Mindfulness With Oli Doyle, Hargreaves St, Bendigo (2025)

08/12/2021

Oh friend, I am tired of this world, of the hurrying and scurrying and planning and executing, I am tired of this world.

Tired of the buzzing here and there, the scheming, the waiting, the anticipation. Will life turn out as I had planned or will it take another path? The suspense is killing me.

I am tired of trying to get somewhere else, of imagining some future will make me happy, of thinking thinking thinking.

About past and future, about me and you, about this that and the other.

I am tired.

I think I will lay down here in the sun, I think I will do what is needed and no more.

I think I will not think so much, I think I will just be.

Let the world take care of itself for a lifetime or two, let the universe run the course it has planned.

Let me dwell in this, with no concern for that, breathing one at a time, walking one at a time, taking care of whatever is in front of my nose.

Let the world decide what that is, for it is wiser than I and it has more energy for such things.

Let me sit in the evening breeze of this eternal day.

Let me fade into stillness.

Let me be.

05/11/2021

The to-do list in my head is a funny thing, a list of pretend tasks to be completed by an imagined one, infused with an importance they don’t have.

Something inside speaks as if those things were a measure of my success, as if the number of things ticked off correlated with the success of my life.

But what did I tick off a week ago, a month ago, a year ago? What tasks did I complete on the 7th of March when I was seven years old?

I have no idea.

Those doings fade faster than the light at dusk, a flicker of activity, a spark leaping from the fire.

Imagine if every spark was seen as important, if you tried to hold onto them all and keep them alive, the world would be nothing but fire.

The fire is brilliant and beautiful because of its impermanent e, because it dances with the shining brilliance that can only emerge from stillness.

Just the same, what I did today means nothing, ultimately.
To the voice in my head that sounds like waste and purposelessness, but to the real Me it is pure delight.

Life is dancing through this body, wild and mad and chaotic, also still and serene and calm.

Life contains all, it births all and swallows all.

Life IS all.

That list is but a series of words infused with imagined meaning, while this breath and this step and this heartbeat are the universal dance.

So please friends, write a careful list of things to do tomorrow.

Check it twice.

Set it on fire.

And dance beside the sparkling flames.

11/05/2021

In meditation it is easy to be bothered by the various inner objects that arise and take attention away from what we are trying to notice.

You sit and breathe and try to watch, feel, notice breath, but thoughts about something that happened yesterday, about something that may or may not happen tomorrow, come and grab your attention.

Then maybe you get frustrated, thinking you are doing something wrong, that your meditation is not working correctly, or that it isn’t worth the time and effort at all!

What happens in this way of practising is that we are focused on a task (watching the breath) and we measure the success or failure of our practice by how well we manage this task.

We could call this, ‘meditation as a job’, we are trying to accomplish something (becoming peaceful) by doing a particular thing, and when we don’t do that thing well, we get upset.

When I first sat down to meditate this was exactly what happened - I read about breath awareness and decided to master it, and when I got distracted I also got annoyed and disheartened.

A few years later I realised that the practice was about learning to notice, about sitting and knowing myself as the space in which all those distractions were arising, and everything started to click.

My practice then shifted from concentration to noticing, from trying to focus on a particular thing to knowing myself as spacious awareness and from that position allowing everything to arise as it did.

When I get lost now in meditation I feel the breath, then I notice the space and the Awareness itself, then I sit and allow everything to arise within that awareness.

Just that noticing is enough.

10/05/2021

Sometimes when emotional reactions come, a story comes along with them.

The story is that I shouldn’t be reacting, that I should be able to deal with that situation without being bothered, that my practice should be strong enough to stop such a reaction from arising.

This is pure resistance.

True practice allows everything to be as it is, letting all emotions, thoughts and experiences arise in the space of Now.

In True Practice we are not bothered by these arisings, but not because they don’t come.

When we are clear in our practice we know that we are not the reaction, the thought, emotion, belief, we are the space in which they arise, the Awareness that watches everything come and go.

