Meditation-Singapore

Toby's meditation articles are moving

2010-06-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

This is the last post that Toby will be writing on the meditation-singapore blog. Toby will, from now on be posting his meditation articles on the new tobyouvry.com meditation blog

If you have already subscribed to receive updates from the meditation-singapore blog, you will continue to be informed of meditation articles by Toby on the new site, THERE IS NO NEED TO SIGN UP AGAIN ON THE NEW SITE.

For those of you who are visiting this site for the first time, you will find plenty of articles to enjoy, but please be aware that Toby's latest material is now being posted on a weekly basis on the above mentioned site.

The healing power of awareness; the topography of insight meditation

2010-06-23T08:34:00.000-07:00

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.

Finding inner space within your mind by focusing on outer spaces

2010-06-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

An ongoing motivation for both beginners starting meditation and those who are more experienced practitioners is simply the need to create and preserve a sense of space within our mind which we can relax into and use to keep the rest of our busy lives in perspective. One technique I use regularly that I find creates a sense of inner space very quickly is to focus on an awareness of the outer spaces that exist in our physical environment. The mind basically becomes like what it focuses upon, so when you focus on an outer physical space, this in turn quite naturally starts to give rise to a sense of an inner space within our mind. Here is one example of a way in which you can do this:

Making your mind BIG
We have been using this technique recently in the class I facilitate. Once you have sat down in a comfortable posture, become aware of the sky and stars up above you and the earth beneath you, allow your awareness to become big and open like the sky above you, and vast solid and stable like the Earth beneath you.
After you have done this, extend your mind horizontally around you, out to the horizon of the land, to the north, east, south and west. Extend your awareness as far out as you can to feel the curve of the Earth’s surface all about you. Now you have a sense of your mind as being BIG, and spacious, taking in the vast physical spaces all around you.
Stay with this feeling for as long as you like, let yourself relax as much as possible into your sense of the big space all around you; above, below, and extending out into the for directions of the horizontal/horizonal plane.
If you do this for a while, you will find quite quickly that a sense of inner space and calm arises within your mind. By focusing on the big space outside, you start to feel the big space inside!

A final point here is that I have found that this meditation helps ANY problem that I may be facing and that I am concerned about. When your mind feels big, then problems seem much more manageable. In a small mind consumed by itself and its own challenges, even small issues can take on a distorted life of their own!

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

Compassionate listening

2010-06-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

Last week in my weekly meditation class, I brought up the old definition of meditation that I think many people find very helpful:
“Prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to God”
If our mind is talking to itself all the time, how are we going to be able to listen to the intuitive wisdom, or the “still small voice” of our spiritual self as it offers us advice, support and consolation in our life’s journey?
So, listening in a reflective, meditative manner is important for this reason. It is also important as a practise for helping us to develop our compassionate and ethical heart when dealing with other people. If, when we are with others we consciously quieten our mind and really attend to what they are saying, they will notice and appreciate what we are doing for them. There is a book by Michael Ende called “Momo” that is about this power of listening. Momo is a little girl who is able to heal all those who come to her simply by deeply and attentively listening to the stories that they tell her about their life.
The second aspect of really listening to people is that we will really see where they are coming from, and so be much more likely to act in ways that are appropriate and helpful to both them and us. As a result our basic practise of ethics or positive action will improve.

So, when you are with others, try and see your listening to them as a meditation, it will help both them and you!
I want to end this article by outlining three ways NOT to listen that I had drummed into me during my Tibetan Buddhist training, using the anlalogy of a pot:

Don’t be like an upturned pot
An upturned pot cannot receive any liquid into itself. Similarly, when we are with others, if we are not really listening, we are like an upturned pot, they are talking, but nothing is going in!
Don’t be like a leaky pot
A pot with a leak cannot not hold what it liquid, it is useless. If we are not really paying attention, even if we hear what is being said, it simply “goes in one ear and out of the other” so to speak!
Don’t be like a bad smelling pot
You pour fresh juice into a dirty and bad smelling pot the fresh liquid becomes contaminated instantly. Similarly, if we are listening to someone, and there is a continuous negative inner commentary going on in our mind, this poisons everything that we are hearing. As George Michael once said (was it the title of one of his albums?) “Listen without prejudice”

© Toby Ouvry 2010, you are welcome to use this article, but you MUST obtain Toby’s permission first, and cite Toby as the author.

Related articles:
30 Second methods for developing your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence technique 1: Breathing with your compassionate role model

Experimental ethics; strengthening your compassionate and ethical heart through personal experience

Experimental ethics; strengthening your compassionate and ethical heart through personal experience

2010-06-04T06:39:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest barriers to our practice of compassion and ethics is the old and VERY outdated idea that by doing good and being compassionate we somehow have to sacrifice our own happiness and well being for someone else. The key to overcoming this is understanding that practising good actions and compassion is really a form of enlightened self interest; the reality is, by doing good we will feel good to!
To gain firsthand experience of this, think of a compassionate act, great or small (NO act is too small) that you engaged in recently. When you bring it to mind and focus on it, how does it make you feel? Feels good to have done it right? So, my suggestion for a 30 second compassionate experiment is this:
Whenever you do something caring, compassionate and or ethical, take 30 seconds after the event just sit, breathe with and appreciate what you have done. It is not ego we are talking of here, just recognition and appreciation of the act. At the end of that 30 seconds you will feel good, and this feel good factor will strengthen your intention to do such acts again; you’ll want to do good because you KNOW it makes you feel good!

Doing good because it makes you feel good is a COMPLETELY different act from “doing the right thing because we feel obliged to”, which in the long term tends to deplete our energy and, consciously or subconsciously resent the “sacrificial “actions that we are engaging in.

NOTE: This is the second in a series of articles on 30 second techniques for strengthening your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence, click HERE to see the first article.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission

30 Second methods for developing your compassionate heart and ethical intelligence technique 1:

2010-05-25T20:52:00.000-07:00

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

Fundamental Zen sitting meditation forms

2010-05-24T06:15:00.000-07:00

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.

Our compassion is measured by what we offer to those who are in our power

2010-05-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

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.

Meditation as natural goodness and the meditation on equalizing self and others

2010-05-18T00:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Does doing good make you happier?

2010-05-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Meditation and reflection on the four levels of love.

2010-05-04T19:52:00.001-07:00

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”.

The challenges of meditating on love

2010-04-26T01:57:00.000-07:00

What could be more pleasant than meditating on love? In this article I want to explore a little how a simple meditation on love/loving kindness will actually stimulate a complex and challenging developmental process for us if we do it sincerely and consistently. What I will do first of all is outline a very simple meditation on what is called wishing love, then we can have a look at an example of the sort of stuff that love meditations can bring up.

A simple meditation on wishing love.

This meditation is called wishing love because it focuses on 4 benevolent wishes that we direct toward living beings which are:

May everyone be happy,

May everyone be free from misery,

May no one ever be separated from their happiness,

May everyone have equanimity, free from hatred and attachment.

In Tibetan Buddhism these four wishes are called the four immeasurables, because they take all living beings as their object. However we can alter the structure of the sentences to direct the wishes to ourself (may I be happy), or a specific group of people (may my friends/family/so-and-so be happy). So, by altering the structure of the verse we can make it a meditation on love directed to self, others, or all living beings. We can even structure it in such a way that we spend the first 5 minutes focusing on ourself, the second 5 mins on a group, and the third 5mins focusing on all living beings.

The challenge.

So there you go, a simple, flexible format for meditating on wishing love, where does the challenge lie you ask? The challenge comes because what happens is that as soon as you try and develop these types of loving wishes toward self and others, all the things in your mind that are NOT compatible with these wishes will start to come to the surface and start to object to or block our expression of these wishes. Here is an example from my own experience. I am generally ok with directing love toward myself, toward all living beings, Gaia, the Planet, the Universe, and specific groups of living beings including some humans. However, when I think of humans in general here are some of the type of dialogues that come up:

Loving wish “May humans be happy” – Mental response: “Hold on, I’m looking at humans every day, aren’t they the wilfully selfish, self centred, animal abusing, planet polluting consumer zombies that are the source of all the problems on the earth? I’m supposed to love them? I don’t even like them!”

Loving wish “May all humans be free from suffering” – Mental response: “Since they are creating so many problems with their egos, don’t they deserve what is coming to them? Wouldn’t it be justice?”

As you can see, my mind has plenty of issues in this area, how did I / do I get around this? Some of the points being raised are indeed legitimate! I get to the fourth wish:

“May all humans have equanimity, free from hatred and attachment” – Mental response: “Ok, I can get behind that one, if they did not have hatred, attachment, pride, egoism and all the other delusions in their mind, they would not be so harmful to themselves and the planet, I can get behind this wish!”

So, in this case my solution is found in the fourth wish, I feel I can legitimately extend a loving wish that humans be free from delusions, as it resolves the somewhat legitimate objections that have been raised; I can wish humans happiness and freedom from pain by becoming free from their delusions, which will also stop them causing so much carnage! I can also start to channel some of the anger and aggression that humans stimulate in me toward doing things that will help humans overcome their delusions (see article “In order to be happy sometimes you have to get mad as hell!”)

From this example we can see that the meditation on love stimulates some quite challenging developmental processes, and for each person there will be different challenges. People with low self esteem will have trouble connecting to the wish for themselves to be happy. People who are habitually self or family centred will have trouble wishing happiness to others whom they may not know. My basic point here is that this sort of developmental challenge is where the real benefits of the meditation is. Love is not just about connecting to a soft, rosy emotional feeling, it is about truly caring about ourself and others enough to look deeply into the dynamic of our mind and our life and to get to the bottom of the human issues that we face. To REALLY meditate on love you have to care enough to get through all the uncomfortable stuff, so that your wish to give yourself and others happiness is coming from a very deep and stable place.

Good luck!

Read next article on the "four different levels of love".

Text ©Toby Ouvry 2010 please do not reproduce without permission. www.platinumlight.com

Magical meditation as a method for awakening our psycho-spiritual powers

2010-03-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

In this article I intend to have a look at the meaning of the word "magic", and outline a practical walking meditation method for integrating it into our daily life in such a way as to awaken our inner powers.

First of all lets look at the meaning of the word magic with fresh minds. We have to let go of all the programming that we have received from mainstream media and culture regarding what magic means. If you think of the word magic, you are most commonly going to think of fantasy genres such as the Harry Potter series of books and films (which I quite like but are not the same as what we are investigating here), or you are going to think about TV shows with very clever people doing funny things with cards, coins etc, or playing fascinating mind games with members of the audience. So, I would like you to set all that aside for a moment. Instead, here is a working definition of magic that can give us insight into how magical work has been used for centuries, particularly in the western tradition of spirituality, in order to facilitate peoples psycho-spiritual growth:
"Magical work involves any activity that aims to bridge the gap and facilitate communication between the inner worlds of our mind and spirit, with the outer worlds of our physical being, environment and action.
In particular, all white forms of magic aim to harness the power of the inner worlds of mind and spirit and direct them in such a way as to facilitate positive change in our outer world and environment. All forms of magic, being facilitators of communication/communion between the inner and outer worlds help us to develop a sense of empowered participation,creativity and belongingness in the world and environment within which we live."

It is worth spending time with the above definition as there are quite a few levels of meanings and connections that you can start to grasp intellectually and poetically just by reading it through a few times. What I want to explain below is a basic "magical walking meditation form" that can be worked with and explored easily. It involves developing awareness of our energy body, and the energy body of the place where we are walking, and using it as a way of connecting to and communicating with the spirit of that place. Practiced regularly, it is a very good way for awakening your basic psychic powers in a natural, healthy and balanced way.

Basic magical walking meditation form

First select and travel to the place that you have chosen to walk. A place with plenty of trees, nature and living creatures is preferable. If you live in a city environment then a park is an obvious example of such a place. Places of real wildness and natural power are ideal, so this is a good practice to do when you are on holiday in an area where you have access to such areas. For this explanation, I am going to take the example of a wooded area within a park.

Connecting to the living spirit of the place:
Stand at the periphery of the space you have chosen. In our example we stand just outside the edge of the trees that form the wood where we are going to walk. Now observe and contemplate the trees and woodland as a whole, try to sense and feel it as a singular, living being with its own unique spirit and presence. as you stand before it, take a few deeper breaths, and sense the woodland breathing with you. Feel your energy and the energy of the woodland connecting.

Setting intention and requesting permission to enter the space:
Before you proceed any further, set your intention that for the duration of the walk you are going to connect with the spirit of the woodland in order to facilitate healing and communion between the human world, and the world of nature, particularly as it is found within this wood. It is also advisable to ask the permission of the woodland to walk within its body, and to commune with it. Most times you will receive an affirmative answer but if you feel intuitively that the answer is a "no" or there seems to be some kind of strong negative energy or resistance to you doing so, then it may be advisable to seek another place to walk.

Connecting to your energy body, and the energy body of the place:
Having connected and received permission to walk in the woodland, focus now on the energy of the earth beneath your feet. Several meters beneath the surface of the earth sense a vast lake of golden earth light and energy. Now feel that energy rising up in two streams to the soles of your feet, from where it proceeds to fill your body with earth light and energy. You now feel as if you have an energy body, or light body that is inhabiting the same space as your physical body, and it has a set of subtle senses (sight, touch, hearing etc...) that are the energetic equivalent of your physical senses.
Having built your energy body in this way, now turn your attention to the land in front of you, and be aware that the earth light is also flowing up into the body of the landscape and the plants, trees and creatures within it. Sense that the whole of the landscape, like you, has a subtle energy or light body from which emanate subtle forms of energy, colour, sound and so on.

Walking in and through the land:
Having attuned yourself to the spirit and energy of the place, in this case the woodland, in this way, now proceed to enter into the woodland, and walk mindfully and slowly through it. Allow the particular direction that you take to be spontaneous and intuitive, just let your feet lead you where they seem guided to go. For the time you have allocated for your walk, proceed carefully and gently, observing the physical surroundings, and also attuning to the energy/light bodies of the trees, creatures, objects and spaces that you come in contact with. Pay particular attention to the plants, trees, stones, streams etc... whose energy seems to resonate strongly with you. You may find that certain animals "seek you out", and that more than once you find yourself face to face with them during your walk.

Concluding:
After you have finished your walk, don't forget to thank the spirit of the place where you have been. Walking in the same location regularly enables you to build up a relationship to the spirit of the place that is somewhat like (though different from) an ongoing relationship with a friend or family member. We develop a sense of how we can communicate with it, participate in its life, and both give and receive deep levels of love and soulful companionship. There are also many levels of (magical) inner work that may become available to us by engaging in this walking form regularly, but that is the subject of another article, and also for you to find out about through your own experience!

