The phrase “effortless meditation” may sound to you like an oxymoron or a clever marketing tease, but it’s neither. This immediate reaction arises from the experience many beginners have when they approach meditation as a process of subduing the mind. That certainly feels like effort.
Meditation is customarily taught as a relaxation technique, a remedy for anxiety, stress, the overactive mind, insomnia, and a host of other mental disturbances of modern life. Learning meditation usually begins with a technique, a method, and related instructions applied with considerable practice and effort toward the aim of subduing the overactive mind. Such techniques might include repetition of a phrase, observing the breath, guided imagery, mantra repetition, or the mindful training of attention and concentration. Each of these approaches, and others, may temporarily calm the mind and even allow for certain insights.
But these transient results require dependence on a method to subdue the mind, often generating an unending mental struggle, leading to frustration and a sense of “I can’t do this.” The positive effect of a calming the day-to-day mind lasts as long as the technique is actively utilized. However, it’s difficult to sustain or integrate the results into daily life. And, most importantly, methods and techniques do not allow for the cultivation and revelation of our inner self with its natural and stable stillness, wisdom, clarity, and freedom.
Why are these prevalent methods so limited? It’s because we approach mental activity as if it was a problem, something to fix, stop, control, or remedy. And that, only makes the active mind more active, as the ego self tries with increasing effort to control what is normal – the natural arising and falling of mental activity in the human mind. While occupied by this approach, we fail to discover the simplest and most effective approach, one that is natural and effortless.
Why is this possible? It’s possible because our inner self, in contrast to the ordinary mind, is naturally, already, and always still and present. That does not mean the mind ceases to generate mental activity, but as long as we remain in a natural, witnessing awareness mental movements will come and go as they do without creating a disturbance. We don’t and can’t stop the mind from generating mental and sensory activity. But we can relate to mental activity as an aware witness rather than as an involved drama maker. If we live from our deeper self, mental activity is an accepted expression of consciousness that need not constantly grab our attention.
Further, what makes meditation is that we don’t have to learn an observing awareness, create, or imagine it. It is already and has always been within. It is our foundational self. It is our essential nature. In truth, it is who we are. The personal self, which has no capacity for a stable inner peace, is a mere mental construction composed of our learned experiences, multiple identities, and fixed perspectives. It can have moments of relative calm, but not sustained serenity.
To experience our natural self we follow what the ancients called the via negativa. There is nothing we have to do except let go of the belief in and attachment to who we are not – the strung together collection of our life experiences, what we call our personal self. That is where some wisdom, intention, and effort are useful. Not in an effort to control the mind, but in letting go of the belief that we are our personal self. Softening and letting go does not require effort, merely understanding and practice.
That is why “effortless meditation” is both possible and the true core of meditation. Let go. Do nothing. Let go. Then, experience your true inner self that self-reveals itself, when the mind has been stilled through a natural presence. It is then that we will find what we seek, find our true home – not in external activities or pleasures – but rather at the center of our being. This is not to negate our involvement in worldly activities, but merely to suggest that the only true and stable source of serenity, ease, and wisdom is our natural, inner self.
For many years, I have taught different approaches to meditation. Where I have finally landed is at the simplest, most effortless, and yet most profound approach. Let’s recall. Meditation has two aims. The first and most common in the West is the enhancement or upgrading of the quality of day-to-day human life. The second is to reveal, experience, and live in the natural self that lies beyond our limited and constructed personal self. Here we experience the rich perfume of our true nature – a peace that surpasses understanding, pure mental clarity, happiness without a reason, a wise natural intelligence, selfless presence, and freedom from the known.
Effortless meditation begins with directly re-experiencing our natural self, rather than employing methods that seek to quiet the mind. We start at the end. We start by dropping right into the direct experience of an unconditioned awareness, our true self, the essence of meditation. This approach will give us two for one. As we increasingly live in our true self, its qualities will simultaneously pervade and transform our day-to-day life.Please, I ask you to not believe that meditation is difficult. The unexamined ordinary life is difficult. Meditation is the natural experience of who we truly are and how the world actually exists. That simple presence is always effortlessly available when we stop, do nothing, and merely experience simple presence.
Podcast: Effortless Meditation
Meditation and Beyond at Amazon