So our work is to return to the Awareness itself, to know ourselves as that, and to let anything that comes up in Awareness be exactly as it is.

When an emotional reaction arises my job is not to move it on or to lament, my job is to remember that I am the space, the Awareness, and to watch it come and go.

This means that there can be no mistakes in practice, that there is nothing wrong with my emotional state, it is just another part of the experience of Now, just more fuel for this process of waking up.

07/05/2021

My future is always complicated, a tangled web of maybes and should and could and have to’s.

And my past? What a mess of mistakes and should haves and why nots and whatnot.

When both combine to create the story of my life the picture is all blurry, the story is a scary one and I don’t like where the ending is going.

But right Now? Right Now is fine, better than fine!

I hear a bird singing its evening song, a car in the driveway, I feel shoulders and hands, fingers on keys, breath in lungs, then gone, then back.

This is-ness is easy to deal with, it needs no effort from me, it simply takes care of itself. Letter keys are struck and I have no idea what words they will make, whether a sentence will come, when it will stop.

It just comes.

An itch gets scratched, another breath comes by itself, this heart moves oxygen just where its needed and I can’t take credit for any of it.

All that is moves on its own and I remember Now that I don’t need to micro manage it, that I can’t, even if I wanted to, but I can do something.

I can engage with This, delight in it, love it with all my heart, feel every breath, notice every step.

Or at least I can make that my path. Thought takes me away from time to time you see, but nothing is lost, everything remains here waiting when I come back.

Everything in this instant is already taken care of, including me.

My only job is to fall deeper in love with it with the rise and fall of every breath.

07/05/2021

Come and sit beside me old friend and let us dispense with all our ridiculous talking.

For a hundred thousand lifetimes (or was it just one moment) we have nattered away, trying to understand the important things and always missing the point.

Maybe the answers we seek lay not in words and ideas, in concepts and thoughts, but in the silence itself.

Maybe the wisdom we chase is not intellectual prowess but the open channel to the universal wisdom opening up, moment after moment.

What we look for is peace and joy and contentment and I am sure we won’t find them in discussion.

And yet, after we find that peace and joy and contentment we can surely express them in our talk. Speaking from that place of peace we will have a lot of fun and never will we lose our way.

But for now, let’s forget about words and see how this moment tastes.

Can you feel your breath dear friend? Your heart? Your toes?

Can you feel them without any thought of breath, or heart, or toes?

Can you just be?

06/05/2021

The truth you seek will not reveal itself from behind your eyes, from some brilliant concoction of brain, it is waiting to be found inside your chest.

It is no scavenger hunt, this quest we call Life, it is a game of hide and seek, but you are the only one playing.

Feel it now, that divine chest, can you listen and allow its song to be heard? Can you fall in love with love itself?

Rest attention there and allow all to be revealed in time, rest attention there and let everything unfold in its own perfect way. Rest.

There is nothing to figure out through words and concepts, nothing you need to understand to be free.

Just breathe and feel your heartspace, let yourself dissolve into that wonder. Forget about ideas of this and that, about beliefs and certainties and the way the world works. None of it is true.

All words are wrong, sooner or later, all beliefs crumble, all certainties die with the passing of time, all concepts are rotting even as you chew them.

Don’t you want the fresh fruit of inner knowing, which is understood by feeling, not by thought?

Will you trade the heavy carcass of your beliefs for the above, the delightful, the freshness of this Now?

How long will you drag that sack of rocks around, always hoping that one will be the key to happiness, never realising that the sack itself is the cause of suffering?

You, my friend, have suffered enough!

That pile of stinking donkey s**t you keep under your bed, the one you call past, is spoiling your sleep, and your waking, is it not time to bury it?

And the flames of desire, the fire you call future is burning you every time you try to enter it, haven’t you enough blisters?

That divine chest will never burn you, nor will it disturb your perfect slumber, it merely gives without being asked and soothes without being called upon.

