In the Tuesday meditation classes that I facilitate we have just finished a set of 3 classes on compassion and ethical intelligence, so over the next few days I am going to post four of the meditation techniques that we have been using that can be done in 30 seconds, as a way of pepping up our compassionate heart.
Technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model.
To do this exercise first you have to think of someone whom for you is a role model in terms of their compassionate heart and compassionate action. This could be a figure of spiritual inspiration, such as Quan Yin or the Buddha, it could be a figure from history such as Ghandi or Mother Theresa, of it could be someone from your own circle of friends and family who for you embodies these qualities. The main thing is that they should, for you embody the energies of compassion and ethics, and when you think of them you can feel their energy inspiring and strengthening your own compassionate and ethical impulses.
Once you have selected the figure that you wish to work with here is what you do:
- Mentally visualize them sitting next to you or in front of you.
- Feel their compassionate energy radiating from their heart
- As you breathe in, feel yourself connecting to their compassionate heart and ethical courage and breathing it into your own heart space.
- As you breathe out, feel the energy that you have taken in expanding out from your heart, filling your body and energy field.
- Breathe in this way for 30 seconds, then relax and finish.
Try doing this three times a day for a week, you can do it anywhere any time. Physically we may find ourselves alone, but mentally and spiritually there are always sources of inspiration available to us, anywhere, anytime. I find it useful to do when I hear of bad news or disasters around the world, it helps keep my mind steady and courageous.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Fundamental Zen sitting meditation forms
One of the most basic and fundamental meditation practises in the Zen tradition, especially for those in the Soto Zen school is called “shikantaza”, or “just sitting”, and it is this meditation form that I want to outline in this article, as it forms the basis of the meditations that we have done and will continue to do in the Zen in the Heart of the City” retreats at the Sanctuary on the Hill.
So, the idea with shikantaza or just sitting meditation is that through just sitting you will start to develop and refine your awareness. When you sit down quietly and still your mind a little, you discover that there are basically five main aspects of your awareness. These are:
1) Awareness of your environment and senses, meaning the surroundings around where you are sitting, and the external sights, sounds and sensations that you can perceive with your five senses.
2) Awareness of your body and breathing, or your basic physical body awareness.
3) Awareness of the stream of thoughts, images and feelings within your mind
4) Awareness of the natural inner space and silence of your consciousness that surrounds and contextualizes the thoughts and feelings. To use an analogy, if you think of your thoughts and feelings as being like clouds, the space and silence in your mind is like the sky itself.
5) Awareness of awareness itself, that is to say the ever present witnessing aspect of our awareness that is present and observes the objects present in levels 1-4. To continue the analogy, if your thoughts are like clouds, and the formless space of your consciousness is like sky, then your witnessing awareness is like the sun shining its light rays into the sky of your mind. This awareness is sometimes called our natural “Buddha nature” in Buddhism. Other traditions call it other things, eg: the Hindus refer to it as Atma the Eternal Self, or the causal self. Western spiritualities might refer to it as the light of the soul, or the inner light of God that lies within the heart of all.
So, when you just sit, you can choose to focus on any or all of the above and take them as your object of meditation and observation. Different people will find that different aspects of their awareness feel more natural to focus on than others. For example some people find focusing on the body and breathing to be most effective. For others focusing on the sky like nature of the mind feels most appropriate and enjoyable.
A basic Zen meditation form
I personally recommend that when you are doing this initially, you spend a few minutes focusing on each different level of awareness in turn. For example if you are doing a 20 minute meditation, then you could first spend two minutes on each of the levels 1-5 above, from environmental awareness to awareness of awareness. That would take you about 10 minutes. Then you could spend the remaining 10 minutes of your meditation focusing on the aspects of awareness that you personally find most comfortable and helpful for meditation.
This meditation form enables you to gain basic familiarity with all five basic awareness’s, whilst also giving time for you to focus on your own personal preferences.
A more advanced form
Once you have some familiarity with the basic form above, you can then practice combining two or three different levels of awareness into a single awareness, for example:
- As you are aware of your body and your breathing (level 2), you can combine that awareness with a sense of the inner sky like space of your mind (level 4).
- As you are aware of the cloud like thoughts and feelings in your mind (level 3), you can be aware of the witnessing self that is observing them (level 5).
This can be a fun stage, whilst at the same time it helps you to develop your skill and dexterity in terms of leaning to be mindful of all the different facets of your present moment awareness simultaneously.