Text © Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.

Single Pointedness and Going with the Flow

2010-03-22T08:45:00.000-07:00

Article subtitle: The two fundamental types of meditation found within eastern teachings, and a practical method for exploring both.

To a person new to meditation, the potential choice of different meditation types and traditions, together with all the different terminology that is used can make for quite a bewildering experience. The fact that the world is rich in spiritual traditions is a cause for rejoicing, but when it comes to the question “which meditation form should I choose” the diversity can be a challenge!

What I propose to do in this article is to point out a basic two fold division within which can be placed almost all of the meditation practices that one may find in the eastern traditions of meditation. Many of the western traditions of meditation also fall into these two categories, but I specifically want to focus on eastern traditions here, as they fit into the two categories much more obviously and systematically. By Eastern Tradition, I mean principally Buddhist and Hindu as these are the two eastern traditions from which spring most of the applied meditation systems that you can find and practice today.
The two fold division I am going to call one pointedness meditation and insight meditation respectively. Here is a brief summary of the meanings of both terms:

One Pointedness Meditation - Focusing the mind on a single object without distraction:
So, one pointedness meditation is essentially a training in concentration. Using one object, such as the breathing, a mantra, a feeling (love, compassion, joy etc…) or a visualized object, the meditator trains him/herself and her mind to focus attention on the object without distraction. The training progresses in stages; First the meditator is only able to focus for a few seconds before getting distracted, but gradually she builds focus until she is able to hold it for a few minutes, then ten, half an hour, one hour and so on, until eventually she can enter into meditation and hold the object in his or her mind without distraction for as long as desired.
For someone engaging in one pointedness practice, meditation is an act of will, one exerts effort to keep one’s attention where it is supposed to be, and not get distracted by extraneous mental activity. It is through this concentration that the meditator makes progress in his path of inner growth and development.
In Tibetan Buddhism this form of meditation is called tranquil abiding meditation, in Theravada Buddhism it is called the jhana or samatha meditation, and in Hindu and yoga meditation practice it is called dharana.

Insight Meditation - Going with the flow:
In the second form of meditation, insight meditation, rather than try and control the mind, the essential point is to witness the mind as an observer. No attempt is made to stop the mind working, the meditator simply sits and takes in all the information that is available to him. He notes the experiences coming from his senses, notes his breathing, the thoughts and feelings flowing through his mind. He also notes the spaces in between the thoughts and feelings in his mind. The only thing that the meditator must NOT do in insight meditation is to get caught up and identified with what is arising in his mind, if he does this then he has lost the thread of his mediation. As soon as he becomes aware that this has happened, he should immediately return to his position as an observer and witness.
As his practice progresses, gradually the flow of thoughts and feelings within his mind recedes, and the true nature of his mind is revealed to him, which is why it is called insight meditation.
In Tibetan Buddhism this is called mahamudra meditation, and/or dzogchen. In Theravada Buddhism is called vipassana meditation, although some vipassana traditions seem to emphasize meditation on the breathing in a way that is more like one pointedness meditation.

For us today in contemporary society, I think both meditations have their merits as both of them teach us useful skills that we can apply practically to our daily lives. One pointedness teaches us focus, strength and stamina whilst insight meditation shows us how to let go, how to allow, go with the flow and to develop our reflective wisdom.
With this in mind I am going to outline below a simple practice that you can do where there is alternation between one pointedness and insight techniques. Practiced together in this way they form a complementary whole where we can develop both skill sets.

Combined one pointedness and insight meditation form:

Setting up the meditation:
Find a comfortable meditation posture on a chair or cross legged on a cushion, the main feature of the posture should be a naturally straight back, with the muscles relaxed, doing only enough work to hold your posture upright and no more.
Once comfortable, make a decision to relax and take your mind away from the business of your life for the period that you have allotted for meditation.
Use the natural process of your breathing to start to bring your mind into the present moment, and onto your body. Once your mind has settled somewhat, become aware of the expression on your face. Raise the corners of your mouth just a few millimeters, so that you are now wearing the expression of a gentle half-smile **(see note below), note that the physical expression of a half smile if held consciously gradually gives rise quite naturally to a naturally positive inner smiling energy.

The main meditation form
Stage 1:
Now, for five breaths, try and focus on the inhalation and out exhalation without distraction. As you breathe in focus your attention on your inner smile, and as you breathe out, feel the energy of the inner smile gently expanding through your body and mind. This is the one-pointedness aspect of the form.
Stage 2:
Once you have completed five breaths without distraction, relax your exclusive attention on the breathing, and just take it easy for a few breaths. Be aware of the whole of your moment to moment experience, the breathing, your senses, your body, the flow of thoughts and feelings though your mind. The only thing you CANNOT do in this phase of the meditation is allow yourself to get lost in thoughts and distractions. You are a witness and observer as you relax and let go! This is the insight meditation aspect of the form.

For the next part of the meditation, just alternate between stages 1 and 2, focusing on the breathing and smiling for five breaths, then relaxing and observing for a few breaths. Do this for as long as feels appropriate.

Optional stage 3:
This is a slightly more advanced stage, but you should find that it comes quite naturally once you have been practicing stages 1 and 2 regularly in your daily meditation. You should find that as you do stages 1 and 2 above, a sense of space and clarity starts to appear quite naturally within your mind, like a clear sky emerging from behind clouds. So, with stage 3, As you do the five breath single pointedness section, rather than focusing on your inner smile as you breathe, focus single pointedly on the sense of inner space as you breathe in and out. Then, as you relax for a few breaths as in stage 2, rather than focusing on the stream of thoughts and feelings flowing through your mind, instead focus on the spaces between the thoughts and feelings.
In this way you can use the one pointedness part of the meditation and the insight part in a complementary way to gradually journey deeper into the experience of inner space and clarity within your mind.

** For more information on the inner smile meditation please go to:
Introduction to the inner smile meditation

Practical applications of the inner smile:

Text Copyright Toby Ouvry 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.

An answer the the question "How do I experience meditation?"

2010-03-17T20:55:00.000-07:00

I was asked the other day during a coaching session "How do I experience meditation?" I thought this was actually a very good question to ask a meditation coach, it seems a very obvious one, but I don't think I have ever been asked it before so directly, which seems quite remarkable considering the amount of time that I have been a meditation teacher!
Anyway, the answer that I initially gave was something to the effect that when I meditate these days the meditation tends to ''do itself" in the sense that it now has its own natural momentum, and I just have to follow it. Some of what I experience is directly related to techniques that I have been practicing for a long time, but other aspects of my meditation experience are direct and spontaneous, where the technique has been left behind and given rise to an experience that ''is itself'' not taught but discovered.

So, later that day after my own regular sitting meditation practice I sat down and wrote another response in my journal that came to me and seemed like it was worth recording. This response is what I want to share with you below, as I think it may provide some interesting insights into the subjective experience of someone who has been meditating consistently for many years. If you compare it to the formal meditation technique on the "Level 2 microcosmic orbit meditation" that I recently placed on the Qi Gong blog, you will see certain common points. If you compare and contrast the two you can start to see how a formal technique evolves into a deeper, more free-form/fluid and participatory experience.

So, here is my answer to "How do I experience meditation" as I sat down and wrote it in my journal. Please remember I have done it in a subjective, poetic and creative manner, rather than a scientific or technical one. As many of you know I am a practicing artist, and this response is a reflection of this part of who I am. It is one answer of potentially many that I could have made:
"Imagine that beneath the surface of where you live there is a big lake of Earth light, or Earth Soul, a huge pool of liquid golden light lying within the body of the planet. Imagine then that when you meditate this light is catalyzed, starting to rise up to the surface, flowing into your body through the soles of your feet. This fills your body with a sensation that is tangible physically and gives rise to a deep sense of connection/connectivity to the Planet and to the Whole.
So, then imagine that as you continue to meditate day by day, gradually more and more of this light starts to rise up to the surface of where you are living. It start to flow not just up into you, but also up into things like the trees and the plants in your neighborhood, even into the fabric of the buildings, paths, concrete and so forth.
The natural flow of the Earth light / Earth Soul is catalyzed so that, even if (like most places) the surface environment where you live has been tampered with, blocked and otherwise abused by human activity, the flow is revived, renewed and increased. To what extent it is renewed depends upon many factors, such as the power of the meditator, how badly the original energy flow of the place has been blocked, what ongoing activities there are around about and so on.
Then imagine that the increased flow of energy up from the Earth and land below into the trees, the living things, and the natural and artificial structures in the landscape around you has another effect. Imagine that it starts to attract and catalyze an increased flow of Star light and energy down from the sky above which flows down through the body of you the meditator, and the bodies of the things on the surface of the land around you.
It seems almost like the Earth light and the Stars above start to communicate and interact, and everything on the surface world in the middle, including you and your body experience a participation in this energy exchange and dialogue.
In this experience, speaking from the subjective view of the meditator, there is sometimes a lot of dynamic energy and movement through the body, and sometimes deep stillness. Most often it is a balance of the two that is ebbing and flowing in an organic and protean way.
Within the context of this description, the meaning of being human seems to be revealed as a mediator of energies between Heaven and Earth, a potential catalyzer of the evolutionary process of the Planetary being of which we are a part. To be human in this way feels deeply wonderful and meaningful.
For me meditation seems to contain much in the nature of communion, a sense of contact, a sense of finding that which takes away any sense of isolation, and replaces it with a deep, centering experience of belonging.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, please do nor\t reproduce without permission.

Getting to know your own personal perennial truths and wisdom.

2010-02-24T01:10:00.000-08:00

Last night I taught a class on the perennial philosophy, which is a school of thinking that has attempted to track the common or universal spiritual practices that are found in all religions and spiritualities worldwide. It is a school of thought that I have a lot of time for, and that I consider to have a large part to play in the re-integration of authentic spirituality our modern and post-modern society and culture.

What I wanted to look at in this article is an immediate and practical way in which we can discover what perennial spiritual practices, if any we have in our own personal life right now that are impacting our experience in a real and visceral way. To this end I am going to describe an exercise below that will help those who engage in it to start to measure this for themselves. Here it is:

Sit in a quiet place, with a pen and a piece of paper handy. Take a few moments to set aside any practical affairs that may be occupying your mind, so that it is ready for a period of relatively focused contemplation and reflection. When you are ready, imagine as follows:

“I have unexpectedly had my lifespan cut short, such that I only have twenty four hours to live. During this time I have to reconcile myself to the fact that I shall be leaving my family, friends and loved ones behind permanently, never to meet again on the physical plane. I will also have to leave behind all the possessions, money, property that I have gathered, not to mention my reputation, career and other worldly enjoyments. The tide of my life has taken an irreversible turn toward death, which will come to me shortly.”
Take a little bit of time to see and visualize yourself in the above situation, perhaps lying in hospital with a fatal disease or after a traumatic accident. You are able to think clearly enough to understand fully the situation that you are in, but have no power to change it.

After you have spent a few minutes entering into this situation and getting a feeling for some of the uncomfortable feelings that arise upon its contemplation, then ask yourself the question:

“What experience of inner wisdom or universal truths have I built within my being that will be of practical help to me at this time? What inner guidance can I find within me at this time that will step forward and hold my hand as I prepare myself for a final departure from my body and from life as I have known it?’’

As you contemplate this question try not to lose touch with the vividness of your imagined situation, where you really feel you are approaching death. If you are going to find our what it really going to be of use to you, this must not turn into a mere intellectual exercise, it must be deeply felt. After you have thought about it for a short while, then write down your response to the question. I recommend you put pen to paper and just keep writing until there is nothing more left to put down. Try not to “edit” what you write, just be honest and write down what is coming to you. After you have finished writing, read through what you have written. Then put the piece of paper aside for twenty four hours, then read it again.

What the answer that you have written to the question will have revealed to you is the current connection that you have your own inner perennial or universal wisdom, that is to say the inner guidance that, when you find yourself faced with deep challenge, change and transformation in your life, you can truly rely upon to be your friend and protector.

So, one way of answering the question ‘’Why should I make time each day for spiritual practice and reflection on what is most important to me?” (for details of my recent article on “What is spiritual practice?” click HERE), The answer comes back; “In order to keep consistently keep articulating, cultivating and building my own deepest inner wisdom and personal truth, so that when the suffering, pain and challenges come in my life, I shall have something within me that I know I can rely upon to be my friend and guide.’’ I would also add the following as being equally important: “I make time for the daily cultivation of my inner wisdom so that when true happiness, rapture, joy and bliss come knocking on my door, I shall be able to recognize them and accept them fully into the depths of my being!!”

The perennial philosophy asserts that it is a basic tenet of all spiritual faiths that genuine spiritual practice is accessed through the gateway of contemplating death and impermanence. It is also an assertion of the perennial philosophy (and one that I share most fully) that the purpose of engaging in genuine spiritual practice is to reveal the imminent and transcendent bliss, joy and rapture that, as human beings participating in the manifest world is our birth right.
An authentic spiritual journey tends to take us to inner spaces where polar opposites such as happiness and sadness, or life and death are brought together in a single, unified awareness.

© Toby Ouvry 2010, Please do not reproduce without permission.

What do we mean by spiritual practice? What is its purpose? How does it affect practical change in our life? Motivating ourself to engage in spiritual

2010-02-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

The answers to these three questions that I an including in this article below are based around my notes for the recent introductory class on Essential Spirituality. There is a lot of conversations that people have regarding spirituality that really lack any meaningful substance simply because the people involved have not really thought about or defined what it is that they mean by spirituality and spiritual practice. More than this, clear understanding of what the purpose of the spiritual path is will give us a clear insight into the benefits to be gained from engaging in it, thus empowering us to start doing it consistently in our day to day life!
The thoughts I have placed below are one possible way of defining the playing field.

What do we mean by spiritual practice?

Spiritual practice involves the process of consciously awakening each day to that which is most important and fundamental to our lives. It means creating the time each day to reflect upon this and allow that reflection to inform the way we view, act in and assess our lives and what we are choosing to do with it.
This reflection empowers us to creatively affect meaningful change in our lives, so that we no longer feel like a victim of random circumstance, rather we experience ourself as an active participant in generating our experiences and our destiny.

What is its purpose of spiritual practice?