Are you ready to find your way there? Are you ready to feel the breath coming and going for ten thousand years?

Are you ready to find your deepest heart?

05/05/2021

We are like children who wandered out onto the front porch and forgot how to get home.

We were so sure that fulfilment was to be found out there in the snow and the rain that we stood watching, waiting, looking for the answers out there in the world.

There was a whisper behind us, the voice of our own perfection calling from inside the house, asking if we wanted our tea yet, but we did not hear it.

Even as we started meditation we were sure that the answers lay out there in the right religion, the right teaching, the right technique to bring us to happiness.

And all the while perfection and love spoke to us from inside the house, singing songs and calling us back inside.

We started on a path and again the future came, setting goals for fulfilment at some other time, never to be realised Now, always later, when things were resolved.

Maybe we became set on the goal of being free from thought, the mind chattering on and on about how it would one day be free of mind chatter, and that sweet voice kept whispering, calling us inside.

We seemed to have journeyed so far out into the snow, and the goal, the peace, the happiness, remained always just over the next rise, always close enough to see but never to touch, and so we seemed to wander.

But then the voice came clearer, maybe because we stopped chattering for a split second, maybe because the wind died down just then, whatever the cause, the whisper could then be heard.

And so we began looking, knowing that the whisper was the true call, that our path home lay in following it, still believing it must be whispering from far away. And then we turned.

We turned 180 degrees and moved backwards, attention sinking into attention, heart dissolving into heart and we felt the warmth of the fire and sat back in our favourite chair.

In that moment we knew that the balcony was a dream, that we never left that warm embrace, that home was never even a single step away.

True love brought us home, to the place we never left. True love turned out to be we ourselves.

And by the fire we dozed and snored and smiled, free always, free at last.

03/05/2021

The practice of mindfulness is not a changing of anything, it is not a way to get to a different state of mind or feel better.

Mindfulness is the wholehearted engagement with this moment, whatever it presents. This moment comes as situations, thoughts, people, emotions, even the state of the physical body.

These combined occurrences we could call ‘What Is’ and our practice is to sit amongst all of what is and to learn to observe it without reaction.

The fastest way to find this place of non-reaction is to realise that the reactions that come are not actually yours, they come without conscious choice, rising out of belief clashing with situation as seeds give rise to plants if given the right conditions.

The conditions of your heart give rise to those reactions, and if you learn to watch the reactions as they happen without getting lost in them or trying to suppress them, you will begin to see those conditions as they are.

Seeing the emotions and beliefs that live inside us without losing ourselves in them, we can start to observe emotions and beliefs directly, and in the light of true love they will begin to change.

The true love I speak of is simply Awareness without judgement, which is thought, getting in the way. Everything you look upon with true love is nourished, and as you look into your inner world with this love everything will start to balance itself.

01/05/2021

You dear friend have never not been perfect, you have never not been complete.

Peace was hiding in you every second of this life, but the voice that drove you on, chasing peace, chasing happiness, seemed too loud for you to hear it.

Nothing outside you can deliver that happiness, it is already in you and it comes out to play when your attention is anchored in this instant.

And so feeling the breath is better than doing your homework, feeling every step is better than rushing to make it on time, and listening to the birds is better than listening to your worries.

If the point of your life is happiness, stop trying to find it through something else, through success, through doing stuff, through being some perfect version of the self that only exists inside your head!

Just stop running! Sink into the couch, it will hold you!

Smile, your face won’t crack!

Feel whatever is here now, it can’t hurt you!

No achievement will bring happiness, no activity will bring joy.

Happiness IS the achievement, and joy flows into what you do, once you find and express it.

So rest easy perfect friend. That voice in your head is lying. Your beauty is brighter than the sun.

27/04/2021

When I first sat down upon a black cushion and tried to escape my mind I didn’t do it for you old friend, I did it for me.

That was the small me, created out of words and images, the shadow puppet cast from the light of Awareness, the nattering voice trying to grab and hold down attention.