Deep meditation
Once you are familiar with all the different levels of awareness through the above two practices, then you should gradually try and spend more and more time sitting with awareness of just levels 4 and 5, moving deeper and deeper into the experience of the emptiness or sky like nature of the mind, in combination with awareness of the witness or causal self. These two facets of awareness will feel as if they are merging together into a single experience; the sun like nature of your awareness and the sky like nature of the mind merging and mixing into a blissful single flow of awareness.
Non-duality
Combined practice of deep sitting meditation with mindfulness of the five basic levels of awareness in your day to day life will eventually start to give rise to a sixth level of awareness, that of non-duality. This sixth non-dual level of awareness is where we start to experience the lower five levels of awareness as a single unity, not separate or distinct from each other. The world and our moment to moment experience is seen to be arising from the non-duality of primal spirit, or primal awareness.
Non-dual or primal awareness is an awareness that is ever present within us, but which we usually fail to recognize, you could say that it is the final enlightened goal of any authentic spiritual path. You can read a very good article by Ken Wilber on non-dual spirit HERE, I recommend it, it is one of the best introductions to the subject that I have read.
Anyway, I hope the above article gives some simple and clear pointers for Zen “just sitting” meditation, it is very simple and enjoyable, and its simplicity enables it to be accessible for beginners and at the same time offering ever deepening insights as we continue to practice it.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, Please do not reproduce without pemission.
So, the idea with shikantaza or just sitting meditation is that through just sitting you will start to develop and refine your awareness. When you sit down quietly and still your mind a little, you discover that there are basically five main aspects of your awareness. These are:
1) Awareness of your environment and senses, meaning the surroundings around where you are sitting, and the external sights, sounds and sensations that you can perceive with your five senses.
2) Awareness of your body and breathing, or your basic physical body awareness.
3) Awareness of the stream of thoughts, images and feelings within your mind
4) Awareness of the natural inner space and silence of your consciousness that surrounds and contextualizes the thoughts and feelings. To use an analogy, if you think of your thoughts and feelings as being like clouds, the space and silence in your mind is like the sky itself.
5) Awareness of awareness itself, that is to say the ever present witnessing aspect of our awareness that is present and observes the objects present in levels 1-4. To continue the analogy, if your thoughts are like clouds, and the formless space of your consciousness is like sky, then your witnessing awareness is like the sun shining its light rays into the sky of your mind. This awareness is sometimes called our natural “Buddha nature” in Buddhism. Other traditions call it other things, eg: the Hindus refer to it as Atma the Eternal Self, or the causal self. Western spiritualities might refer to it as the light of the soul, or the inner light of God that lies within the heart of all.
So, when you just sit, you can choose to focus on any or all of the above and take them as your object of meditation and observation. Different people will find that different aspects of their awareness feel more natural to focus on than others. For example some people find focusing on the body and breathing to be most effective. For others focusing on the sky like nature of the mind feels most appropriate and enjoyable.
A basic Zen meditation form
I personally recommend that when you are doing this initially, you spend a few minutes focusing on each different level of awareness in turn. For example if you are doing a 20 minute meditation, then you could first spend two minutes on each of the levels 1-5 above, from environmental awareness to awareness of awareness. That would take you about 10 minutes. Then you could spend the remaining 10 minutes of your meditation focusing on the aspects of awareness that you personally find most comfortable and helpful for meditation.
This meditation form enables you to gain basic familiarity with all five basic awareness’s, whilst also giving time for you to focus on your own personal preferences.
A more advanced form
Once you have some familiarity with the basic form above, you can then practice combining two or three different levels of awareness into a single awareness, for example:
- As you are aware of your body and your breathing (level 2), you can combine that awareness with a sense of the inner sky like space of your mind (level 4).
- As you are aware of the cloud like thoughts and feelings in your mind (level 3), you can be aware of the witnessing self that is observing them (level 5).
This can be a fun stage, whilst at the same time it helps you to develop your skill and dexterity in terms of leaning to be mindful of all the different facets of your present moment awareness simultaneously.
Deep meditation
Once you are familiar with all the different levels of awareness through the above two practices, then you should gradually try and spend more and more time sitting with awareness of just levels 4 and 5, moving deeper and deeper into the experience of the emptiness or sky like nature of the mind, in combination with awareness of the witness or causal self. These two facets of awareness will feel as if they are merging together into a single experience; the sun like nature of your awareness and the sky like nature of the mind merging and mixing into a blissful single flow of awareness.