Basic spiritual reflection (verified by the many sages of all spiritualities and religions across the ages) reveals that life consists of the potential for joy, rapture, beauty and ecstasy, within the context of many seemingly unavoidable experiences of pain suffering and injustice.
The purpose of spiritual practice is to prepare us to meet the challenges , uncertainties and sufferings of life in as effective a way as possible, whilst at the same time maximizing the potential for the experience of joy, happiness, ecstasy and rapture that life has to offer us.

How does spiritual practice affect practical change in our life?

Spiritual practice aims to affect positive practical change in our life by consistently improving the integrity and strength of the fundamental structure of our being.
Spiritual practice encourages our body, mind and spirit to work together in harmony to meet life's challenges and to grow.
Often in daily life our mind, body and spirit are either not communicating, or actively fighting against each other. An example of this might be a busy person whose body gets sick because it is tired from all the work that she is doing. Instead of giving compassion to her body, such a person may get angry with it for malfunctioning, and resist giving it the rest it needs. As a result the body takes longer to recover, and may even become more sick.
Integrated spiritual practice aims to flag up all these inconsistencies and conflicts between the different aspects of our being, and aims to resolve them so that we can turn and face the challenges of our life as a whole, integrated and strong unit, one that does not break apart under pressure.

Listening to three voices: A basic practice for bringing us back to that which is fundamental to our life.

This is a very simple, practical three stage reflection exercise/meditation. If you spend two minutes each day on each stage, that will give you a basic six minute spiritual practice!

Stage 1: Listening to the voice of your body.
Sit quietly in a comfortable position in an upright posture. Tune into your body's intuitive/instinctive consciousness. Allow your body consciousness to guide you to set a pace and rhythm of breathing that will best promote relaxation, healing and regeneration at this particular moment in time.

Stage 2: Listening to the voices in the mind.
Now turn your attention to the discursive thoughts in your mind. Be an observer of the inner chatter in your mind, consciously avoiding getting over involved in the discussion. Practice inwardly smiling at the thoughts and voices in your mind, whether they seem to be positive or negative, happy or sad.

Stage 3: Listening to the voice of silence.
Now turn your attention from the discursive thoughts in the mind to an awareness of the space and silence that lies between your thoughts, that surrounds them and interpenetrates them. Think of this inner silence in the mind as being like sky, with the discursive voices being like clouds. Relax into the sky-like silence and clarity of your inner being.

© Toby Ouvry Feb 2010 Please do not reproduce without permission.

Establishing an effective formula for daily meditation practice and one of the long term benefits of meditation: Lucid sleeping.

2010-01-28T07:22:00.000-08:00

An effective formula for daily meditation practice.

For many people there is a challenge involved in developing a consistent daily meditation practice. In a meditation class or during meditation retreat, it can seem relatively easy to meditate as everyone around us is meditating also, and the environment is generally supportive of our focus. However, once we get back into the maelstrom of our daily routine, sitting still all by ourself for 20 or so minutes can be intimidating to the point that we may subconsciously avoid it, even if we do have the time in our schedule.
So, in order to help begin to establish regularity in your meditation routine, I am going to suggest a simple formula that goes like this: 5x3x5.
This formula basically means five minutes of meditation, three times a day, five days a week. Rather than trying to sit down for a full 20 minutes each day, try and create five minutes in the morning sometime, five minutes over lunch, and five minutes during the afternoon or evening where you commit yourself to creating a meditation space in your routine.
The particular meditation form that you choose in those five minutes is up to you, in some ways the simpler the better. For example for that time you could simply focus on using your awareness of your body and your breathing in order to release tension in your body an mind, and re-center yourself around the core of your being. Another simple breathing form that you could try and place within some of these five minute periods is the core body breathing or core cellular breathing that I outlined recently in my Qi Gong blog.
Initially just try and do this five minutes three times a day routine on your weekdays, and take the weekend as a ‘holiday’. However, once you start to see how enjoyable and productive inserting these short meditation breaks is to your daily life, you may find that you want to insert a little bit of spontaneous meditation into your weekend routine. The important thing is to set yourself a routine that is enjoyable, doable, and that does not become just another box to tick off in our list of things that need to get done during the day!
So, you might like to remember this little formula, and see if you can integrate it into your routine over the next few weeks and months….

Lucid sleeping.
The long term benefits of regular, consistent meditation practice, even when practiced in the 5x3x5 format above are really immeasurable. However watching the development our meditation practice is a little bit like watching a plant grow; when you look at it from moment to moment, day to day, there does not seem to be a lot happening! The benefits of meditation are therefore really best noticed incidentally, that is to say you set up a daily/weekly meditation practice or routine, and then just get on with it. If you can do this, then every now and again, without necessarily looking for it, you notice that your mind has changed. Old issues that used to send you into a spiral no longer seem to have such power, we are more accepting of ourself and our ‘imperfections’, warmth and connectedness towards others seems to arise more often and more spontaneously than before…
One of the longer term benefits of meditation that I have recently started to notice in my own inner work is what I would call ‘lucid sleeping’. There are lot of books out there that describe how do develop the ability of lucid dreaming, which is where we are basically able to remain conscious and aware during the dream state, and are therefore able to manipulate our dreams to a greater or lesser extent. ‘Lucid sleeping’ is the ability to remain conscious when our mind dissolves onto even more subtle levels of consciousness, where all forms (physical, dream or otherwise) have dissolved into the vast, luminous empty space that lies beneath or beyond the dream state. This vast luminous empty space is called by various names within different meditation traditions; In Tibetan Buddhism it is called the Dharmakaya, in Kabbalistic mysticism is called Kether, other names include the clear light, Shunyatta, the causal mind.
Anyway, the main point here is that, after about 15 years of consistent meditation, I have noticed that quite naturally and organically, my ability to remain lucid whilst simultaneously in a relatively deep sleep has suddenly improved substantially. As a result my ability to meditate at the same time as lying down and going to sleep has become very much a part of my daily reality. This obviously has huge advantages in the sense that substantial periods of time that previously were spent in unconscious slumber have now become actively available for spiritual development.
So, I thought I would mention this as an illustration of the longer term benefits of dedicating a portion of time each day to meditation and cultivating inner peace. What starts out as a 5x3x5 weekly routine, if practiced over months and years will naturally bear much positive fruit without an unnatural amount of effort!

© Toby Ouvry Jan 2010, please do not reproduce without permission.

Meditation, spirituality and sensual pleasure

2009-12-30T20:10:00.000-08:00

Many people may be a little put off from getting involved too seriously in meditation and spirituality as they believe that it involves a renunciation or rejection of sensual or worldly pleasures that they enjoy very much. There are also quite a large number of spiritual practitioners who labor under the delusion that the more ascetically you live, the holier you become and the more progress you are going to make on your path.
In order to overcome these extreme views we can need think about what it is that we are renouncing when we embark on an path of inner or spiritual development. To renounce means to let go of. When the great Sages and spiritual teaches of the world advise us to practice renunciation, they are actually advising us to renounce suffering, pain and the inner causes of that suffering and pain, many which are attitudes of craving, attachment or compulsive addiction. They advise us to renounce suffering, pain and its causes IN ORDER THAT WE MAY BE ABLE TO EXPERIENCE MORE HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE, AND THIS INCLUDES A GREATER AND MORE REFINED ENJOYMENT OF SENSE PLEASURES!

One of the keys to developing a healthy enjoyment of sense pleasures is to emphasize the quality of an enjoyment that you are engaging with, and to learn to do it with the whole of your being, rather than in a distracted manner. For example if you are walking or sitting in a park, and you choose to focus with a peaceful mind for a short while on the different sounds that are available for you to listen to (the birdsong, the wind in the trees, the water flowing through the stream), you discover that many of these sounds can be experienced as deeply pleasurable and nourishing to your soul. Similarly, our afternoon tea or coffee is often something that we gulp down whilst our mind is consumed with the activities of the day. However, if we can look upon that time as an opportunity to really relax and experience that drink as a sensual pleasure, then those few minutes of pleasure drinking tea or coffee can be a deeply nourishing and healthy experience.

In the long term, those of us who are committed to a consistent meditation practice over a period of years discover that there are certain meditative states or conditions that give rise to experiences of sensual bodily bliss that are way beyond the scope of any ordinary pleasure. Gaining consistent experience of these blissful states entails being able to open to the idea that there are far greater and deeper experiences of pleasure than currently most people would deem possible. Having opened ourselves to this possibility, we then need to try and find something each day where we are retraining our mind and body to experience pleasure in a new and positive way. Finding an opportunity each day to experience sensual pleasure with a peaceful and positive mind can be fun and creative. As mentioned above, walking through a park and listening, or making our afternoon hot drink a time for mindful pleasure are two ways. Here are a few other ideas:
- Making your shower or bath time an opportunity to enjoy the tactile experience of water on your body, and the smell of whatever cleansing soaps etc that you are using.
- Taking a few minutes at sunset or sunrise to enjoy the colours of the sun across the sky
- Making a bit more time at the beginning of lovemaking with your partner for subtle physical arousal (gentle stroking ect)and emotional connection.
- Listening to soulful music for its own sake, allowing it to nourish your inner being, rather than being always background music for social or other activities.

Really the list is endless and I would encourage creativity here. The main thing is that whatever activity you choose, you engage in the activity consciously, mindfully and with the intention to enjoy the activity in a way that will nourish your soul.
May 2010 bring you all the pleasures of the soul, great and deep!

© Toby Ouvry Dec 2009, please do not reproduce without permission

Meditation Definitions 5 - Creating a Safe Space

2009-10-04T05:19:00.000-07:00

Quite often when people first start meditating it is because they are feeling stressed, tired or emotionally imbalanced. One of the most useful things that we can do to help to start to remedy the above issues is to learn to create a ''safe space''. This is an inner space where our mind can relax and heal, and where we are not adding any further burden upon ourself with a meditation technique that is over complicated. Creating a safe space needs the following conditions:
A placed where we can sit or lie down quietly (or appropriate environment for a meditative walk if so desired)
A decision to yourself that, for the time that you have allotted (10 minutes or whatever you have decided) you are in a safe space, and are going to not allow negative, stressful or fear based thoughts to attack you from within. It is a time that you have specifically set aside where the only agenda is to relax and enjoy a quiet, healing time in your own company.

Having created the above conditions, you then simply sit with your body and mind and allow them to catch up with themselves in an inwardly loving and compassionate environment.

You can click here to listen to a 15 minute guided ''safe space meditation'' (taken from a talk I did recently at NUS) that gives you a good idea how you can do this, and how useful it can be for our overall balance and inner peace.

To return to the first of this series of five articles on meditation definitions, please click HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2009 Please do not reproduce without permission.

Meditation Definitions 4 – Meditation is Being rather than Doing

2009-08-14T01:37:00.000-07:00

This is another extremely useful definition of meditation, and one that is very appropriate for today's super busy ''post-modern'' lifestyles. One of the basic challenges that we face today is that there is always so much that we seem to need to do. Not only that, even when there is nothing in particular to do, because we have been programmed to just ''do things'' all the time, we just invent stuff to keep ourselves busy, as the process of simply sitting down and enjoying the present moment has become an alien and uncomfortable experience for us!
It is also a great definition in the sense that it helps us to see that meditation can include a very broad range of activities, as it is the state of mind that makes an activity meditation, not the particular activity itself. For example if you are sitting in formal meditation on your meditation seat, but your mind is wondering about all that you have to do after you get up, that is not meditation. However, if you fold clothes you do so with an awareness of what you are doing, and with an appreciation of who you are as a human being, then that is a form of meditation. As has been pointed out by someone wise, we are human BEINGS not human doings, and whenever we sense an appreciation of that beingness within us, and the beingness of the Planet and other living things around us, then we are naturally moving into a meditative state of mind.
Another way of putting this is that a state of beingness focuses on the QUALITY of our subjective experience, whereas doingness focuses on the QUANTITATIVE, objectively measurable nature of what we are doing. So, what meditation can give us is in terms of our daily life is a refocusing on the depth of quality of our experiences. Meditation offers a sense of appreciation that will give us back our life in the sense of helping us to find a sense of connectedness and depth that we have lost touch with due to an over emphasis on quantitative achievement in our life.
The now classic book ''Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance'' by Robert M Pirsig is in large part an exploration of how modern culture has gradually lost its sense of appreciation of the qualitative experience of life through its obsession with quantity, efficiency, getting things done and generally ticking boxes of all descriptions. To become a meditator is to decide that ticking boxes is no longer good enough for you, and you want to reclaim the quality of life that is rightfully yours, and can be found simply by deciding to appreciate what you have right now, and cultivate your beingness. Your beingness is the natural human spirit within you that, when you are in touch with it, nothing else is necessary to feel happy, fulfilled and complete in the here and now.

Meditation on becoming a Man or Woman of no rank.

From the above we can see that, in a sense no specific technique is needed to move into a state of being. It is simply a matter of choosing to slow things down a bit for a while, and really try to appreciate the experiences you are having at any given time in your day or life. However, certain meditation forms lend themselves particularly well to the development of a deep sense of beingness, and the meditation on the man or woman of no rank is one of these.

To become a man or woman of no rank simply means to consciously chose to put down all the labels that you normally attach to your sense of self, and just become a human being. You can do it in formal meditation, or you can just practice it as you are sitting in you office chair, walking in the park or wherever. If you are a company manager, married, father, physically strong, put down all these labels that you normally put on yourself and let them go. Feel yourself to be no better or worse than anyone else, their equal. Temporarily allow yourself to be free from all the concepts of yourself that normally surround you, let yourself be in the present moment here and now, and just appreciate whatever is there.
Try it now if you like, just for a minute or two!

To read the first in this series of articles on meditation definitions click HERE.
To read the next (5th) article click HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2009 please do not reproduce without permission.

Meditation Definitions 3 – The Development of Awareness

2009-08-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

In this third article looking at definitions of awareness I want to relate a four point structure that I used a couple of weeks ago when giving a talk on walking meditation. I'll give the four points first, and then I'll expand a little bit on each point:

1) Meditation is any activity that leads to the sustained stimulation of the awareness reflex.

2) Sustained awareness is what is meant by meditative concentration.

3) Meditative concentration leads to the wisdom of insight, which in turn offers the potential for authentic change and transformation.

4) This change and transformation may be willed and/or expected, or it may be unforeseen, spontaneous and not previously anticipated.