That little me wanted to escape from itself, from the feelings created when I listened to it obsessively, and so I believed I wanted to escape too.

I wanted to get away from the torture of my thoughts, the torment of a world that seemed to disappoint at every turn.

I had no thought of you.

I guess I was what they call ‘thoughtful’ then, but I never knew how much I loved you friend.

Now that I am thought-less, (at least sometimes), my whole life is for you, just to express this love that is so hot it burns away identity, thread by thread.

When you hear how I love you I wonder what you will think…will you look at your body, your name, your Story Self and wonder how I could love such a thing?

Or will you look a little deeper?

That story of who you are, that cheap fiction in the library of the universe, is that what you think I am in love with?

No!

Behind the eyes that look, behind the heart that feels, there you are hiding but I see you old friend, I see you!

That you is not young or old, tall or short, black or white, that you is Me in a different costume.

Loving you is self love, is delight in the wonderful Life that is everything.

I see through your costume, through your pretending, I see your heart because it is my heart also.

And so all that I do from this moment, every step, every movement, every word and gesture and every moment of stillness, I do all this in devotion to You.

You are myself in other clothes, and my only wish is to sit with you, to look deep into your eyes, to dance and sing and delight in the beauty of what we are.

27/04/2021

I grew tired of the past, tired of the future, I resolved to live in the Now.

But past kept catching me and pulling me in. Future kept whispering of what I could be.

This Now stayed silent.

So I tried harder, meditated more, kept my goal in view:

One day I will live in the Now…one day.

Then I grew tired of straining, of trying to be present, of seeking the goal of being here, Now.

Something relaxed.

I saw.

Saw that past was a thought arising Now.

That future was a thought arising Now.

That time isn’t.

Everything is Now.

I had been looking at time as if it was multiple choice, as if I could pick past, present or future, as if there was anything but Now.

I saw that past is not a place or a time, that it comes as memory, that future is not a place or a time, that it comes as imagination.

That Now is everything, always.

I knew then that since past and future don’t exist, the present moment is just an idea, a phrase to describe reality.

Life is not multiple choice, it is binary - either we live in reality or in imagination.

We live in story or we live in This.

And while imagination is scary sometimes, and wild and out of control, reality is clear and kind.

Can I deal with this instant? Always. Can I deal with the forever of my imagination? Never in a thousand lifetimes.

And so I sit here Now, fingers tapping keys, clock ticking, dog snoring. What I just wrote is already imagination, and by the time you read it it will be ancient history.

I can’t write about this Now, not really, I can only describe its echo.

And yet those echoes are beautiful when they call to the knowing inside your heart centre, when they call you home.

This breath dear one, feel this breath and come home.

Feel your heart beating and come home.

Dissolve into this instant and come home.

Know that you never left.

25/04/2021

As the waves crashed together they looked at each other with hatred, disgust.

‘That one is rough and foamy while I am smooth and clear’ said one.

‘That one thinks it’s better than me just because I’m broken’ said the other.

And together they crashed, one blending into the other, the substance of them identical in every way, their shape becoming one shape.

Individuality dissolved in that moment and there was just one wave, one energy, one intelligence, one Life.

There were no waves, only water.

Your enemy is like this, the one you curse and attack (in your head or in the world), the one you criticise and blame and dislike.

Life has taken on that shape, it is dancing in that form a while and you call it wrong, you tell it to be different, you shout and stomp and yell.

You know better than Life in that moment, you know what it should look like, how it should act, how it would best perform its dance.

And Life looks at you and smiles, or maybe it pokes out its tongue and then it dances, wild and free of constraint, beyond right/wrong, good/bad it shakes and shimmies and howls.

You are that Life too, as the wave is water doing its dance. You and that so called enemy are not different, not even a shred.

Can you sense the Awareness underneath all the noise? That is You!

Look into the eyes of another and that Awareness is there too.