Non-duality
Combined practice of deep sitting meditation with mindfulness of the five basic levels of awareness in your day to day life will eventually start to give rise to a sixth level of awareness, that of non-duality. This sixth non-dual level of awareness is where we start to experience the lower five levels of awareness as a single unity, not separate or distinct from each other. The world and our moment to moment experience is seen to be arising from the non-duality of primal spirit, or primal awareness.
Non-dual or primal awareness is an awareness that is ever present within us, but which we usually fail to recognize, you could say that it is the final enlightened goal of any authentic spiritual path. You can read a very good article by Ken Wilber on non-dual spirit HERE, I recommend it, it is one of the best introductions to the subject that I have read.
Anyway, I hope the above article gives some simple and clear pointers for Zen “just sitting” meditation, it is very simple and enjoyable, and its simplicity enables it to be accessible for beginners and at the same time offering ever deepening insights as we continue to practice it.
© Toby Ouvry 2010, Please do not reproduce without pemission.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Our compassion is measured by what we offer to those who are in our power
I have recently been facilitating a series of meditation classes on ethical intelligence, and I read this quote from Milan Kundera (from the book "The unbearable likeness of being") which I think is very powerful:
"True human goodness in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Humanities true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude to those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humanity has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."
Ethical intelligence entails, amongst other things, recognizing the relationship between inner and outer peace in ourself and the world, and the actions that we engage in. The more deeply you look into this, the more inevitable it becomes that you start bumping up against the horrible way we use animals and exploit them for our food. You can find some very uncomfortable but meaningful information abut this on my wife's "Food or Junk?" blog.
The more I sensitize my self to this area, the more I also include plants and trees in this equation as well, my experience of them is that of sentient beings with souls, who are beyond the crude "material commodity" lens that humans so habitually view them from. For example, I firmly believe that it is an abusive practice to cut flowers. Why? because they are the sex organs of the plants. Can you imagine if plants were the ones who were all powerful on this planet, and they developed a taste for giving human genitalia to each other in order to beautify their houses and to console each other when members of their family died? How would we feel about that as a race of ensouled, pain-feeling living beings?
Normally when we think about having to give up meat (or cut flowers for that matter), we flinch at the idea of giving up something that is pleasurable to us. However, if we truly have compassion for the other living creatures (animal, plant or otherwise) and give up abusive practises to them, there is a whole world of wonder and blessedness that starts to open up to us. For example about the same time as I made a point of not investing in cut flowers, I started having psychic contact with the spirits of plants and flowers (and the beings who overlight the growth of plants and flowers). I count these inner contacts and experiences as some of the most beautiful and wonderful experiences that I have had. I have also found the same to be true of animals. When I really started making a conscious compassionate connection to animals, I started to have psychic contacts with all sorts of different species of animals, offering wonderful companionship and perspectives to me.
(By psychic experience I mean an inner experience, for example sitting in meditation and being actively contacted by the spirit of a plant or an animal)
So, the thing I am pointing out here is that, every abusive and non-compassionate act that we cease and desist from always opens up vistas of wonderful and beautiful experiences that we could not have dreamed were possible before. A choice to act upon our ethical intelligence always results in a huge enrichment of our personal soul experience.
© Text Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.
"True human goodness in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Humanities true moral test, its fundamental test, consists of its attitude to those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect humanity has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it."
Ethical intelligence entails, amongst other things, recognizing the relationship between inner and outer peace in ourself and the world, and the actions that we engage in. The more deeply you look into this, the more inevitable it becomes that you start bumping up against the horrible way we use animals and exploit them for our food. You can find some very uncomfortable but meaningful information abut this on my wife's "Food or Junk?" blog.
The more I sensitize my self to this area, the more I also include plants and trees in this equation as well, my experience of them is that of sentient beings with souls, who are beyond the crude "material commodity" lens that humans so habitually view them from. For example, I firmly believe that it is an abusive practice to cut flowers. Why? because they are the sex organs of the plants. Can you imagine if plants were the ones who were all powerful on this planet, and they developed a taste for giving human genitalia to each other in order to beautify their houses and to console each other when members of their family died? How would we feel about that as a race of ensouled, pain-feeling living beings?