The first point above is that ''meditation is any activity that leads to the sustained stimulation of the awareness reflex.''
So, meditation can be any activity that stimulates your awareness. Awareness is a faculty that you use when, rather than being completely involved and identified with an aspect of your experience or identity, sensory, mental, emotional etc... you are instead detached enough to observe it in a reflective and considered manner. To give a simple example lets take a person who has become annoyed by the comments of a colleague at work. If that person lacks awareness he or she will very quickly find herself identifying with the feelings of irritation and reacting impulsively to the provocation, without reflecting effectively on what may be the best course of action to take. If the person has awareness in the situation, although he may still feel the anger, he will feel detached and reflective enough to consider how best to respond in a way that is going to represent both his own best interests, and the best interests of the group within which the situation is playing out. From this example we can see that what awareness gives us is the PRESENCE OF MIND to respond freely to any aspect of our being or situation, rather than just reacting blindly and non-reflectively because we are totally involved and identified with the ''mechanisms'' of what is happening.
ANY activity that stimulates our ability to reflect on our experience in an aware way is meditation. So, one of the first things that this definition of meditation will help you to do is to see that there may be several activities that you are doing in your life already that are meditation! If you regularly go for a walk in the evening and watch the sunset or moon rise, and this helps you to step back from your life, process difficult emotions and reach a point of inner stability and peace, then that walk functions as a form of meditation. This definition of meditation allows you to look at the meditative activities that you are already doing, and to place them in a context where you can appreciate and grow these activities so as to facilitate the development of your overall meditative awareness.
The next thing that this definition tells you is that whether an activity can be considered meditative or not depends upon the QUALITY with which you are doing it, rather than the nature of the activity in itself. Any activity that helps you to develop your awareness can be considered a form of meditation. There are certain formal methods that different schools of meditation teach, but these are techniques of meditation, rather than being meditation in and of themselves.

The second point above is that ''sustained awareness is what is meant by meditative concentration''.
This points out the difference between meditative concentration and ordinary mental concentration. Our day to day mental concentration allows us to focus on one thing at a time without getting distracted, which in turn enables us to be effective in accomplishing things in our lives. Many meditation techniques also include this initial form of mental focus (for example learning to meditate on the breathing without distraction, or to focus on a feeling of love to the exclusion of other emotions). However, all of these techniques are merely DEVICES that are designed to lead the meditator to an experience of sustained self awareness that takes in the WHOLE of your experience in the present moment, rather than just one singles aspect of it. To give an analogy, if you are staring at a landscape, mental focus is like examining very closely one blade of grass or one tree to the exclusion of all other aspects of the landscape. Meditative awareness is aware of the whole landscape, and sustained awareness provides a context within which our perception of the landscape is experienced.

Moving onto point three: ''meditative concentration leads to the wisdom of insight, which in turn offers the potential for authentic change and transformation''.
This third point indicates that one of the main purposes of meditative awareness, and the process of mediation in general is to help us to see clearly what is going on in our life and in our consciousness, and to effect change in a way that is conscious and considered. I would say that the process of meditation is catalytic, that is to say that when we start to meditate, it tends to encourage different levels of our experience to come more fully into focus, and place us in a situation whereby if we do NOT change, things can become a little challenging! Meditation provides a space whereby our consciousness can start to HEAL ITSELF, and when it does this, what we see or experience may not always be pretty, or fun. In the long term however we can be confident that it will always be taking us in a direction that leads to an experience of greater holism, integrity, happiness and harmony.

This brings us to the fourth aspect of the original statement: ''This change and transformation may be willed and/or expected, or it may be unforeseen, spontaneous and not previously anticipated''.
This final point indicates to is that meditative awareness acts as a forum or environment where change and transformation can take place within our subjective experience of ourself and the world that we interact with. Sometimes this change may have been something that we may have been consciously working towards and using our willpower to bring about. At other times the change that we find ourself undergoing may be entirely unforeseen, taking us well beyond the paradigms or models of consciousness that we may have previously had as our points of reference. Our present awareness is generally very limited, and so it is quite natural that as our awareness expands we should find ourselves moving into inner territory that we could not have predicted. In this sense every time we sit down to meditate there should be a sense of adventure and a willingness for our previous sense of limitations and impediments to be shifting according to what we may experience in the sitting session. Ideally meditation should be both a space where we are able to rest, relax and recuperate/regenerate, whilst AT THE SAME time move into an entirely creative and spontaneous space where anything may become possible.

An example of an awareness exercise:
The below meditation is a simple breathing exercise that I use in the Trans personal Coaching Program to help students to develop awareness of their relationship to their physical body. It helps the mediator to see their current relationship to their body AS IT IS, and also encourages them to consider new ways in which they can establish a positive relationship to their experience and awareness of their body. Once you are familiar with it, you can make up your own ''poem'' that integrates all of the essential aspects of awareness that you wish to develop with regards to your body.

Poem of Care for the Physical Body

Breathing in I am aware of my physical body,
Breathing out I calm and care for my physical body,
Breathing in I am thankful to my physical body,
Breathing out I feed my physical body love and gratitude,
Breathing in I am aware of psychological tensions I hold within my physical body,
Breathing out I release this tension,
Breathing in I am aware of the still point within my physical body,
Breathing out I move deeper into that still point,
Breathing in I see and experience my physical body in perfect radiant health,
Breathing out I see and feel that health in every cell and atom of my physical body,
Breathing in I align my physical body with my other bodies,
Breathing out I feel all my bodies as one, balanced and aligned,
Breathing in I feel energy flowing into my body from above and below,
Breathing out I feel that energy expanding and increasing.
Breathing in I feel at home in my physical body,
Breathing out I rest within that homely space.

To read the first in this series of articles on meditation definitions click HERE.
To read the next (4th) in this series of articles click HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2009 Please do not reproduce without permission.

Meditation Definitions Part 2 and Amnesia

2009-07-23T01:17:00.000-07:00

The next definition of meditation that I want to give is a simple one, and one that many people will associate with their idea of meditation:
''Meditation is stilling the mind''.
Many people are constantly trying to solve their inner problems and find inner peace by using their mind to ''think'' their way out. In many ways this is actually a contradiction, as the nature of mind in action is activity, and activity generally produces stress and and absence of peace to varying degrees of intensity. I remember in one of his books Osho said that anyone who writes a book called ''Peace of Mind'' is an idiot (he called quite a few different kinds of people idiots :-)) as the only way to find real peace is to move into a state of no-mind, where the thinking and imaging processes have stopped.
Actually, it is 100% true that if you can stop yourself thinking, then peace and a sense of well being will arise naturally and easily from your consciousness, because peace, wholeness, luminescence and stability are the true nature of your consciousness when there are no thoughts getting in the way of it.

So, of course simply stopping thinking will not solve all the problems in your your physically embodied journey through time and space. However, it can enable you to enjoy inner peace regularly through meditation, and this peace can give you the inner stability and perspective that you need in order to face your challenges without feeling as if they are harassing you in a way that is out of your control.

So then, stilling the mind, or learning how to temporarily move into a state of no-mind is an essential skill that we are trying to develop in meditation. In many meditation schools, such as Zen, moving into a state of no-mind and stillness is emphasized as a major goal right from the beginning, it is THE training.

Before I go onto explain two techniques for stilling the mind, I want to point out that many people consciously or unconsciously resist moving into a state of no-thought because a state of no-thought seems to be associate with a sense of emptiness (in the negative sense of the word) or meaninglessness. Moreover, to our egos a state of no thought seems like a death, and so our ego, interpreting it as a threat in this way resits vigorously!
This resistance can actually be solved through practical experience of the no-thought state, but in the interim period between fear of no thought and stable experience of it, it may be useful to consider as follows. When your mind is empty of thought, rather than considering such a state to be devoid of life, we can consider it to be in a state of wholeness of life, or fullness of life. When there are no thoughts dividing it up, our consciousness and being naturally and easily become whole, undivided, united. It is a state where we can find unity not just with ourselves, but also with other living beings, the planet, the universe. So, approaching the space of no thought in this way can help us build a positive relationship with it from the outset.

No-mind technique: Amnesia or becoming a Simpleton.

This meditation technique or form involves an act of imagination, where you either imagine that you have suddenly bee afflicted with amnesia and can remember nothing, not even your name, or that you have become a complete simpleton. You have become so simple-minded or ''stupid'' that you can no longer even string a sentence together!
Sitting quietly in your meditation seat in this way, just maintain the recognition of your amnesia or simpleton-ness. Progressively let go of any thoughts, images and feelings. When they threaten to arise, simply remember that you have amnesia, or that you are simply to simple to hold the sentence or stream of thought together in your mind.
Practicing in this way, you will find that your mind will gradually become more and more relaxed, with less and less thought activity arising. From this absence of thought will come a sense of inner peace. When you get good at this, you will be able simply to let your mind rest in a state of no-thought for longer and longer periods of time. This will give you a tangible experience each day of inner peace, and it will allow the mind to start engaging in a process of self-healing that affect your everyday life positively on many different levels.

Question: Won't meditating on no-mind in this way make me actually more stupid, less intelligent and more forgetful??

Answer: Quite simply, no. We are using our imagination here to create a condition of no-mind or no-thought within our consciousness. This in turn allows our mind to really have a good rest and recuperate its faculties, which in turn should result in an increase in our awareness, clarity, intelligence and natural creativity. It should also result in an improvement in mental factors such as memory.

Once you become used to moving into a state of no mind you will also discover that you can use it in many different situations in your daily life. For example if you find that as you walk down the street your mind is commenting in a negative way on all the passers by and this is upsetting you, you can simply ''switch it off'' and ride out your difficult mood in relative inner silence, without making it any worse than it needs to be.

To read the first in this series of articles on meditation definitions click HERE.
To read the next (3rd) in this series of articles click HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2009 Please do not reproduce without permission.

Meditation Definitions Part 1 and a Positive Mindfulness Game

2009-07-17T02:24:00.001-07:00

In the next few articles what I intend to do is to outline different definitions of meditation, and then give a practical technique of how it might be done. In general meditation is just a word, its meaning depends (like all other words I suppose) upon the context within which it is presented. So, different schools of spirituality and thought have different ideas about what meditation is about. For myself, I like to use multiple definitions as it broadens my practical ability to apply meditation to my daily life, and thus increase its level of quality, depth and effectiveness. So, without any further ado, here is the first one:

''Meditation means to focus on an object of mind (meaning a mental or inner object) that, when we contemplate it causes our mind to become positive, peaceful and happy.''

This is the definition that I learned when I first joined the Tibetan Buddhist group that I was connected to for many years and that, as a Buddhist monk I would teach to people. It is at once quite specific, telling us that meditation is a form of mental focus that functions to generate and hold positive states of mind, but also quite general, leaving scope for the meditator to choose the particular objects that he or she wises to focus on. During my training in Tibetan Buddhism the foundation of the daily meditation practice that we had were twenty one specific positive or ''virtuous'' feelings and determinations that we would study and train our mind to hold without distractions.

So, working with the above definition, you can if you like take a little inventory of all the things that, when you think about them cause you to become happy, peaceful, energized, appreciative, grateful and so on. All of these things are possible objects of meditation for you. The interesting thing about making such an inventory is that it can cause us to reflect on the things that we currently THINK make us happy, and make us realize that actually, maybe they don't make us a happy as we thought. Conversely, some of the things that are right in front of us all the time have a substantial power to make us happy, but we realize we are not appreciating them, and so this reflection can cause us to re focus on these potential causes of happiness.

What I want to explain now is a mindfulness game that we can play with ourself as a form of meditation. In this exercise the positive object of meditation is not so much one particular object, feeling or affirmation. Rather it is the PROCESS that it invokes that is the object of our meditation and that functions to make our mind peaceful and happy. One of the main benefits of this exercise is that it gradually trains our mind to orientate itself around positive thoughts and feelings, and consciously edit out our negative ones.

STEP 1:
Sit down and either think of or write down three things in your life that you feel positive and happy about. There are infinite possibilities here, here are three that I am going to pull out of my mental hat right now:
1)I enjoyed my Qi Gong class this morning, I was encouraged by the progress that people seemed to be making.
2)Enjoying learning about how to create a website
3)Daughter was happy going to school this morning, no tears!

So there we are, three things.

STEP 2:
Set aside a certain time, say ten minutes. During this time you can choose to sit in meditation, or you might choose to go for a walk, have a bath or any activity where you can maintain a relative state of relaxation and focus.
Once you have settled yourself and the allotted time has begun, your job is simply to keep your mind oriented around three above three topics, and the positive feelings, thoughts and images that are generated in your mind in association with them. Your mind may wonder onto any object that is positively related to the above, but it MAY NOT move onto and object of contemplation that is either unrelated to your three topics, or that is a negative contemplation of them.

So, for example of what I MAY contemplate with regard to my above three topics above are:
- A sense of the positive flow of Qi/light and energy within my body (relating to point one).
- The harmonious sense I get from one of the Artworks that I have placed on my website
- An appreciation of my relationship to my daughter.

Examples of what I may NOT contemplate or get distracted by:
- Recalling something I disliked about one of the Qi Gong class members
- Getting involved in a ''to do list'' for my website
- Worrying about my daughter on any level

So, you get the idea, as long as you are keeping to an aspect of the three topics that is making your mind positive, happy, peaceful, appreciative etc, then you are on the right track. Any negative or worrisome thoughts are not to be followed, as are any thoughts that are simply distractions!
This is a simple meditation or mindfulness form that I would say is a very good for the overall long term health of our consciousness. It leaves plenty of room for us to make the practice ''our own'' and be creative. It enables us to experience first hand how to train in the meditative activity of learning to generate and hold positive and peaceful states of mind for extended periods.

To read the next article in this series of meditation definition articles click HERE.

© Toby Ouvry 2009 Please do not reproduce without permission.

Wheel of Life summary meditation

2009-07-15T20:39:00.000-07:00

I am pasting the class notes for the Wheel of Life Class 1, principally so that those attending later classes can consult it as a point of reference:

July 7th Class1: Introduction and Overview of the Planetary, Lunar and Solar Wheel of Life, Finding the center of our own Wheel of Life.

The main content of the talk of the class was a review of the diagrams that were handed out in class, if you have the time to review the diagrams before the next class, just to get a little bit more familiarity with the constitution of the wheel of life it will pay some dividends! (pdf copies of the diagram attached)

One basic point about the Wheel of Life is that it has evolved out of received ancestral wisdom, rather than being a revealed teaching from one particular master.
Received ancestral wisdom is really an organic body of ever-evolving wisdom that we inherit and build upon.
Revealed teachings are where a teacher such as a Jesus or a Buddha makes some form of revelatory format for a new spiritual path, and then his or her followers create a path or religion based around that approach.