Only the noise is different, the shape of the wave, and that is just a passing storm, a weather pattern that will last but a moment, while what’s underneath is eternal.

When you look into your enemy’s eyes, do you see the noise, the foam, the wave?

Or do you see yourself?

Look deeply and know your truth.

22/04/2021

Mostly people are like trees without roots, delighted by the sunshine and the breeze they look up and out until they topple over.

Because they forget their connection to the source those trees have no stability. The winds of the world push them this way and that and they slide back and forth uncontrollably.

Profit and loss, praise and blame, love and hate. Those trees are swept this way and that by fortune, and not knowing their depth they are at the mercy of the world outside.

When we breathe in and feel it fully, we are connecting with our roots, grounding attention and finding the solid ground that was always there.

When you notice your toes, your feet, your legs, when you connect with them with heartfelt awareness, then you sink those roots even deeper, allowing Life to flow through you and to know itself.

These are simple acts, far too simple for the voice inside our heads to credit as anything useful, and yet…

And yet the greatest of trees grows like this, sending tiny roots, tiny threads into the earth that will expand and deepen into anchors of immense power.

Every breath you take wholeheartedly is like one of these tiny roots, seemingly insignificant, unimportant, in reality those roots connect you to an intelligence that is beyond comprehension.

Trees don’t grow on their own after all, they aren’t ‘doing’ the growing, instead they are receptive to the nutrients of the universe.

They don’t make sun, they don’t create water and they didn’t invent the minerals that feed them on their journey, they are just open to all three.

We too cannot create wisdom. Neither can we make understanding dawn or invent an openness of heart.

But when we embrace the breath with wholeheartedness, when we allow what arises in the body and through thought, and when we surrender to this Now that is everything, we become receptive to the nourishment of the universe.

And when we allow that nourishment to grow us in whatever direction it chooses, when we welcome wind and snow and scorching sun, knowing that this is the journey chosen for us, then we can let that delight in this life, whatever it brings.

Knowing the earth, the root, the depths, we can enjoy the sunshine above.

Knowing ourselves to be Awareness itself, we can embrace this instant with a smile, a laugh and a handful of tears.

May your smile be wide and may your roots sink deep.

21/04/2021

In the blue sky the clouds were dancing, swimming, skidding around and enjoying themselves and the sky was disturbed.

Sky kept seeing every cloud as itself and when it heard their songs sky thought the songs were orders and tried to follow them.

Sky was sad and worried.

The clouds showed what sky could be, if it worked a little harder, tried a little more, if it did what the clouds were saying.

And sky didn’t like feeling sad or worried, and it started to wonder whether the clouds held the mystery to finding happiness again.

And so for a hundred thousand days (or was it years?) sky did just what the clouds said, watching them closely to look for clues, desperate to find the answers it needed.

But the more sky stared at the clouds, the more sad sky felt, the more worried.

The more sky tried to do what the clouds said the more they seemed to change and shift and move.

And finally sky felt so lost, alone and disturbed that it was ready to give up. And so it did.

But sky did not give up on life, it gave up on those clouds. Exhausted as it was it stopped watching so closely, stopped staring right at them, and so it began to notice…

That the clouds kept shifting and changing, kept coming one after another.

That the clouds were wispy and unreliable while sky felt solid and continuous.

The the clouds appeared within sky, watched by sky, and then disappeared again.

And that while sky itself was always there watching, the clouds were flighty and unreliable.

Sky smiled then, remembering how it had been tortured by the shapes that now looked like shadow puppets floating across its vision.

Sky laughed as it remembered how it had tried to do everything the clouds, which it now saw as just shapes in the mist, had instructed it.

And sky settled into itself, calm and clear and spacious and it sat and it watched the cloud show unfold.

You are sky.

You are freedom.

You are not what that voice says you are.

18/04/2021

Imagine this investment pitch:

"I have a once in a lifetime opportunity for you sir/madam! It’s a rare and valuable investment like no other. All you need is to put all your attention into two assets, which we call past and future, for your entire life as long as you are awake.