Normally when we think about having to give up meat (or cut flowers for that matter), we flinch at the idea of giving up something that is pleasurable to us. However, if we truly have compassion for the other living creatures (animal, plant or otherwise) and give up abusive practises to them, there is a whole world of wonder and blessedness that starts to open up to us. For example about the same time as I made a point of not investing in cut flowers, I started having psychic contact with the spirits of plants and flowers (and the beings who overlight the growth of plants and flowers). I count these inner contacts and experiences as some of the most beautiful and wonderful experiences that I have had. I have also found the same to be true of animals. When I really started making a conscious compassionate connection to animals, I started to have psychic contacts with all sorts of different species of animals, offering wonderful companionship and perspectives to me.
(By psychic experience I mean an inner experience, for example sitting in meditation and being actively contacted by the spirit of a plant or an animal)
So, the thing I am pointing out here is that, every abusive and non-compassionate act that we cease and desist from always opens up vistas of wonderful and beautiful experiences that we could not have dreamed were possible before. A choice to act upon our ethical intelligence always results in a huge enrichment of our personal soul experience.
© Text Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Meditation as natural goodness and the meditation on equalizing self and others
In my previous article on “Does doing good make you happier?” I draw a distinction between what I called “willed goodness” and “natural goodness”. In this article I want to look a little bit at how meditation is naturally good or virtuous. If we are defining virtue or goodness as an activity, we could say that it is any activity that leads us to an experience of happiness and peace. Meditation is a naturally good or virtuous activity because:
1) When we engage in meditation we make more space in our mind. With more space in our mind, we naturally develop a connection, conscious or otherwise with the deeper soul or spiritual levels of who we are. So in this sense we can say that meditation is naturally good because it acts like a window to a deeper, more profound and peaceful awareness of who we truly are.
2) When we make more space in our mind, we naturally become aware of and sensitive to how our actions of body speech and mind affect ourself and others. Because of this we will naturally start to modify our behaviour in order to bring it into line with this new found sensitivity.
3) Because we have more space in our mind we also have more room for concern and consideration for others. In a perpetually busy mind there is never any room for the ‘I’’s of others, because our whole moment to moment experience is taken up with busy thoughts about ourself, and with emotions relating to these thoughts. With a perpetually busy mind it is very difficult to be consistently unselfish even if we want to be, because the dynamic of our mind is such that egoic self concern is always the aspect of our consciousness that is making the most noise. When we meditate, there are fewer thoughts, more space, and so it is literally easier for us to take in the perspectives of others and to include them in our circle of concern.
So, these are some of the reasons why meditation is naturally and effortlessly a good of virtuous activity. That is not to say that it is always easy and effortless, rather it is saying that the process of meditation in itself is naturally good.
The meditation on equalizing self and others.
We can also use specific meditations that include conceptual content in order to help us develop more space in our mind in a way that is complementary to simply calming and reducing the thoughts in our mind. One such technique that I learned during my time in Tibetan Buddhism is called the meditation on equalizing self and others. It is quite simple, and the basic reasoning can be summarized as follows:
“In the same way that I always wish to be happy and free from all forms of suffering, so do all other living beings without exception. Regardless of whether they are large or small, regardless of their level of intelligence, regardless of shape or species, all creatures are all basically the same in this regard. Considering all living beings from this perspective, I can see that we are all fundamentally equal in this basic wish, and because of this I now determine to cherish all living beings equally with myself.”
If we consider the above level of reasoning and see its validity, we can develop a powerful determination to try and cherish others in the same way that we cherish ourself. This determination is a very helpful factor in keeping our own problems in perspective. Because we are aware that everyone, human or animal has similar problems, this prevents our mind from becoming neurotically preoccupied with our own personal problems. We have a bigger, more stable perspective from which to view what is happening to us in our life.
In quiet contemplation we can visualize other people or creatures, and practise including them in our circle of awareness, trying to see things from their point of view, and take their perspectives into account. When we are out and about in our daily life, we can try and be as conscious as possible of the other living beings whom we are sharing our space with (whether it be the other people in the train carriage, or the creatures around us in a forest), and take them into account in any activity that we may engage in.
Simple sitting meditation on equalizing self and others
If you contemplate the points in the above section, you can see quite clearly the validity of making the effort to cherish others equally with yourself. Once you have convinced yourself of the validity of this, you can then just sit quietly and turn your attention to your breathing. As you breathe in you can mentally recite “I will cherish others” and then as you breathe out “equally with myself”. Use the breathing in this way to consolidate your determination. As you use the breathing to calm your mind, you are also affirming the determination to cherish others equally with yourself, and allowing it to lodge deeply in your subconscious mind.