The meditation:
This is the basic format for meditation work on the Wheel of Life, it can be done as a 5 minute exercise (once familiar with it), or as a longer more contemplative meditation.

Awen and Ioho
Use of the Awen (pron: AA-OO-EN) and the Ioho fo activate the directions.
Awen is the ancient Celtic (and pre-Celtic) invocation meaning ''fluid inspiration'', or ''blessings of God/the Goddess.
As we focused on the ''Aa'' we focused our energy on the sky and stars above. As we changed to the ''Oo'' we sent our energy down into the earth and land below. As we changed to the ''En'' we focused our attention on our inner center. We did this three times and then just felt the flow of energy activated between above, below and our own inner center.
Ioho is the word for the Yew tree, and invokes the mysteries of life, death and rebirth/regeneration.
We focused our attention on awareness of the 4 directions (NSEW) stretching across the planet around us, awareness of the movement of nature and the seasons and ourself as the center. With this awareness we then recited the Io-ho three times. We then sat in silence and felt the flow of directional energy activated by our chant.

Within the context of the 7 directions (invoked above), we then saw two intersecting, moving circles of light in the center of our meditation space, one embodying time (past, present, future, the cycle of the 4 seasons and 4 times of day, 4 stages of life), the other embodying energy (4 elements, 4 states of consciousness, 4 energies of creation).
These two circles expanded to enclose us, we then focused on placing our energy in the center of the still point in at the middle of this cycle of time, space and energy.
(Note: If we are doing this meditation by ourself the center of our circle/wheel of life is our own center (within our heart center), if in a group we can feel the center to be the central point within the space that we are working in).
We held our awareness in this center, and moved our mind gradually and without hurrying into a state of stillness.

After staying with this state for a while we then visualized 4 gateways around us. In the north was earth, night, winter. In the east air, dawn, spring. In the south fire, noon day, summer. In the west water, evening, autumn. We felt the energies of each of these gateways, and the effect of the interaction of these 4 directions when visualized together.
In the intermediate directions we then visualized the 4 stages of life, and the 4 stages of manifestation.
NW: Old age, death completion.
NE: Birth, childhood, new creation
SE: Young adult, formulation
SW: Maturity, manifestation
Again we felt the effect of these energies in our space for a while.

We then moved back into the center of the wheel, back into silence and stillness for a short while.

Without hurrying we then moved out of the meditation and back into full awareness of our physical being.

Housework Meditation

2009-07-13T02:43:00.000-07:00

I was talking to one of the meditation class members the other day, and she was mentioning to me how she had started doing her own housework again (as opposed to getting a cleaner in), and what a grounding and positive effect she had found it had on her. I have also found that cleaning forms a regular part of my overall weekly routine, and that it is a great way of doing a little bit of active meditation. This is because when you are cleaning the movements are simple enough such that you can combine them with being mindful of the present moment, and of your body. An hour of mindful cleaning work can really bring your mind into a wonderfully relaxed and calm state. When I was a Buddhist monk cleaning was very much a part of my meditation practice, and in many of the different Buddhist traditions mindful cleaning is a central part of the path to enlightenment. There are quite a few stories in the Tibetan and Zen traditions of people attaining spontaneous and profound spiritual insights in the midst of sweeping this or cleaning that!

Recently quite a few of the machines in my house have been breaking down. One of them was the vacuum cleaner. Initially I was a bit irritated, as I had intended to vacuum and mop the house on that particular day. I picked up a dustpan and broom and started sweeping the floor of dust. Very quickly I was quite glad that the vacuum cleaner had broken, as I found the activity of sweeping in silence much more conducive to mindful cleaning. One hour later the floor was swept and mopped (actually it was about the same time as doing it with a vacuum cleaner, surprising but true!), and I felt truly grounded and happy. Needless to say, my vacuum cleaner is still sitting unrepaired in the cupboard!

Cleaning meditation is as simple as can be; just keep present, focus on what you are doing, don't go too fast or too slow. You'll be truly surprised how many worries and anxieties can be let go of through this process, and how much natural, uninhibited peace and happiness can be generated without much effort. In these days of trying to cram all our activities into too little time, and also in a maid-culture like Singapore where it is all too easy to get others to do it for us, maybe it is time to integrate a little mindful cleaning into our routine?

Colour Walking Meditation

2009-07-06T10:03:00.000-07:00

I spent much of last weekend painting at a Steiner colour workshop, which was a wonderful experience and has made me think quite a lot more about the influence that colour has on our lives, and how we can go about interacting and engaging with it in a way that really opens up our emotional,spiritual and energetic being. So, below is one meditation that I invented and have been using over the last couple of days to consolidate the practise of working with colour. It is a walking form, you can read more about basic aspects of walking meditation from a previous article which you can find here.
Anyway, here's the meditation:

As you are walking along in an outdoor environment, be aware of the principle colours of your environment. Generally the main colours will be the green of the trees and other flora and fauna, the blue of the sky (various shades depending on the time of day), yellow golds from the sun, silver from the moon and white from starlight and clouds. If you are near water, then there are options there as well.
Select the colour from your surroundings that you intuitively feel is the one that you are most going to benefit from at that particular time (for example today I mainly worked with the yellow gold of the sunlight). As you are walking along, simply imagine yourself surrounded by that colour and its vibration. Feel its beneficial effects in your energy field and within the cellular structure of your body. Feel its effect upon your emotions and sense of well being. Breathe it in and out of your body with each inhalation and exhalation.

If you have the time, you can pause at places where there are other colours, such as in front of violet or red coloured flowers, and feel the effect of surrounding yourself in the tones of these colours.

This meditation form is very simple (a lot of the best ones are) and can really help us to open up to an appreciation of just how effective working with colour can be in terms of your own sense of emotional well being. You will find quite quickly which colours you feel best surrounded by, and be able to use them effectively with just a little practice. Partaking of colour is such a fundamental part of accessing the joy of being alive, but for many of us it has been intellectualized out to the point that we can no longer really 'feel' it and respond to it from the depths of our being. We may have lost it, but we can find it again too!

The 'Ok, thats enough' meditation.

2009-07-02T23:20:00.001-07:00

We live in an age of information, and it seems like these is a never ending list of things to do and new information that we could be digesting. So, having all sorts of information at one's disposal is a gift and a blessing, but it can become a curse in the sense that I think many of us have become addicted just to processing information, and made the mistake of thinking that we can solve all our problems simply by consuming more information and doing more things.

The 'Ok, that's enough!'meditation is simply setting aside 5-10 minutes in your routine and saying 'Ok, that's enough information and doing, for the next 10 minutes I'm simply going to focus on being in the here and now, and I give myself full permission to take a break. No matter how many really 'important' things I have hanging over my head, the next few minutes I am going to totally take the pressure off, and catch up with my inner being'.
Having said this to yourself, just spend the remaining minutes being mindful of this decision, and really relaxing, and adopting an inner attitude of kind self-awareness. Check all of your mental impulses to get back onto the check list of things that need to be done, notice what is immediately around you. Appreciate whatever there is to appreciate within that moment.
You'll find that this creates a sense of awareness within you where all sorts of pleasant and positive feelings, experiences and thoughts can move up to the surface of your consciousness, and after a short period of time you'll be feeling relaxed, refreshed and have a new perspective on whatever is you are doing in your life, and whatever challenges it is giving rise to.

Try it, as always, most of the best things in life are simple and free!!

Practical Applications of the Inner Smile Meditation

2009-07-02T23:06:00.000-07:00

Having posted a basic outline of the inner smile meditation a couple of weeks ago (read it here), I thought I would just write down a few ways in which I have been using it recently, and finding it very successful:

1) Tired feet
After a long day riding home on the bus with standing room only I found that my feet were very painful. Closing my eyes, focusing on my inner smile and then directing the energy down into my feet substantially alleviated the pain and allowed me to move into a surprisingly deep and comfortable meditative state for the majority of the way home. Being able to meditate like this on busy days really makes a difference, as our time for formal sitting meditation is often reduced.

2) Smiling at irritation or impatience when waiting for internet pages that are taking a long time to download, or standing in ques.

3) Smiling in response to other peoples miserable faces. Passing people in the street and on the MRT, the majority seem to be fixed in a state of relative miserability/stress, or at least cold indifference. This can have a negative effect on our own mood, sometimes even though we may not be aware of it. So, observing my own tendency sometimes to be affected by the faces of others, I have found inwardly smiling to myself and staying with the image and energy of this smile rather than the images of someone elees miserable face has been really useful!

As with many of the other meditation techniques I discuss on the blog, it is really about how you learn to apply it practically and 'make it your own' that makes the difference in temrs of how successful it can be for you.

Calming the Brain Fast!: Mouth Breathing

2009-06-17T01:04:00.001-07:00

In general, most meditation schools will say that breathing through the nose is best for meditation and for the most part I would say that this is true.
However, there are specific advantages that can be gained from deliberately meditating whilst breathing through the mouth. One reason for this is that breathing through the nostrils has a directly stimulating effect upon the brain as the air passes through the nasal cavities, which are directly beneath the left and right hemispheres of the brain. When we breathe through the mouth our breathing no longer stimulates the brain in such a way, and so it can be easier for us to move into a relaxed and non-conceptual state of mind relatively quickly.

Here is a ''mouth breathing'' meditation that you can try:
Sitting comfortably with a naturally straight back, begin consciously breathing through your mouth in a natural and comfortable manner. As you do so, feel your brain moving into a state of deep relaxation, almost as if it were like a computer that you are putting into ''sleep'' mode; it is still switched on and partly alert, but moving into a deeply relaxed and non-conceptual state. Simply focus your mind on the breathing in this way, consciously allowing energy to flow through the brain without it stimulating conceptual thoughts.
You can do this as a meditation in itself (for as long as you like), or you can use it as a preliminary technique to calm your mind before going on to do your main meditation.
For the insomniacs amongst us, it can be a good one to do as you are lying in bed at night to help you fall asleep!

Variation:
One thing that you can happen with mouth breathing is that you may find that your concentration becomes a little dull, or goes a little too far toward a sleep state. If you find this to be the case, try this as a balancing breathing pattern; Breathe in through your nose, as you do so feel energy and light spiralling down into your chest, lungs and body, revitalizing and reinvigorating them. Then breathe out through your mouth, consciously relaxing the brain and other areas of your body. This pattern of breathing helps us find the ''middle way'' between alertness and non-conceptual relaxation.

Inner Smile Meditation

2009-06-09T20:25:00.001-07:00

We have been doing quite a lot of meditation with the inner smile recently in classes, please find below a brief meditation on the inner smile that can be integrated into your daily routine easily:

The expression on our face is always an indicator of how we are feeling (unless we are deliberately trying to hide how we feel). When we are happy and relaxed, our face becomes relaxed and open. When we are tense or unhappy our face becomes tense and serious. Consciously generating the energy of a smile is a very simple and powerful way of helping to transform difficult and negatively charged energies in our body and mind by sending the energy of our smile to them.

Here is a simple form of this exercise:
Firstly, sit in a comfortable meditation posture, breathe and relax.
Direct your attention to your face, consciously relax all the muscles in the face from the forehead to the bottom of the chin.
Raise the corners of your mouth up a few millimeters, so that your facial expression becomes that of a half smile. Feel the energy of this smile spreading through out your whole face.
Now feel the energy of your inner smile gathering within your third eye area (between the eyebrows), once it has gathered there feel it flowing backward into your brain, head and neck areas. As you send the energy of your smile to your brain and other parts of your head and neck, feel them smiling back to you.
Now smile down into your heart, lungs and other areas/organs in your chest. Feel them filling with the light and energy of your inner smile, see and feel them smiling back to you.
Now smile down into your abdominal organs, liver, stomach, digestive system, pancreas, kidneys, sexual organs and so on. Feel the light of your inner smile filling them with light and warmth. Feel them smiling back to you.
Now send the energy of your inner smile out to your limbs, hands and fingers, feet and toes. Feel all the cells of your body filled with the energy of your inner smile, feel your whole body smiling back to you.
Conclude by spending a short while sitting with the feeling of well being that has resulted from your practice of smiling.

Intuition Meditation Track

2009-04-27T23:54:00.000-07:00

Here is the second meditation for April '09:

Theme of Meditation: Getting to know our intuitive self in the context of our instinctive and intellectual self.
Duration: 35 mins approx

Title of class from which meditation is taken: "An overview of the different levels of consciousness together with the powers associated with them, developing an intuitive 'inner circle'."

Context: This is the opening guided meditation from the first class of a series of eight classes that I am currently doing entitled "Developing your Intuition – Opening to Levels of Consciousness Beyond the Intellect and Logical Mind."

This track is © Toby Ouvry 2009. You may download the recording onto your computer or MP3 player for personal use. If you wish to use it for any other purpose you must obtain Toby's written or verbal permission first.

Audio recordings of the full class, and the whole series of eight classes on developing intuition are available for purchase, for further details please contact Toby by emailing tobyouvry@gmail.com

Listen to Meditation

Spiritual Power Meditation Track

2009-04-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

I am going to be trying to upload one or two audio meditations per month for people to listen to. Here is the first:

Theme of Meditation: Development of conscious awareness as a point of power from which we can engage in our relationship to the past and future with trust and confidence.
Duration: 33 mins approx

Title of class from which meditation is taken: "Developing the power of our conscious mind, the gateway between our inner and outer worlds"

This is the opening guided meditation from the first class of a series of eight classes that I am currently doing entitled "Connecting to your Spiritual Power – Meditations for Developing Inner Courage, Self Leadership and Connecting to Your Inner Truth."

This track is © Toby Ouvry 2009. You may download the recording onto your computer or MP3 player for personal use. If you wish to use it for any other purpose you must obtain Toby's writeen or verbal permission first.

Audio recordings of the full class, and the whole series of Spiritual power classes are available for purchase, for further details please contact Toby by emailing tobyouvry@gmail.com

Listen to Meditation

Druid Seed Planting Ritual

2009-03-31T00:38:00.000-07:00

This is a Druid ritual for planting, I thought I would post it now as we are just moving past the Spring Equinox in the western hemisphere, which is a good time both for planting seeds and for thinking about the things that you want to manifest in your life. However it can be done at any time of year. I find it a nice way of adding to the already relaxing and meditative practice of gardening and growing things.

Step 1:
Sit quietly and bring to mind that which you wish to bring into manifestation over the coming weeks, months or year.

Step 2:
Pour soil into Pot/ touch the earth, say:
'This earth will support me'
Place the seed in the soil, say:
'This see will inspire me.'
Place ash on soil, say:
'This ash will nourish me.'
Pour water on soil/seed, say:
'This water will bless me.'

