that ALL SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE, IN WHATEVER DISCIPLINE KNOW HOW TO FOCUS!

That last sentence is a good object of meditation in itself…

Yours in the spirit of relaxed focus,

Toby

PS: For those of you in Singapore, this coming Tuesday 21st December there will be a special Winter Solstice meditation at Sanctuary on the Hill with myself. All proceeds will be going to the River Kids Project. See you there!

Categories
Inner vision Meditation techniques Presence and being present Primal Spirituality

Walking meditation with the primal ancestors

This is a simple meditation form that can be done as a walking meditation or a sitting form. I am going to explain it here as a walking meditation. It is a creative meditation where the imagination plays a large role in the experience. However by engaging our imagination we connect ourselves to the spiritual energies of the Planetary Being and of our own common and individual ancestral heritage, and this can be a powerful experience.

One of the things that I think we have forgotten in our contemporary day and age is a feeling of connection and participation in some of the fundamental processes of life. By this I mean simple things like:

  • When you walk you are walking on the surface of a planet that is awe inspiring and in many senses alive and responsive to us
  • Above us is a beautiful and wondrous sky with stars
  • Time moves in cycles, daily, monthly, yearly. We can experience this living process just by lifting our head and looking around
  • We are a part of something much bigger than ourselves

To our ancestors living in earlier ages, these simple and awe inspiring things would have been obvious, as they tended to live in immediate proximity to nature and were more obviously vulnerable to it and reliant upon it. In reality we are no less so I think, but this is in many ways hidden from our view these days.

In this meditation we imagine ourselves to be one of the first ancestors of our human family, and imagine what it is like to walk as they did and experience the Earth as they did. The purpose is to re-awaken a sense of wonder, connection and participation to the earth and the universe as a living thing, something naturally divine.

Walking with and as the primal ancestors

–          Find a pleasant natural environment to walk in. In time you can learnt to do this in the midst of a city, but initially it is helpful to find a peaceful place with plenty of greenery and relative quiet. If you can walk barefoot this is preferable

–          Spend a little while simply breathing and centring yourself in the present moment, attune yourself to your environment.

–          In your mind allow yourself to go back in time as far as you can to the times of your oldest, most primal relatives in distant earlier ages of the Earth. Intuitively see one of these ancestors in front of you or beside you. Get a sense of their clothing (or lack of it) their aspect, their manner, their energy. Feel your minds and hearts establishing an energetic link.

–          Walking with your primal ancestor: Walk through your environment with them walking next to you (perhaps you are holding hands). As you walk try and enter into their experience of walking on the earth, their natural awareness and reverence for nature and the Planetary being. Try and feel into their natural sense of timelessness, their understanding of the seasons, of the elements.

–           Walking as your primal ancestor: Once you have done this a few times you can try walking AS your primal ancestor, that is to say you see yourself in their body, see the world through their eyes, and think with their thoughts as you walk.

–          You may find that each time you do the meditation you meet the same ancestor, or you may find that they change periodically. Trust your intuitive imagination here!

Click here to find out about upcoming classes by Toby on the Six stages of Love.

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

Categories
Awareness and insight Meditation techniques Presence and being present

The healing power of awareness; the topography of insight meditation

 

Next Tuesday 29th June I will be beginning a new series of classes entitled “Insight, awareness and the awakening of our spiritual vision” , so I wanted to spend a little time in this week’s blog post reflecting upon some of the subjects that we will be tackling in these classes.

I want to begin this article by paraphrasing Roger Walsh in a conversation that he had with Ken Wilber. Basically he said that one of the amazing things about our minds is that, if we let it, our mind has this incredible power to self-heal, self-actualize (that is start to move naturally toward an enlightened state), and self-transcend (that is to move naturally toward the deeper/subtler level of consciousness immediately beyond its present state of growth) itself, without our having to do anything too much other than allow it.

What Roger is basically saying here is that, if you regularly cultivate states of relaxed and lucid awareness in your day to day routine, then the innate power of this relaxed and lucid awareness will have a powerful healing effect upon your mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. The problem for so many of us is that we perceive our relationship to our mind as a perpetual battle, where the main object that seems to be standing in the way of our inner growth is the mind itself!

One of the principle forms of meditation that we can use in order to start making friends with our mind, and begin to access and experience it’s amazing powers of self-healing is insight meditation. The main activity of the mind in insight meditation is simply to observe the different levels of our awareness without getting in the way. Because of this insight meditation is sometimes called “choice-less awareness” whatever comes up, we just watch, don’t interfere.

There are four basic levels of awareness that insight meditation helps us to cultivate awareness of; gross, subtle, very subtle and non-dual. We will be looking at these in depth in the classes, but what I want to do below is to outline them and then outline a simple meditation form that we can do on each of these four levels. This way even if you are not able to attend the classes (or listen to them as a recording), you can still get a basic practical flavour of what insight meditation involves.

A basic map or topography of insight meditation awareness:

Level 1: Gross awareness

This level is basically our awareness of our environment, senses and physical body.

Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:

Be aware of everything that you hear for a period of time. Note all the different layers of sound that your ear awareness is picking up. As I am sitting now I can hear some distant cars, the fan on the table next to me, the typing as my fingers work on the type-pad, I can hear the sound of my breathing in my inner ears. Just sit back, relax and enjoy the layers of sound flowing into your moment to moment awareness.

Level 2: Subtle awareness

This level basically observes the flow of thoughts, feeling and images that flow through our mind on a moment to moment basis. On this level there is a range of subtlety, from the everyday thoughts of our waking mind to the more subtle experiences of the dream state and of day dreaming. Basically this is the realm of inner form, or thought-form.

Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:   

Simply sit down and observe the flow of thoughts, feelings and images the flows through your awareness. Imagine that you are like a person sitting by the side of the river of your mind, observing the constant ebb and flow of mental images and feelings that passes by you.

Level 3: Very subtle awareness

This level observes the formless inner space of our very subtle consciousness that is causal to, and lies behind our mental consciousness and sensory consciousness. If you imagine your thoughts and feelings are like clouds, and your very subtle formless conscious is like the sky that contains those clouds.

Sample insight meditation exercise for this level:

Continuing to watch your mind, become aware of the spaces between your thoughts. Allow your awareness to sink deeper and deeper into these spaces, as if you were entering into a clear open sky-like space. Let the cloud-like forms of your thoughts and feelings gently dissolve away into the sky like space of pure, formless awareness.

Level 4: Non-dual awareness

This levels is where the sense of yourself as an observer of the formless space of your consciousness (as in level 3 above) dissolves away, and you are left with a unified (non-dual) experience of primal awareness, just one single experience in the mind with no conceptual ideas of duality at all.

The way to approach this level of practice is through the level 3 exercise. The more you practice this gradually you will feel yourself moving toward this non-dual state.

So, my basic point in this article is that if you allow your mind to consciously relax on a regular basis, then you are giving yourself a chance to activate its natural self healing awareness. If you want a particular in-depth method to develop your minds self-healing mechanism, then insight meditation offers one such tool.

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