Do this for as long as you wish or for as long as feels comfortable before relaxing and brining the meditation to a close.
Read article by Toby on natural intelligence and natural dignity on the Mentalfitnessnow.com site
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please to not reproduce without permission.
1) When we engage in meditation we make more space in our mind. With more space in our mind, we naturally develop a connection, conscious or otherwise with the deeper soul or spiritual levels of who we are. So in this sense we can say that meditation is naturally good because it acts like a window to a deeper, more profound and peaceful awareness of who we truly are.
2) When we make more space in our mind, we naturally become aware of and sensitive to how our actions of body speech and mind affect ourself and others. Because of this we will naturally start to modify our behaviour in order to bring it into line with this new found sensitivity.
3) Because we have more space in our mind we also have more room for concern and consideration for others. In a perpetually busy mind there is never any room for the ‘I’’s of others, because our whole moment to moment experience is taken up with busy thoughts about ourself, and with emotions relating to these thoughts. With a perpetually busy mind it is very difficult to be consistently unselfish even if we want to be, because the dynamic of our mind is such that egoic self concern is always the aspect of our consciousness that is making the most noise. When we meditate, there are fewer thoughts, more space, and so it is literally easier for us to take in the perspectives of others and to include them in our circle of concern.
So, these are some of the reasons why meditation is naturally and effortlessly a good of virtuous activity. That is not to say that it is always easy and effortless, rather it is saying that the process of meditation in itself is naturally good.
The meditation on equalizing self and others.
We can also use specific meditations that include conceptual content in order to help us develop more space in our mind in a way that is complementary to simply calming and reducing the thoughts in our mind. One such technique that I learned during my time in Tibetan Buddhism is called the meditation on equalizing self and others. It is quite simple, and the basic reasoning can be summarized as follows:
“In the same way that I always wish to be happy and free from all forms of suffering, so do all other living beings without exception. Regardless of whether they are large or small, regardless of their level of intelligence, regardless of shape or species, all creatures are all basically the same in this regard. Considering all living beings from this perspective, I can see that we are all fundamentally equal in this basic wish, and because of this I now determine to cherish all living beings equally with myself.”
If we consider the above level of reasoning and see its validity, we can develop a powerful determination to try and cherish others in the same way that we cherish ourself. This determination is a very helpful factor in keeping our own problems in perspective. Because we are aware that everyone, human or animal has similar problems, this prevents our mind from becoming neurotically preoccupied with our own personal problems. We have a bigger, more stable perspective from which to view what is happening to us in our life.
In quiet contemplation we can visualize other people or creatures, and practise including them in our circle of awareness, trying to see things from their point of view, and take their perspectives into account. When we are out and about in our daily life, we can try and be as conscious as possible of the other living beings whom we are sharing our space with (whether it be the other people in the train carriage, or the creatures around us in a forest), and take them into account in any activity that we may engage in.
Simple sitting meditation on equalizing self and others
If you contemplate the points in the above section, you can see quite clearly the validity of making the effort to cherish others equally with yourself. Once you have convinced yourself of the validity of this, you can then just sit quietly and turn your attention to your breathing. As you breathe in you can mentally recite “I will cherish others” and then as you breathe out “equally with myself”. Use the breathing in this way to consolidate your determination. As you use the breathing to calm your mind, you are also affirming the determination to cherish others equally with yourself, and allowing it to lodge deeply in your subconscious mind.
Do this for as long as you wish or for as long as feels comfortable before relaxing and brining the meditation to a close.
Read article by Toby on natural intelligence and natural dignity on the Mentalfitnessnow.com site
© Toby Ouvry 2010, please to not reproduce without permission.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Does doing good make you happier?
I will be starting a series of meditation classes on “how to develop ethical intelligence” tomorrow, so with this in mind I thought I would have a little bit of a look at the basic question “does doing good make you happier?” And a second follow up question, “if it does make you happier, why do we find it so tough to do, and so easy to do the opposite?” Then I want to finish off with a meditation exercise where we are specifically developing an appreciation of our own good actions, and seeing just how happy they can indeed make us.
So, does doing good make you happier?
On a basic level, yes it does, when you can combine TWO different types of good actions into your life in a balanced and harmonious way. I am going to call these two types of good actions “naturally good actions” and “willed good actions”.