Conclusion:
'May the shining Sun be a father to me.
May the glowing Moon be a mother to me.
May the lights of heaven and earth guide me on my Journey.'

The Basic Fundamentals of Walking Meditation

2009-03-12T01:41:00.000-07:00

Many people who think of meditation often think of a formal exercise involving sitting still on a chair or cushion with our eyes closed. It can come as a bit of a surprise to such people to find out that walking can be considered a form of meditation practice, and that walking meditation can become a major part of our daily routine, contributing substantially to or overall consciousness development and sense of inner peace and centred-ness. It is well worth investing the time and effort in learning to do walking meditation, as we spend a substantial portion of our day walking from one destination to another, and if we know how to walk in a meditative manner, then time spent walking can become time spent relaxing and meditating!

Walking meditation can be simply defined as any walk that we undertake where we are using the process of walking to develop our mindfulness, awareness of the present moment and other states conducive to inner peace and happiness. Below I describe some very simple walking meditation techniques that can be used by anyone. Be sure to begin your walking meditation with a conscious decision to stop worrying about your personal life, work projects etc., and to focus on enjoying the process of walking in the here and now!

Initial concentration builders:

Method 1
Walking at a pace that is comfortable for you note how many steps it takes you to breathe in and breathe out, then combine your observation of your breathing with your steps. Lets say it takes you three steps to breathe one in breath and three to breathe out. As you take each step on the inhalation inwardly say to yourself ''In'', and as you breathe out with each step say ''out''. So the basic pattern in this example would be in, in, in, out, out, out, in, in, in, out, out, out and so on. Try and get yourself into a rhythm use it to keep your attention in the here and now.

Method 2
A simple variation on method one. Lets stay with the rhythm of three steps in and three steps out. As you breathe in you recite “step, step, focus”, as you breathe out “step, step, relax”. Continue in this way using the last step of the inhalation to prompt yourself to focus, and the last step of the exhalation to prompt you to relax. If you like you can substitute other words for the focus/relax combination, for example here/now, present/awareness, calm/ease. Choose a combination that is effective and pertinent to you!

Method 3
Pick an object a distance in front of you, such as a tree. Then, as you walk toward it, try and be mindful of the tree and of the present moment with each step and each breath that you take. Once you reach the object, relax for a few steps/breaths, then pick out another object in the distance to focus on in the same way. Build your mindfulness based upon your awareness of the physical object, your breathing and your steps.

Once you have a little bit of focus:

Method 1
As you walk and breathe, pick one sense power, such as your hearing or sight. Try and focus on that sense power mindfully, being aware of all the information that is coming into your awareness through that sense door. So, if you choose your hearing for example, try and pick out all the sounds that are available to you, the wind in the trees, the bird calls, the distant waterfall, the traffic, and so on... Pay full attention to this one sense power with each step, try and experience this as if it is the first time that you have heard, seen or felt.
Method 2
Once you have some experience of method 1, expand your sensory awareness to take in the whole experience of walking in the present moment. With each step and breath try and experience walking in and experiencing the physical and sensory world as if for the first time. Allow time to disappear, so that the full power of the present is able to impact itself upon your being.

Meditating ‘Cold Turkey’

2009-02-18T00:55:00.000-08:00

With regards to meditation it is better to get in to good habits as soon as possible, and one of the main good habits that we are trying to develop right from the outset of our meditation practice is discipline and focus. This means that once we have sat down on our meditation seat we are entirely focused on the job at hand and do not allow our mind to be knocked off course by distractions, no matter how much they may be nagging us. To this end it can sometimes be better to focus on the quality of our meditation practice rather than the quantity. Five minutes of really focused and applied meditation is worth more than twenty minutes where our application is somewhat half hearted, and our mind spends 90% of the time distracted!

To this end here is a five minute meditation where we practice stopping our thoughts ‘Cold Turkey’:

Sit comfortably with a naturally straight back, have a watch or other timing device handy.
Take a few deep breaths, centre yourself, then imagine that the past and future dissolve away, only the present remains.
Be aware of the inner voice in your mind that is talking pretty much all of the time in our waking life, take about 1 minute to watch it and listen to it, ensuring that you do not get identified with it.
Using your watch or countdown timer, now begin a period of five minutes where you are 100% focused, and your only task is to let go of your thoughts and stop thinking. Imagine that the thoughts and images in your mind are like a TV, as soon as a thought or an image appears, inwardly press the ‘off’ button on your inner remote control, and let go of the thought, return your mind to zero, no thought.
For the five minutes that you have given yourself, apply yourself to this task with total commitment. No ifs and no buts, your only job is to keep alert, be fully present and stop thinking. You are not asking yourself to be perfect, but you are committing yourself to really applying yourself for this short time to do the very best you can. Initially you may get knocked off track a few times, but if you do it regularly with real application, you will find that your ability will improve substantially in a short period.
Once the five minutes is up, spend a final minute relaxing and observe the space that you have created in your mind through your efforts. When you bring the meditation to a close, be sure to congratulate yourself, for that short time you can say with your hand on your heart that you gave it your all!

As well as creating good meditation habits, this form of ‘power meditation’ also trains our mind to focus quickly on the tasks immediately at hand in our life. This in turn helps us to achieve the goals that we have set ourself, save time and get more out of the opportunities that we have in each day.

Breathing Meditation for Calming the Mind, Body and Spirit

2009-02-05T00:44:00.000-08:00

In both the Wednesday and Tuesday classes over the next few months we are going to be using a basic fundamental meditation 'form' at the beginning of each class, so I am placing it on the meditation blog so that people can print off a copy and use it by themselves during the week.
In this meditation we focus on three different physical aspects of our breathing in order to calm the energies of our body, mind and spirit. According to Taoist philosophy, our bodies 'qi' or energy is centred in the belly, our mind qi or energy is centred in the heart, and the qi of our spirit/soul is located in the centre of the brain and head. Accordingly we focus on the movement of the breathing in the nostrils, chest and belly on order to calm and centre these three aspects of our being.
Within this context the 'mind at the heart' refers to our emotional being and the everyday discursive thoughts that flow through our mind during the day. The 'Spirit in the head' refers to the pure essential awareness that lies at the centre of our being, but also to the reflective, philosophical and ethical aspects of our thinking (in Yoga philosophy this is what as referred to as the 'intellect' as opposed to the everyday mind).

So, here it is:

1. Having seated yourself in a comfortable meditation posture with a straight back, make a decision to yourself to give yourself a mental holiday, and put down your 'inner baggage'. You should approach the meditation in a light spirit, as if it is a game that you are playing with yourself.

2. Bring your awareness into the present moment, be aware of your body, breathing, mental activity, what appears to your sense awareness. Consciously decide to let go of the past and future. Imagine that the past and future dissolve away, so that temporarily only the present moment exists for you. Relax into the present moment.

3. Become aware of the inner dialogue or voice in your mind that is constantly commenting on everything. Listen to this voice for a short while, then consciously let go of it. Be aware of the natural space and silence in your mind, become a listener rather than a talker! Relax further into the space and silence of your mind.

Don't rush through these first three stages, if you try and go from your normal everyday busy mind to focusing exclusively on the breathing it can be quite frustrating! Stages 1-3 above are designed to bride the gap between an initially moving and distracted state of mind and a focused,concentrated one.

4. Focusing on the breathing in the nostrils.
Become aware of your breathing, in particular the breathing as it enters and leaves the nostrils. You will note a slightly cool sensation on the in breath, and a slightly warmer sensation on the out breath. Take the breath within the nostrils as your object of focus. If you like, see if you can count from 1-5 or 1-10 without becoming distracted. When your concentration is relatively steady, consciously relax the face, head, brain and neck as you breath so that energy can flow freely through the top part of your body.

5. Focusing on the breathing in the chest.
When you feel ready, lower the focus of your breathing down to the chest. Be aware of the movement of the Chest, ribs and lungs as you breathe in and out. If you find counting the breaths helpful for focus, then do this. Once your attention is relatively stable, you can consciously relax the Chest, shoulders and back so that energy flows freely through this area of your body and torso.

6. Focusing on the breathing in the belly.
Now move your attention down into your abdomen. Notice that as you breathe in and out your belly naturally rises and falls. Take the movement of your belly as you breathe as your object of focus, again use counting if you find it helpful. Once you feel like your attention is relatively stable, then consciously relax the whole abdomen, hips and pelvis as you breathe.

7. For the final part of the meditation simply change the focus of your concentration from the breathing and body to a state of pure awareness. Up to this point we have been using our awareness to focus on the breath. Now we turn the focus of our attention in upon itself so that the object of our meditation is awareness itself. In this final stage of meditation the main thing is just to keep the mind in a state of 'letting go'. This will allow our pure awareness to manifest freely, and we will then be able to gently sustain our attention upon it.

8. Bring your mind fully back into your physical body, be aware of the earth beneath your feet and your physical surroundings, when you feel ready relax your concentration and bring the meditation to a close.

A 15 minute meditation period per day is sufficient to develop your proficiency in this meditation. Initially you will find that you have to work through each of the stages systematically, but over time you will find that you can move through stages 1-7 relatively quickly and easily, and extend the duration of stage 8.

A final note here is that you can find a related standing practice based around the three 'dan tiens' or 'elixir fields' which you can find here on the Creative Qi gong blog.

Reflections and practices for the Christmas period

2008-12-17T19:40:00.000-08:00

I recently sent a message to the students on the I AM University Singapore Training Program which I thought those who have been attending the weekly meditation classes might find of some value. So here it is!:

"As for things to emphasize over the Christmas and New Year period, here are a few ideas:

- Focus on relaxation, regeneration and renewal of your inner and outer energy levels. Christmas can be hectic sometimes, and unless we are careful we can end up speeding through it in the same way that we do the rest of the year! The Winter Solstice and the birth of the Christ can be seen as the rebirth or renewal of the Christ child / Child of Light within ourselves, and an opportunity to begin the new year with a spirit refreshed and revitalized. Give yourself a chance to do this!
- Focus on balanced enjoyment, fun, play, communion with nature and the planet. Christmas may be totally over commercialized and exploit the attachment that children have to the idea of receiving gifts, but we can se through that and really get in touch with the sprit of play and the child within, as well as with our outer children and child relatives!
- Be prepared to look anew at your relationship to giving and receiving. Observe the quality with which you engage with these two fundamental human activities. Deepen your experience of them.
- Look back on 2008. Focus on the things that you have enjoyed and achieved, and that others around you have done and achieved. Increase you appreciation of these things, rejoice in them!
- Think about your core goals for 2009, what inner or outer goals are going to be on the top of your agenda over the next year?
- Focus on quality communication with family and friends. Often during the year we get so caught up in the practical aspects of day to day life that the quality and depth of our communication with those close to us deteriorates. Over the Christmas period, be aware of your speech and interaction with yourself and others, try and make it four or five star quality, rather than just 'budget hotel' service! (I'm not quite sure about that last analogy, but I thought it worth including as it communicates a certain something!)

Wishing you all the very best for the Christmas and New Year periods, it has been a pleasure working with all of you over this last year, and I look forward to being of service in 2009!"

Yours in the creative spirit of God,

Toby

Breathing meditations

2008-12-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

Here are three forms of breathing meditation that I have recently published on the 'Creative Qi Gong' Blog:
'Breathing in a circle'
'Wave breathing'
'Core body breathing'

The Six Perfections: The Bodhisattva’s Path to Enlightenment.

2008-11-13T22:02:00.000-08:00

Over the next few weeks in the Tuesday evening meditation classes we shall be focusing on the six perfections, and so in my next few blog articles over the coming weeks I intend to focus on each of the six perfections in turn and explain them a little.
Possessing the ‘Mind of Enlightenment’ (or bodhichitta in Sanskrit; ‘chitta’ meaning mind and ‘bodhi’ meaning enlightenment) is what distinguishes a Bodhisattva (translated literally: ‘being bound for enlightenment’) from other people. The mind of enlightenment itself is, simply put an intention to become an enlightened being in order to free other living beings from suffering, and lead them also to the blissful, happy state of enlightenment. A Bodhisattva who possesses this intention has essentially dedicated him/herself and all of her actions to the greater good of the planet and the evolution of the living beings who abide within the Planetary Being.

In a sense the mind of bodhichitta is quite a natural one. If someone were to ask you ‘would you like to become a Buddha so as to free others from suffering and lead them to the bliss of enlightenment? Most of us would answer “Yes that seems like a nice idea!” So, a Bodhisattva is simply someone whose main agenda or intention in life has become this.
The question then is, so, I want to become a Buddha out of love and compassion for other living beings, how do I do this? In Buddha’s teachings on the perfections we accomplish our enlightenment by training in six forms of enlightened action; giving or generosity, discipline, patience, effort, concentration and wisdom. These six types of action are the main inner and outer pathways that the Bodhisattva treads in order to accomplish her/his enlightenment for the benefit of others.

The perfection of giving
Giving in Buddhism is defined as a virtuous or positive intention to give (when giving is done in expectation of return, or with ulterior motive we cannot really therefore include such actions in this practice). An act of giving becomes the perfection of giving when we develop the intention of Bodhichitta before and as we engage in the action.

The power of intention and dedication.
In general, if we are mindfully holding the mind of enlightenment in our consciousness, then we can transform any action into an act of giving through the power of our intention, and by using our creativity. For example before we go to sleep at night we can think to ourselves “In the same way that I am now caring for and resting my body by sleeping, may all living beings also receive adequate rest and relaxation”. Or, if we step over a snail on a pathway, taking care not to harm it we can do so thinking “Through my action of caring for this snail, may all beings be protected from danger and harm”. Similarly at the end of any action we can dedicate the positive energy of the act to the welfare of all. For example if we put 50cents in a hospital charity can, we can think “may my action of giving be a cause for all living beings to experience good health and long life”. Alternatively, if we have enjoyed a good dinner with friends and lots of laughter we can think as we go home “May the joy that we have experienced this evening be a cause for all living beings to have lives filled with joy and laughter”.
So, using the power of our mindfulness and of intention and dedication we can transform many of our daily actions into the actions of a Bodhisattva!

More methods for cultivating the perfection of giving.
In his teachings on the six perfections, the Buddha divided giving into four major types:
1) The giving of material things.
2) The giving of ‘dharma’ or good counsel and wisdom (to ourselves as well as other people!)
3) Giving fearlessness. This is in the sense of protecting others from suffering and fear.
4) Giving love.

