Effort and the Freedom Beyond It
El esfuerzo y la libertad más allá de él
A student describes a breakthrough in which lifelong habitual efforting suddenly fell away during meditation, and the teacher clarifies where true freedom lies in relation to effort and non-effort.
Effort and the Freedom Beyond It
A student describes a breakthrough in which lifelong habitual efforting suddenly fell away during meditation, and the teacher clarifies where true freedom lies in relation to effort and non-effort.
I was debating whether I should say anything, because sometimes when I speak, it feels like I'm speaking as "somebody," and that almost reinforces the sense of being a separate person. But then I decided to go ahead with it.
In the beginning, I took your recommendation to keep the eyes open, since I usually keep them closed, and it felt too challenging. I did it for a while. Things felt a little less solid, but it was like climbing a very steep hill. A lot of effort. It's probably good to do here and there, not as a marathon, but as a way to dip my toe in the water.
Then I closed my eyes. It just naturally went that way. Somehow I heard you say something about just being here, just experiencing what's here right now, and the way you said it felt like a very direct, personal invitation. It's like the nickel dropped. The efforting of trying to take in what you're saying, trying to get it, trying to retain it, all of that lifted. I don't have to do anything. I've been hearing this for years, and all I have to do is just hear the words. I don't have to figure out what they mean. I just hear them.
It was like: where did the effort go? Decades ago I noticed that effort is a huge part of how I approach things. And then after the effort dropped, there was a question: "Do I understand? Will I remember? Do I get it?" But the invitation was right there, and I got it. It was like, "Oh, that's the piece." And then every once in a while the doubt would arise, but it would pass naturally, as long as there was no effort. Where's the problem? It felt like finding the end of a tangled pile of yarn. Somehow your invitation and my age-old efforting just clicked.
It would be great for you to consider that it's not just the way I said it. I wouldn't want you to leave here thinking it all depends and hangs on the way somebody says it.
I knew you were going to say that. Yes. Thank you for tracking me relentlessly.
The two sides of the trap
Because it's two sides of a trap. One is: "It's all about effort and it's all up to me." The other is: "It all depends on something I have no control over." Then you are at the mercy of those two extremes. On one side, what you do is never good enough, and it's always about more effort, always coming short. On the other side, the solution is completely out of your control; it depends on me or whomever or the government or whatever. Obviously I'm painting those as extreme versions. It could be a lot more subtle. But it will still be the two ways in which we don't see the reality, which in this metaphor is the center.
Tell me more about the center.
A hair off from the center
For example, you were a hair off from the center towards the efforting side when you said, "All I have to do is listen to the words." You dropped this huge idea that it's about massive effort, but there was still one hair of effort in what you saw: "I need to hear the words, and the words are coming from the teacher." So it's a hair off in effort and a hair off in "it depends on the way the teacher said it this time." Freedom still seems to lie in something that requires effort, or in something external, not here, not now, depending on something else somewhere else.
I would say that what I experienced was that effort is not needed. What was left was just being here, and then there was the peace. I guess your part of it is that you're an amplifier of that for me. But what I've been noticing is that I don't "bring it into my life" so much as I just notice it showing up in my life. Is that valid, or is there something off with what I'm saying?
Clarifying the glimpse
No, it's very valid. What I'm saying is: you had a glimpse. And you're interpreting a process, a cause and effect. What I'm offering has to do with the framing and the post-interpretation, to clarify the understanding. When you taste something, when something releases and you feel you've touched something more real, more fundamental, what I'm bringing is a subtle clarification of your understanding of what happened and how it works. It's not an efforting. You cannot even drop the effort. What you can see is that something is happening effortlessly.
I want to be as clear as I can about this. Whatever this persona is, it's deeply ingrained in it to effort. This persona has believed as long as it can remember that effort is the ticket. And now this persona is getting it, that it doesn't have to effort. Maybe that's what I'm reporting to you. Maybe it's the persona that's reporting. Is that what's going on? I want to understand this.
What sees is not the persona
By "persona" you're talking about your mind, your ego. That's very useful, because that's what learns, adjusts, grows, and develops. But what glimpses, what sees, is not that.
What can happen is this: you disidentify from what you're calling the persona that knows efforting is the ticket. That pattern creates a characteristic you can identify with, because it's always splitting things in half and saying, "It's through effort." That creates a narrative, a structure, and your body-mind operates with that kind of direction. It creates certain advantages in functioning and certain disadvantages. Because it becomes a habit, there won't be freedom there. If everything has to come through effort, there's no freedom in many ways. For example, you will not be open to seeing the other side, which is that a lot comes from no effort, and that a fundamental aspect of reality is non-efforting.
What happened in the meditation, at least as I understand it, is that you stepped back, disidentified from that structure. You've been seeing it progressively more and more, but now you're seeing it more deeply. That separation also allows a certain kind of reprogramming, where your character, your body and mind, can start functioning with more freedom. The freedom doesn't depend on your character and body-mind being free. At that level there's always going to be limitations and a lack of freedom. But there's going to be a progressive increase in flexibility, an ability to respond to different situations without the program that says, "I always have to go this way" (in your case, effort).
So your human experience can start to enjoy the fruit of no effort. But that's because you can learn to see when effort is not needed.
The deeper recognition
There's another aspect, which is in a sense more fundamental. It has to do with this seeing, and with what is pointed to in more tricky ways, for example: effort and non-effort. This is wu wei, from Chinese tradition. Wu wei is not something you do. It's something you realize. It's a fundamental nature of reality.
What can happen through seeing that is this: something that you are, which is vast and unknowable, sees its own nature, recognizes its own nature, which is non-effort. And within that, there is also efforting. Now your functioning, your body-mind, can become more permeable and aligned with that. You learn to function in a more free way, and that's ultimately what matters.
I say "ultimately" because we can break this down into steps. Developmentally, a baby is born and there's no sense of a localized, separate self. If development is successful, that sense of being a center will form. We separate from the vastness, and that's a required developmental process. The way it happens is through identification with polarities: "I will function more as an efforter." That creates a characteristic. But then we can become more free in opening up to other ways of responding and functioning in life.
So there are two aspects. One is: you've come this far in your life thanks to efforting, so it's not a bad thing. For somebody with a different story of non-efforting, it would be the same kind of thing flipped the other way. They've had gains through non-efforting, and if they're attached to that form of functioning, they will gain freedom by recognizing when efforting is valuable.
But freedom is not in the efforting or in the non-efforting. Freedom is where both are the same thing. When you are completely disidentified from any form of functioning, efforting and non-efforting are the same thing.
I think that's helpful to hear, that efforting and non-efforting are the same thing. Could you say a little more about that?
Effort and non-effort as one
When you choose non-efforting, it's a form of doing.
But what if I don't choose? That's the thing.
I'm talking about the level of functioning. What you're talking about is the more fundamental place. And there, I'm saying there is no difference between effort and non-effort. It's freedom. That's where there isn't choosing. Choosing is happening. Action is happening. Movement is happening.
So non-efforting is not a basic characteristic of freedom?
Only if non-efforting is experienced while there is effort. That's why it gets tricky. You can map it into an idea and flip to the other side, where it's all about non-efforting. You can reprogram yourself in the opposite direction.
Can you give an example of freedom in non-efforting alongside efforting?
Yes. I could be weightlifting, and there's no effort, even if physically my body-mind is under stress and strain.