Naturally good actions:
Naturally good actions are actions that are more about cultivating relaxed forms of holistic awareness that, when we engage in them help us to connect to conditions of healing, regeneration and wonder within ourselves. They are not “willed” dynamic actions, but more about opening to what is already there and allowing ourselves to sink into the experience. Some examples of naturally good actions might be:
- Creating spaces in our day for our mind to naturally unwind and unclutter, so that we can connect to the natural wholeness and dignity of our soul and inner being
- Connecting to the natural rhythms of nature and landscape, and allowing these natural planetary rhythms to bring our own individual rhythm back into balance
- Deliberately getting in touch with deeper conditions of “feeling-ness” within our mind and body, and making sure that we do not allow our mind and daily actions to become feelingless and mechanical.
Naturally good actions are an essential part of leaning to do good and enjoy it. They are not about doing anything special, just creating spaces in our everyday life to open to what is there and improve our qualitative experience of it.
Willed good actions:
Willed good actions are more dynamic forms of virtue where we are actively taking a step to do something that we consider to be positive for ourself or for the sake of another, amongst infinite examples here are a few
- The giving of time and money to good causes
- Helping others to develop their skills in an area where we have competence
- Refraining from food from unethical sources, or where animals have had to die for our pleasure
- Reducing our energy consumption
- Actively refraining from our own negative habitual actions such as bitching about others behind their back
So, I think we are all familiar with the different types of willed good actions on a basic level.
Why do we find it so difficult to do good, and so easy to do the opposite?
There are many answers to this, but my answer here is that one main reason why we find it so difficult to do good is that our understanding of good actions is very biased toward “willed” good actions that I mentioned above, and we have not developed our experience of “naturally” good actions substantially enough. If we see good actions as something that we SHOULD do, and continually will ourselves to do those good actions, we will lose sight of the NATURAL PLEASURE of doing good. Doing good starts to feel like an obligation, and of course when our ego feels like we are obliged to do something, then it rebels, it looks for reasons to sabotage our perceived obligations.
So, my proposed solution here is that we spend more time getting in touch with the “naturally” good actions that I outline above. Engaging in these activities each day will help us to keep in touch with the natural feel good factor of goodness, and prevent us from feeling as if doing good is an obligation. Naturally good actions are those that naturally help us to rest, regenerate and revive depth and sensitivity of feeling, and that heal us of the naturally fractious and fragmented states of consciousness that we find ourselves in for so much of our everyday life.
Meditation for combining the willed and natural good within us.
What I am going to do now is outline a meditative exercise that will help us to combine both natural good and willed good into a single experience. In this exercise we look at willed good actions that we have done in the past or present, and rejoice in them, allowing our contemplation of them to produce feelings of natural goodness and depth within our being. It is very simple and easy to do, and you can apply it to your own experiences with no trouble:
Firstly sit down in a comfortable posture with a relatively straight back, spend a little time relaxing your body and breathing, setting aside your daily tasks just for a short time.
Now bring to mind two or three willed good actions that you have done recently, here are my three that I am thinking of as I write:
- Renewal of my membership to treesforlife.co.uk , a group that is regenerating the wild rainforest in the west coast of Scotland
- Time spent last night helping a friend talk through an issue on the phone
- The fact that our family now uses 100% green washing powder for clothes and dishwashing liquid
Bring these to mind (write them down if you like), and just contemplate them and breathe with them for a while. In my case using the above examples, I think about how in some small way I am helping regenerate forest in Scotland, how I have helped a friend clarify their issues, how the water that goes into the drain from our house has far, far fewer damaging chemicals.
As I contemplate like this there is a NATURAL feel good factor that starts to arise, I can feel my body relax, my face begins to smile gently, it feels good to have done good.
Once you have that good FEELING in your heart, mind and body from having contemplated what you have done, you can now stop contemplating the specific actions that you have done, and instead just breathe the feeling that you now have in my mind and body in and out. Allow that good feeling to move as deep as possible into your consciousness and into your cellular structure. It is almost like you are soaking in your good feeling like soaking in a bath. Stay with this feeling, (using the breathing as a focus point to orientate you concentration) for as long as you like, then when you are ready relax and move back to your daily awareness.
So, my final comment here is that doing good does make us happy, but we have to learn to do good in the right way, out of a conscious volitional choice, not out of obligation!
© Text Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.
So, does doing good make you happier?