One fun practice to do each day is to simply try and consciously perform one of each of these four types of giving with the motivation of bodhichitta. If there are no opportunities to do them physically (there usually are!) then they can always be done inwardly, for example by sending others love through visualization, or by praying for those who are in danger. If we do this each day we will be pleased to feel that we are making a positive contribution to the evolution of the planet, and the happiness of the beings that live there. We may also be pleasantly surprised at how much giving we are already doing, but may not have appreciated up to this point.

Awareness of giving.
In general, being aware of times in the past and present when we have practiced giving and simply rejoicing and enjoying our generosity, however great or small really enhances the power of our mind of giving. Also, being aware and rejoicing in the generosity of others is another easy and powerful practice.

An essence level meditation on giving.
Sit quietly and clam your mind through focus on the body and breathing. Then bring to mind an act of giving that you or others have engaged in in the past, or that you may be going to do in the future. Focus on the pleasant feelings that arise from your contemplation, breathe these feelings in and out, allowing them to fill your body and mind with the energy and radiance of generosity. When you finish dedicate your meditation to the welfare of all living beings with a prayer such as “Through the power of my meditation may all living beings experience peace of mind combined with both inner and outer abundance.” In your spare moments during the day, return to the breathing and feelings of generosity that you generated. Let your mind rest regularly in this state.

Positive Thinking Workshop Preview: Reflections on Creativity.

2008-10-31T20:17:00.000-07:00

This Sunday, 9th of November I will be doing a two hour workshop on ‘The Art of Positive Thinking’. As a preview to this I thought it would be fun to write a few words reflecting upon the relationship between positive thinking and creativity. This will give an idea regarding content for those who wish to attend the workshop, but should also be stimulating and useful as an article in itself for those who are reading but cannot attend.

I want to begin with a quote from Coomaraswarmy that I really like:
“It is not a question of an artist being a special type of person, but of every person being a special kind of artist.”

I’m going to stick to the discipline of painting to put across the relationship between creativity and positive thinking. Firstly, in the same way that an artist begins with a blank white canvas, so a person who is looking to master the art of positive thinking needs to become familiar with the ‘white canvas’ of his or her natural mind. In this context ‘natural mind’ simply means the mind when it is free of disturbing conceptual thoughts or turbulent feelings, just abiding its natural state. It is of immeasurable use to know from direct daily experience that behind the continual stream of thoughts and feelings lies the peace, tranquility and radiance of our natural mind. If we develop the skill of learning to let our mind rest in its natural state for regular periods each day, we will realize that knots and twists of negativity within our mind can be removed or unwound temporarily simply by allowing our mind to return to its natural,
non-conceptual state, to allow it to become like the white canvas of a painter. From there we can then learn to paint the canvas of our mind with new and vibrant colours in the form of positive thoughts and feelings.
“Easier said than done,” I hear you say, “isn’t the problem being able to clear the mind in the first place?” Yes, that is true, but here is the key to doing it; your conscious mind can only do one thing at a time, so, if you focus on watching the thoughts and feelings in your mind, rather than engaging and identifying with them, then you will find that they will start to clear from your consciousness quite swiftly and naturally. Imagine that your thoughts and feelings are like the waves on an ocean. You are sitting on a beach looking out, seeing the waves of your thoughts and feelings rise, break and subside back into the ocean of your mind, without getting involved. After doing this for a short while, you will find that your mind naturally starts to become clearer and lighter. With practice you will be able to make your mind into an inner blank white canvas within the space of a few minutes. This non-conceptual white canvas of the mind is by its nature peaceful, balanced and still.

So, having created the ‘white canvas’, within your mind, there then remains the challenge of painting a work of art each day onto your consciousness using the creative power of positive thinking.
Let us say the ‘pallet’ which you use to paint on your inner canvas is made up of what happens to you during each day of your life. Each day a different set of paints and colours is placed upon your pallet, and it is up to you to use what you have been given in order to create your work of art.
On this subject I have two points that I would like to share with you for the remainder of this article. The first is that the nature of the colours themselves depends upon the attitude and perception with which we approach them. For example “my wife and I are not getting along well” is very different from “my wife and I are going through a learning process that is going to deepen our relationship in the long term”. My point here is that the ‘colour’ of the events that happen in our life depends upon the perspective that we choose to see them with. So, firstly we can brighten up our ‘daily pallet’ each day by choosing carefully the attitudes and perspectives through which we see what is happening to us.
The second point is that great art is not always made up of bright rainbow colours. Some of the greatest art has been made up of colours that many people may consider to be dull or uninspiring. For example the self portraits of Rembrandt, or more recently the abstract canvases of Mark Rothko are works of beauty and depth, and yet they are made up of muddy browns, grays and other turgid colours, worked together to produce a masterpiece. So my second point here is be careful about judging what you have been given on your pallet each day, and rigidly labeling it as a ‘good colour’ or a ‘bad colour’. If we use our creative abilities, we can come to see the how the most superficially dull or dreary colours can be combined together artistically to create an artwork of great beauty and depth.

Meditating with our Ancestors in the Eternal Present

2008-10-31T20:07:00.000-07:00

Next Tuesday, 4th November at 7.30pm at Basic Essence, I shall be leading an ‘Earth Healing and Transformation’ meditation on the above topic. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good time to write a little on the subject of our ancestors and the role they can play in our life and evolutionary path. For those of you that can make it, I look forward to seeing you then, for those that cannot, I hope the article will be stimulating nonetheless.

The significance of November 1st

In the northern hemisphere, in ancient cultures, November 1st (May 1st in the southern hemisphere) was seen as an intersection, or gateway between the light part of the year, and the dark winter months. It was, and is, thought to be a time when the ‘veil’ or gap between the outer human world and the inner spiritual world was particularly thin. It, therefore, represented a particularly good time for communication and communion with our ancestors, and the spirit of generations past.

How do we relate to our ancestors when seeking to commune with them?

There are two basic paradigms that are helpful to remember when we consider opening communication with our ancestors.
Firstly, when we seek to commune with the spirit of our ancestors, we should do so in the spirit of love and compassion, not fear. If you think of your intentions toward your children, or to members of the younger generation that you feel close to, your natural intention is one of love, goodwill and benevolence. In a similar way, our ancestors will, in general, be naturally positively disposed toward us, and want us to be successful. Thus when we connect with them we should approach the communication with confidence in the natural positive bond that we enjoy with them, not in fear and trepidation.
Secondly, we should be clear that we are not worshiping them in any way as gods, deities or enlightened beings. We are connecting to them in the same manner as we would with loved ones who are still living. Friends and family may have wisdom and support to offer us, but we would be foolish to regard them as infallible. Instead we take their opinion and perspective on situations, and weigh it up in the light of our own wisdom. It should be the same with the spirit of those departed: wise discernment is needed at all times.

In what way can we communicate with those who are long departed?

This question is an important one to contemplate. Authentic communication with ancestors is very different indeed from ‘spiritualism’ where the so-called ‘ghost of Auntie Meg’ is called up for words of comfort (and to find out where that pesky long- lost will is hidden!).
When we seek to communicate with our ancestors in an authentic way, we should seek to do so within the ‘eternal present’. The eternal present sees time not as a linear concept where the past extends backward in a line from the present moment and the future extends forward. Rather it sees time as being more like a web where all the past, present and future of both ourselves and our ancestors (past and future) are unfolding simultaneously in an interconnected web. Thus, when we connect with our ancestors, we are connecting to them as they are within their own living time, place and present moment.
This can be a challenging concept for those who are only used to seeing time as a linear concept, but viewed from the level of consciousness of the soul, all time is simultaneously unfolding within the eternal present. The past can be influenced and affected by our actions now, in the same way that the actions of our future ancestors can have an effect on our present experience and life.

With this is mind, what I am going to do is describe below two ‘magical images’ that can enable us to connect to the living spirit of our ancestors. A magical image differs from a simple visualized object in that it has the power to act as an interface or gateway between two worlds or dimensional levels of consciousness:

1. The Ancestral Web
After settling your mind in meditation, visualize before you an ‘ancestral web’ made up of lines of light, with nodes/points of light at the intersection between the lines. Each node or point of light is an ancestor, living out their life in the ‘eternal present’ (from a conventional perspective, they may be ancestors from our families’ near or deep past, or from the future). Identify one of these nodes of light as being your place within the ancestral web. Place around yourself a bubble of golden white light, and in your mind’s eye enter into that node of light within the ancestral web. Now within the web open yourself to communion with the spirit of your ancestors in the spirit of love and wisdom. Feel the flow of light between you and your ancestors moving through the lines of light within your ancestral web. Any negative or unbalanced energy from your ancestors is denied entrance to your energy field by the bubble of light surrounding you. Any positive energy communication from the living spirit of your ancestors flows into your being and consciousness.
Sit quietly for a while within your ancestral web and observe the impressions that may come to you intuitively.

2. The Shrine of the Ancestors.
If you like you can do this meditation in front of a shelf or wall where you have pictures of your family and loved ones, past and present.
Visualize yourself in the basement of a house, or in a cave, with the level at which you are sitting being below ground. See in front of you an alcove within the cave or basement wall. Within the alcove there is a ledge made of stone that has upon it pictures of your ancestors and candles lit to illuminate them. Some of the faces are familiar to you, others are unfamiliar, seeming to come from the very distant past, a different age. Take some time to look at these pictures, and, as you do so, feel yourself connecting to the spirit of your ancestors. Consciously state your intent to commune with your ancestors in the spirit of love, light and wisdom.
At the back of the ledge there is a large, flat piece of polished stone, within which you can see your face dimly reflected. As you stare at the reflective surface, your own image fades and you find yourself looking at what appears to be a series of shifting images that are flowing across and within the surface of the stone. Allow yourself to move into a reflective state, and see what your ancestors may wish to communicate to you through these images.

Zazen Meditation

2008-10-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

During the 1990's I lived in a city in the north east of the UK called Newcastle upon Tyne. During that time I got to know of a Zen Buddhist centre called Throssel Hole Abbey. Although I never spent that much time there due to being more involved in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism, I always had a nice feeling about the place. On their website they have an e-book by their Abbot entitled 'Sitting Buddha' (click on the 'Sitting Buddha' icon on the Throssel homepage) which is a very nice introduction to the practice of 'zazen' or sitting meditation. I have always considered the Zen tradition of meditation a good foundation for overall meditation practice because it is so simple and essential. This is a good text for getting to know and starting to integrate zazen into your own meditation and daily life...

Still Point Breathing Meditation

2008-10-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

(Note: Scroll down to bottom of page to listen to guided recording of this meditation)

The following is a basic form of breathing meditation that we can use to help build our ability to still the mind and focus single pointedly on one object for a period of time. We use it in class from time to time, and the feedback I often get from people is that they find it a particularly effective way to sill their mind and move into a meditative space. It uses the natural still point between each inhalation and exhalation as its object.

Stage 1:
Sit, stand or lie in a comfortable position, with a straight back, mouth closed and breathing gently through the nose.
Make the decision that for the next 10 minutes (or whatever amount of time you have set apart for meditation) you are going to give yourself a mental holiday.
Take a few moments just to become aware of your body in the space that it is located, the natural process of breathing and the flow of thoughts and feelings through your consciousness.

Stage 2:
Now, as you follow your breathing, insert a short pause at the top of the inhalation before you begin to exhale. Likewise, insert a short pause at the bottom of the exhalation before you start to inhale. Within these two short pauses, observe that there is a natural point of balance and stillness. As you breathe now, be aware of the point of balance and stillness within the pauses at the top and bottom of the breath. As you reach the top of the in-breath, allow your mind to abide momentarily in stillness before you begin to exhale. As you reach the bottom of the out-breath allow your mind to abide momentarily in stillness before you begin to inhale. Stay with this pattern of breathing for a while. Gradually allow the sense stillness in your mind and body to grow deeper and more pervasive with each in-breath and each out-breath. You may find that your breathing starts to slow a little. This is fine, just let the pace of breathing follow its natural impulses.

Stage 3:

When you feel ready, try and extend the point of stillness into the process of the entire breath so that you find the still point at the top of the inhalation. Then as you exhale, sustain your awareness and connection with the stillness without interruption throughout the exhalation. Then maintain the still point of balance in your being as you pause at the bottom of the exhalation, and keep your awareness of the still point within your being as you inhale.
Without straining your concentration or trying too hard, just try and go from one cycle of inhalation/exhalation to the next whilst remaining in touch with the point of stillness and balance within your being.
With each breath feel your connection to stillness increasing in depth. Allow your mind to merge gradually with the stillness like water mixing with water. Allow your mind and body to become unified in this state of pure stillness and being.

Conclusion:
At the end of the meditation open your eyes and take a few deeper breaths to ground yourself in your physical body, and in your present moment physical surroundings. Relax your concentration.

With practice you will find yourself able to centre your mind in stillness using this meditation when out and about in your daily life. This experience of stillness, stability and balance can become the fulcrum around which all of the movement aspects of your consciousness and daily life can revolve without you becoming knocked off balance.

Listen to guided recording of Still Point Breathing meditation here

© Toby Ouvry 2009 please do not reproduce without permission.

A Perspective on the Worldwide Stock Market Crash and Current Recession

2008-10-16T01:20:00.000-07:00

Of course a big topic in every ones minds and conversations over the last weeks has been the stock market crash and subsequent economic downturn in the global economy. With this in mind I asked an I AM University student whose career is as a financial securities analyst to write a couple of paragraphs on the lessons that can be learned from the situation for those actively involved in their spiritual path. Here’s what he came up with, some very interesting points. With many thanks to Mark for his time and effort in putting the below synopsis together:

An Overall Assessment:

Greed and fear
Unfortunately, the financial markets, or the Wall Street profession has two basic emotions-greed and fear. In the financial profession the workload, workplace and overall sentiment is good during economic good times but greed runs rampant at most Wall Street firms. When the economy turns sour greed turns to fear. Fear is a greater emotion than greed. As a result, the financial markets become much more volatile making it difficult for securities analysts such as myself to make good stock picks on a consistent basis.