Yes it’s ok to take a little break occasionally, but otherwise we encourage investors to plough in all their available attention, that’s the best way to grow your assets.

I guess you’re wondering about the payoff right? Well we have a choice of two dividends, called stress and misery, which are paid back to you even as you invest in past and future. So you don’t have to wait for your assets to mature, you just keep reaping the rewards along the way!

And at the end of it all? Well those assets never actually come to maturity, they’re sort of virtual assets…yes like Facebook or Google, you are a smart one! Except that these assets never pay anything back to you directly because they’re not really in existence, but you get those dividends, stress or misery, or some investors opt for both, and they pay out heavily every single day.

Yes that’s right you will start collecting stress and misery just as soon as you start to invest, and the more you put in, the more stress and misery will come your way!"

Is anybody buying?

And yet, when we step back from the habitual patterns that we have been trained to follow over a lifetime, this is what it boils down to. Invest in past and future (which really means thinking about past and future) and the only payoffs are stress and misery.

But if you invest attention in this instant you get to enjoy life as it unfolds, you get to be alive, raw, walking the razor’s edge of this instant. And all it costs is your attention.

16/04/2021

Sadness comes in waves like the ocean tides, but what if?

What if I don’t call it sadness? What then? Without a word to describe that mysterious sensation that touches heart and eyes simultaneously, the feeling rises inside, pulses, dances like waves of heat on the desert sand.

Mind says the feeling is bad, but without resistance it feels quite sweet, like the heart’s layers melting away in the warm spring sunshine.

And as resistance disappears I see that it was never the feeling that caused discomfort, it was the stories rolling around beside it, the constriction that came with the resistance of that sensation.

Without those, where is the problem? What is the issue? I can’t find one?

Sadness, happiness, just words to describe something we don’t understand, rising from a source we can’t find in a life that is the ultimate mystery.

Love everything that comes.

Freedom is there.

16/04/2021

Come sit beside the fire old friend, there is nothing to discuss.

I know, I know, we’re supposed to say there is much to discuss, but haven’t we tried that before?

You and I, the oldest of friends, haven’t we sat beside the fire soaked in warmth and wine for ten thousand years, trying to find the answers by thinking and talking and dreaming and wondering?

Was it ten thousand years or ten thousand lifetimes? I’ve really lost count!

All those words and ideas and thoughts, those beautifully carved sentences so deep and rich, and yet none moved us forward, none led to the place we were seeking.

We must have spent millennia polishing those concepts, finely tuning our ideas until they seemed to gleam right off the tongue, their perfection reflected in the firelight.

And yet a perfect word, a perfect thought…might as well be a perfect lump of s**t for all the good it did us.

Hypnotised by our cleverness, mesmerised by our wonderful words, we missed the beauty that was right there all the time.

We forgot to watch the fire dancing, the glow and flicker of the coals. The wind was whispering to us, hour upon hour, and never did we listen.

And always our hearts were calling, singing a homecoming song that our intellect talked all the way through.

So let us agree old friend, there is nothing to discuss anymore.

We might speak a little, sure, we love to share words, but we know now that they have no meaning, no importance, not really.

We know that what matters is hiding in the silence, that what we need to hear is the song of the heart.

Let us listen together old friend, soaked in the warmth of the fire and the perfect love of the universe, let us smile contentedly at the mystery of it all.

And let us stay here together another ten thousand years, another ten thousand lifetimes, listening to the perfect stillness that even sound can’t disturb, delighting in the wonder of it all.

Mindfulness With Oli Doyle

08/12/2021

05/11/2021

11/05/2021

10/05/2021

07/05/2021

07/05/2021

06/05/2021

05/05/2021

03/05/2021

01/05/2021

27/04/2021

27/04/2021

25/04/2021

22/04/2021

21/04/2021

18/04/2021

16/04/2021

16/04/2021

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share