On a basic level, yes it does, when you can combine TWO different types of good actions into your life in a balanced and harmonious way. I am going to call these two types of good actions “naturally good actions” and “willed good actions”.
Naturally good actions:
Naturally good actions are actions that are more about cultivating relaxed forms of holistic awareness that, when we engage in them help us to connect to conditions of healing, regeneration and wonder within ourselves. They are not “willed” dynamic actions, but more about opening to what is already there and allowing ourselves to sink into the experience. Some examples of naturally good actions might be:
- Creating spaces in our day for our mind to naturally unwind and unclutter, so that we can connect to the natural wholeness and dignity of our soul and inner being
- Connecting to the natural rhythms of nature and landscape, and allowing these natural planetary rhythms to bring our own individual rhythm back into balance
- Deliberately getting in touch with deeper conditions of “feeling-ness” within our mind and body, and making sure that we do not allow our mind and daily actions to become feelingless and mechanical.
Naturally good actions are an essential part of leaning to do good and enjoy it. They are not about doing anything special, just creating spaces in our everyday life to open to what is there and improve our qualitative experience of it.
Willed good actions:
Willed good actions are more dynamic forms of virtue where we are actively taking a step to do something that we consider to be positive for ourself or for the sake of another, amongst infinite examples here are a few
- The giving of time and money to good causes
- Helping others to develop their skills in an area where we have competence
- Refraining from food from unethical sources, or where animals have had to die for our pleasure
- Reducing our energy consumption
- Actively refraining from our own negative habitual actions such as bitching about others behind their back
So, I think we are all familiar with the different types of willed good actions on a basic level.
Why do we find it so difficult to do good, and so easy to do the opposite?
There are many answers to this, but my answer here is that one main reason why we find it so difficult to do good is that our understanding of good actions is very biased toward “willed” good actions that I mentioned above, and we have not developed our experience of “naturally” good actions substantially enough. If we see good actions as something that we SHOULD do, and continually will ourselves to do those good actions, we will lose sight of the NATURAL PLEASURE of doing good. Doing good starts to feel like an obligation, and of course when our ego feels like we are obliged to do something, then it rebels, it looks for reasons to sabotage our perceived obligations.
So, my proposed solution here is that we spend more time getting in touch with the “naturally” good actions that I outline above. Engaging in these activities each day will help us to keep in touch with the natural feel good factor of goodness, and prevent us from feeling as if doing good is an obligation. Naturally good actions are those that naturally help us to rest, regenerate and revive depth and sensitivity of feeling, and that heal us of the naturally fractious and fragmented states of consciousness that we find ourselves in for so much of our everyday life.
Meditation for combining the willed and natural good within us.
What I am going to do now is outline a meditative exercise that will help us to combine both natural good and willed good into a single experience. In this exercise we look at willed good actions that we have done in the past or present, and rejoice in them, allowing our contemplation of them to produce feelings of natural goodness and depth within our being. It is very simple and easy to do, and you can apply it to your own experiences with no trouble:
Firstly sit down in a comfortable posture with a relatively straight back, spend a little time relaxing your body and breathing, setting aside your daily tasks just for a short time.
Now bring to mind two or three willed good actions that you have done recently, here are my three that I am thinking of as I write:
- Renewal of my membership to treesforlife.co.uk , a group that is regenerating the wild rainforest in the west coast of Scotland
- Time spent last night helping a friend talk through an issue on the phone
- The fact that our family now uses 100% green washing powder for clothes and dishwashing liquid
Bring these to mind (write them down if you like), and just contemplate them and breathe with them for a while. In my case using the above examples, I think about how in some small way I am helping regenerate forest in Scotland, how I have helped a friend clarify their issues, how the water that goes into the drain from our house has far, far fewer damaging chemicals.
As I contemplate like this there is a NATURAL feel good factor that starts to arise, I can feel my body relax, my face begins to smile gently, it feels good to have done good.
Once you have that good FEELING in your heart, mind and body from having contemplated what you have done, you can now stop contemplating the specific actions that you have done, and instead just breathe the feeling that you now have in my mind and body in and out. Allow that good feeling to move as deep as possible into your consciousness and into your cellular structure. It is almost like you are soaking in your good feeling like soaking in a bath. Stay with this feeling, (using the breathing as a focus point to orientate you concentration) for as long as you like, then when you are ready relax and move back to your daily awareness.
So, my final comment here is that doing good does make us happy, but we have to learn to do good in the right way, out of a conscious volitional choice, not out of obligation!