A technical analysis of what has happened:
This down turn in the U.S. economy is not surprising. There is an analytical tool called ‘Technical Analysis’ that shows the U.S. stock market completed a multi-year double top in 2000 and 2007. In between the S&P 500 the market barometer used by most financial professionals in the U.S. bottomed at about 800 after tumbling from 1500. Since the peak last year the S&P has fallen from about 1550 to 1100. One can expect the S&P shall drop meaningfully below 800 in the next 6-36 months. Such a drop obviously implies much greater problems ahead than we are currently aware of today. Although the stock market has not yet imploded and is nearly 25% above the last recession low the media/financial news talks about how difficult it is for any company to borrow money and how the economy is the worst since the depression. Also, I have seen discussion that the says the U.S. is headed for a depression or for becoming a rural economy. A lot of fear mongering is going around. Considering that my organization has been one of the few financial firms in the area to have hired in the last few years a severe economic recession or depression does not bode well for job security.

What are the Lessons that can be Learned?

Dealing with fear:
What lessons can be learned from what is going on? Frank Hebert says in his book entitled Dune, "Fear is the mind-killer". Fear locks our awareness into the material plane. The more you spend your time locked in the experience of fear, the more you will believe the reality that is playing out.
It helps to cope with the fear to realize that what is taking place is part of the economic cycle. Everyone remembers the economic depression that started in 1929. It is easy to forget the depression that started in 1837 that lasted until 1843 and another one that started in 1892. These events are part of a normal business cycle.
Humanity has an attachment to money and many have a fear of lack or not having enough money. In fact this is one of humanities greatest fears. In order for humanity to move on to the next stage of evolution in its consciousness it must transcend this fear of not having enough money. I believe that if the global economy does collapse ending a monetary system as we know it, that this is part of the process associated with the end of an era in the development of human consciousness and the rebirth of a new one.

Competition vs co-operation:
Current society promotes competitiveness. Competitiveness is part of separateness. For humanity to truly evolve in terms of our consciousness, we need to think from oneness. This means that for humanity to advance the economic system has to change from competition-based to cooperation-based where peoples' aspirations are not based on how much money they have but how much service they have provided others. The road may be a tough one. In spiritual teachings we are constantly taught that our mind creates our reality. I try to think with an abundance-minded consciousness. Until money is no longer the commodity used to purchase basic necessities my intention is to try to accumulate more and along the way help others.
I think I read somewhere in one of Dr. Stone's books that we can best touch the heart's of others when we ourselves are in a state of abundance.
One last lesson, Djwhal Khul (an ascended master made famous by the channeled work of Madam Blavatsky and Alice Bailey in the early and mid 20th centuries) has written in a message, "When you wear the colours green and gold in your own energy field you'll naturally magnetize to you more money". I try to remember that whatever lies in front of me is part of my learning and lessons and that sometimes hardship or problems can lead to the best lessons (golden nuggets of wisdom).

Links to good written material on meditation

2008-10-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

I just thought I would place on the blog two links that I have found to be very useful myself, and would recommend to meditation practitioners of all backgrounds. The first is an atricle by Dr Stone from the I AM University website entitled "How to Become an Integrated Spiritual Master of Meditation in a Full Spectrum Prism Synthesis Understanding" which is very good from the point of view of getting an overview of what meditation is, and also getting a feel for the wide variety of ways in which it can be practised. The second is an article by an english Buddhist Monk by the name of Ajahn Brahmavamso entitled "The Basic Method of Meditation" although this article explains meditation from the point of view of a particular Buddhist school, I feel that the basic practises it outlines; that of letting go, present moment awareness, silent awareness and sustained attention to the breathing are techniques that are universally applicable, and any meditator from any mystery school or tradition can benefit from understanding and practising them.
Enjoy!

Is the ego all bad?

2008-10-08T05:38:00.000-07:00

A lot of people on the spiritual path experience a certain level of confusion when it comes to our egos. Can we keep any part of our ego if we embark on our path? Or does it all have to be sacrificed? Here is one answer I gave in response to a related question. Posted with thanks to the student for the question:

Question: Toby, I’d like to ask if you can please help me clarify two things: - Is the ego all bad? We talk about negative ego, is there a positive ego?

Answer: No, the ego is not all bad. When we talk of the ego, what we are referring to is the sum total of our thoughts (mental body), feelings (emotional body), sub-conscious mind, conscious mind and physical body. The ego is the sum total of ourselves that functions in daily life, that thinks, feels, talks, acts and so on...

From this definition we can see that the term 'ego' is a neutral term that is used to refer to ourselves as a personality in daily life. On the path of integrated mastery we are not trying to destroy our ego, we are simply trying to;
1) Recognize the aspects of our ego that are good and positive, and to strengthen and preserve them.
2) Recognize the aspects of our ego that are negative or unwholesome and destroy, reprogram, heal and re-work these parts of our ego into positive or spiritualized habits and energies.
By engaging in this process over time we build a 'positive ego'. By this I mean a personality within self that is deeply happy and harmonious and that thinks, feels, speaks and acts in an altogether positive way that is in harmony with our true spiritual being.

The 'negative ego' is a term that is used to describe all of the negative or dysfunctional aspects of our ego. In the category of the negative ego is placed all of our fear-based thinking and feeling, all delusion, all separation consciousness, all selfish egotism, all imbalanced thinking. The negative ego is 'all bad' in the sense that it is all the energy, habits, feelings and perceptions presently in our consciousness that definitely needs to be overcome, re-worked, healed, re-programmed and spiritualized in order to find our inner peace and to make progress on the path of integrated mastery.
The negative ego in the I AM University teachings is set up in 'opposition' to 'Christ consciousness', which is basically the process of learning to think, feel and act from our positive spiritual or Christed mind (the Christ here referring to the original pattern or blueprint for our consciousness that was conceived during its creation in the spiritual realms) . You can read more about the negative ego and Christ consciousness here:

So, in conclusion, the ego is not all bad, it simply refers to the sum total of our self as a personality on earth. On the spiritual path / the path of Integrated Mastery we are not trying to destroy our ego, we are trying to re-work it into a positive, harmonious, balanced organism. In order to do this we do have to overcome our 'negative ego' which is our fear based and separative thinking.

This is an important point to be clear about because there are many spiritual practitioners who labor under the misconception that all ego is bad, and that anything to do with our ego we should avoid at all costs. This attitude in itself leads to a host of imbalances and fragmentation!

Meditation and the power of creative imagination

2008-10-01T02:10:00.000-07:00

For many people, the perception and practice of meditaton can get stuck in a rather rigid and formal format that over time can become uninspiring. Using the power of our imagination to respond to daliy life events in a creative way can help us to break out of an overly rigid approach to meditation and to find inspiration for our pracitce from all sorts of surprising sources.
Here are a couple of inspiring examples from a student:

On Native American Elders

I have a natural affinity for the Native Americans. Whenever I meditate upon the shaman elders, I feel peaceful. One morning, I receive an inspiration and visualize a shaman elder clad in deep sky blue Red Indian Hopi tribal dress. He was walking along in the streets which I commonly pass by. I begin to visualize all other city dwellers in the streets to be like him, peaceful, loving and calm! All were walking to their tribal lodge to perform some sacred rituals, prayers or meditation. Respect and honor is their code of life. I take a deep breath and allow myself to be overcome by the sum total quiet and peaceful experience.

The cotton wool meditation

I bought a bottle of vitamin pills. Embedded in it was some soft mass of cotton wool. I took the soft mass of cotton wool out of the bottle and its fluffiness filled my hands immediately. I close my eyes and embrace it with my palms. For a few moments, I become completely overcome by a sense of loving tenderness derived from embracing this piece of soft mass. With this touch, I connect myself with the tenderness, kind lovingness, defenselessness, harmlessness, white purity, gentleness and innocence of the cotton wool. Like a kitten, like a lamb, Jesus/Kuan Yin/God picks me up and holds me dearly in their arms. I allow myself to experience, to feel and to receive this love from God.

On Sleep and Dreams

2008-10-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

Meditation and the sleeping/dream state are connected in that they both work with more subtle levels of consciousness than we normally use in our everyday, waking consciousness. As we progress in our meditation practice, the opportunity arises for us to start to use our sleep in order to complement our meditation practice. Below is my response to a recent question from a student that touches upon this subject:

Q: I have not been working consciously with my dreams and I usually don't make conscious dreams. I would like to begin doing more clearing work and more learning, receiving more spiritual knowledge in my dreams. Do you know about Tibetan dream analysis?

A: I don't know/have not read much about Tibetan dream analysis specifically, but in general I dream a lot and make a point of recording what I do dream as I find it very meaningful for reflection.

One classical exercise you might like to try in order to increase your awareness and effectiveness regarding sleep and dream time is, as you are falling asleep, to consciously work your way back through the events of the day, and review each one of them in your mind. If you fall asleep doing this, your mind will continue to process the day’s events in the same way that you were doing before you fell asleep.
This is one way to direct you consciousness during sleep time.

The second thing that you might try is to meditate immediately before you go to bed, and then try and retain conscious awareness of the energies and themes of the meditation as you fall asleep. Your mind will then naturally gravitate towards inner plane sources of spiritual inspiration/education (related to the themes of your meditation) whilst you sleep, and so you may find that you have dreams that reflect this.

One note of caution here, sometimes, if we are very busy in our outer, waking life, it is best just to focus on solid sleep and getting rested. Sometimes we can pursue active learning and development whilst we sleep by using methods such as those described above, however at other times it may be best simply to deliberately cultivate sound sleep, and not too much else.

Balance is the key here.

A speech by the late David Foster Wallace

2008-09-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

I just got sent this link by a freind whom I shared many hours meditating with as a monk. I think there is a lot in it that is really useful for the aspiring meditator, as well as the aspiring human being!!

On being a ‘love finder’ versus being a ‘fault finder’

2008-09-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting areas of the spiritual path that many people find difficult to reconcile is that of finding a balance between keeping a spiritual perception of (and perspective on) any given situation or person, whilst at the same time being able to recognize and deal with our own and other people’s manifest flaws and imperfections.
How can we be a ‘love finder’, seeing the good qualities in all around us, whilst at the same time being a ‘fault finder’ in the sense of making an accurate assessment of what needs to be improved?
This came up in a question that I was recently asked by a student; I have placed my answer along with the question below…

Here is the question:
“My question as I take this to heart and practice in my daily life is: Knowing that in any situation there is always room for improvement, am I being a “fault-finder’ if I call out the areas for improvement? Teachers do it to help students do better and I know I do it with my employees. So it is not that we regard everything as perfect, but that we point out the needed areas for improvement in a loving way – not in a malicious, scandalous or critical manner. Likewise, I should be prepared to take the same “constructive” criticism and not feel slighted when these are offered to me. I will be thankful if these are offered in a loving manner. Should it be the case that it is offered to me in a manner that is “destructive” – I will ensure that I have my golden bubble of protection around me so that these “attack” thoughts and arrows do not penetrate and get through to me. Is the above interpretation correct in terms of how I can practice this principle of being a Love Finder?”

Here is my answer:
The first point here is that to stop being a fault finder should not mean that we lose our faculties of discernment and ability clearly to identify areas that need improvement in ourselves, others and life situations. As you observe, it is part of the function of a teacher, mentor (and sometimes a parent) to point out the faults of those in their charge in order to help them improve. So, if you are in a position of responsibility toward others, then it is actually your responsibility to point out their faults and help them improve :-) However, when you do this you are not losing sight of the inherent perfection and worthiness that they possess within them.
There are basically two extremes here - the first is to see others’ faults, which then causes you to see them as inherently bad and faulty. The other extreme is only to see the pure spirit within the person, and lose your ability to discern the conventional faults and areas where that person is making mistakes. In fact, both of these extremes are of the negative ego, although the latter is more subtly so.
The Christed or ‘integrated spiritual’ balance is found in seeing the inherent purity within people, but without losing your ability to see clearly their faults and articulate the solutions to these flaws in a clear way.

Regarding others who point out our faults with a negative and/or malicious motivation, you are right in that keeping up your golden bubble of protection and preventing any attack energy getting to you is really the way to go. If you do this, you will also then be in a position to see any constructive feedback that you can take from their criticism. Just because their motivation is faulty, does not mean that there may not be some truth in what they are saying!!

In terms of mentoring employees and our children, I feel showing them how to receive criticism and feedback in a constructive way is really a huge gift that we can give them. If they are able to receive this in a positive and objective way, then that really opens the door for them to a lifetime of learning, improvement and truly increases their ability to achieve to their highest potential.
I think even personality level life coaches would see this to be the case. For example I remember reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki (the founder of the 'rich dad' series of books on finance and wealth management), the final chapter of which was a list of his 'golden keys' to success. One of the major ones was being able to receive feedback and criticism in an open and positive way.

Reflections on the first 'Earth Healing and Transformation' Meditation

2008-09-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, the 12th September, saw the beginning of a new once monthly series of meditations that I have entitled 'Meditations for Earth Healing and Transformation'. I have had a mind to do these classes for a while now, as I feel strongly that both our own path to inner peace, wholeness and integrity, and our survival as a planet depend upon our developing strong relationships to the other living beings which inhabit our planet with us.

Who are these other living beings? They are those which inhabit the human, faery(or devic), animal, plant/tree and crystal kingdoms. Each person contains within them the latent potential to develop links with different members of these other kingdoms and, by nourishing these relationships, we find that we can develop strong alliances with particular animals, plants, devas, crystals and humans on both an inner and outer level. These relationships in turn nurture and inform different lines of action that we may then choose to take on a practical level in order to bring harmony and peace to the inhabitants of the earth in ways that we could not have conceived of before.

This may lead to a complete revision and regeneration of our perception of what it means to be a part of this beautiful planet that we call the earth. There is something deeply spiritual that awakens within us as we embark upon our relationship with our fellow beings in the other kingdoms of the world. It is as if, previously, we were seeing ourselves and our planet in only two dimensions, but now we are seeing things with a new depth and sense of reality that is fully three dimensional, or even fourth or fifth dimensional.

Having said all this, I don't think even I was prepared for quite how powerful the first meditation experience was. It certainly made me feel that my impulse to initiate these classes was a good one. Here is what one of those who attended the class said about their experience:

"Connecting with the six directions and visualizing our guides in forms such as animal, minerals and human was especially fantastic. The themes and methods we used particularly appealed to me and were most creative and productive. On meeting my guides during the meditation I was rather moved - the energies were extremely empowering, positive and loving. I have, in fact, felt able to recall and connect with the energy of the guides/allies anytime I have needed to, since the session. I felt very strong connections to them, and to the Earth and space in which we visualized the guides/allies. This has continued to aid my positivity, confidence and calmness during the days that have followed."

If anyone who was not able to attend the class but would like a copy of it, please let me know, a CD copy is available for purchase.
The date for next month’s class is Tuesday 14th October 7.30-8.30pm at Basic Essence.

For an explaination of the image at the top of this post please go here