© Text Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Meditation and reflection on the four levels of love.
This article is intended to help us identify four different levels of love, and to help us see where these different levels fit into our overall process of integrated mastery. For the purposes of this article, we are going to be defining love as simply the creative force or impulse that lies behind and within our lives, and that drives us forwards in our journey, whether it be on a biological, psychological or spiritual level.
First level: biological or procreative love.
No need to say too much here, the biological impulse toward mating, procreation and reproduction shared by humans, animals and plants alike, in its many varied formats!
Second level: Emotional and or psychological love.
This is the love that is shared as a process of daily give and take between individuals and groups of individuals. In its most complex forms it is found in human love, but it is also shared to a greater or lesser degree in the more complex and intelligent members of the animal kingdom.
Third level: Soul level love.
Here love is expressed benevolently within an individual as “the attitude of the soul toward life”. Someone who has a stable realization of this form of love has his or her creative energies firmly and constantly focused on nurturing and service towards the greater and higher goals of any individual or group that s/he has a relationship with. Ideally this is the form of love that we are trying to establish as the basic context for our daily actions and experiences in life. With our inner being centred around soul level love, any act of biological or emotional love that we engage in will be guided by the benevolent perspectives of the soul.
Fourth level: Universal love
This is the level of love that we contact when we are able to set aside our individual identity, and allow our “small self” to merge with a sense of the Universal Being or Consciousness that lies behind all life forms in existence. Typically this is contacted at first in deep meditational states, but over time we can stabilize the experience in our consciousness so that it starts to pervade our awareness as we go about our daily actions. This level of love is paradoxical (like all spiritual experiences) in that on one level we could call it “impersonal love” as it dissolves our sense of individuality and does not favour any one person over another. However, when we contact universal love, there is also a sense of finally having come home, and in this sense it is the most personal and intimate of experiences.
Ideally in our own inner growth we are aiming to centre our basic identity at level three, soul level love. With ourself in this position we can then act as mediators of universal love to the lower levels of emotional and biological love.
What follows below is a brief poetic meditation form on these four levels of love that can be used as a way of developing a sense and feeling of how they (the four levels of love) interact with each other. This in turn will enable us to start to orientate our own experience of love toward the soul and spiritual levels.
I would recommend that you simply read through the description below on a contemplative way, allowing yourself to explore the four different levels of love imaginatively. Then once you have done this you can then spend some time in meditation focusing on the parts that move you most. However this can also be done as a more systematic, four stage meditation where you focus for a few minutes on each level, spending equal time on all the levels.
Meditation on the four levels of love.
Seated comfortably, spend a short while simply relaxing your body and mind, and disentangling them from the business of your daily life using breathing meditation or any other form of centring meditation.
Now, from where you are sitting, allow your awareness to expand and spread across the surface of the planet. Sense the biological life around you; human, animal and plant. Sense the power of biological, procreative love within yourself and in nature that sustains physical life forms and causes them to grow and sustain their species.
When you feel ready, turn your attention to the humans in your area. Contemplate the complex patterns of emotional and psychological love that exist within their (and your own) minds and relationships, the continuous give and take, ebb and flow, the pleasure and the pain, the elation and confusion, the power and the vulnerability.
Now see within your mind’s eye sitting next to you there is a being who has realized soul level love ( this could be an actually figure such as the Buddha or a Saint, or an unknown figure that appears intuitively to your consciousness). As you observe her/him you sense a continuous, benevolent flow of positive, loving energy gently pulsing from the core of their being. Anyone whom the energy of this being comes into contact with benefits from exposure to their energy, whether they know it or not. Without trying too hard, this soul realized individual next to us benefits others simply through their loving presence and manner.
After focusing on this person for a while, now imagine yourself AS that person; see yourself as a soul realized being, gently radiating your love to those around you. You are someone for whom love is their basic attitude towards life.
Finally, allow all thoughts, feelings and images in your mind to dissolve into the Universal mind and heart, like a tiny drop of water dissolving into an ocean. As you allow yourself to relax and move deeper into this infinite universal consciousness, feel within it the primal creative impulse of universal love. Feel that you are in a space within which exists all possibilities, all creative potentials. If you like you can combine your breathing with this experience; as you breathe in feel the creative impulse of universal love flowing into your being, and as you breathe out, feel this impulse flowing outward from your being into the hearts of all living beings.
Read Toby’s previous article on “the challenges of meditating on love”.
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