There Is No Practice To Effortlessly Be
The “problem” with a world driven by the mind is that effortless being is turned into another activity that must be learned or done. Here, the suggestion is that the mind is not a thing like a brain, though it may have correlates to this physical form. It is more simply a way of viewing the world. A process that has no substance but is nevertheless some cosmic mechanism. A proverbial pair of psychedelic spectacles (spectacles that make everything look like a swirl of psychedelic patterns).
We tend to forget we are peering through the mind in the same way we forget we are peering through a pair of psychedelic spectacles because we are paying attention to the patterns that the spectacles produce. We become so engrossed in the patterns that we are witnessing that we become oblivious to the fact that we are what is aware of these patterns.
In the absence of this understanding, these patterns become everything. The mind is a super-computer pattern-matching process that not only organises the information it receives sensorially into these patterns but can also memorise these patterns. Once it has recognised the pattern of a car, it knows all similar patterns. Once it has recognised the pattern of a tree, it recognises all similar patterns. Patterns of information are how the mind finds security. The patterns are not identical and always in a state of flux, and this allows a constant ability for the mind to adapt and learn. In fact, psychological suffering occurs when minds become too attached to and fixated on the patterns they are perceiving. Thus, when someone dies, the pattern of that mind and body in our life naturally takes a while to change, but if we are particularly attached to that pattern for security, then we may never recover from the grief.
Because the mind understands everything in terms of patterns of information as the basis of its security, it is perfectly understandable that it would assume that what is viewing these patterns is just another metaphorical form or pattern called a person. This is the mind’s basic running assumption. It has no way of defining this person in experiential terms. It is just the vaguest of notions. But upon this, the mind projects the meaning of this separate personhood onto the patterns it creates. It, therefore, personalises the whole of existence, creating a story that offers some orientation. The story of being a person in the world who is trying to be happy and live a long life.
Herein lies the clue that such a metaphorical pattern-matching process, which is the mind’s basis of psychological security, is prone to error, as it intrinsically suggests that reality consists of patterns of information as if they were separate building blocks. It cannot see an underlying unity that is beyond and before all patterns of information. In other words, the mind can never be the ultimate source of security for itself by its very nature. It needs to find a deeper context or home for itself. A place that is not dependent on patterns.
But there IS something else going on besides this mind process of pattern-matching, and that is effortless being. In the swirl of patterns and the engrossing nature of them, effortless being may seem like a distant intellectual concept. To a mind that is used to being in control, effortless being can only be just another mental pattern taking the form of a practice, method, or some form of information. But the truth is, effortless being is with us all the time, and it is the essence of what we are. It does not need a practice to attain, as this would be to suggest that the mind is the path to the experience of effortless being. In experience, however, effortless being makes itself available to itself. It is the natural flow of everything and always will be. No person is involved in its attainment, and no practice can take us to it.
Though it may seem abstract and remote and irrelevant to many minds frantically busy trying to be complete and happy, it is, in fact, the very source of the completion and happiness they seek all along and is available but for the noticing of it. It is in the silence at the end of a thought. It is in the peace when, for a moment, nothing has to be done. It is what is available when the mind, for a second, rests. Though the mind may try to grab this silent peace and claim it is something IT has achieved through diligence and effort, in fact, no sooner does it do that than the peace is lost, and the mind cannot find it again through its efforts, for it has no pattern it can recognise.
Effortless being is our very nature, and this nature calls naturally to itself. We do not need to practice to attain it. In the same way, we do not need to force ourselves to practice something or try to create this unity. It is a natural process that wants to hear itself. This hearing is its nature, and in this hearing, it welcomes awareness of itself. It welcomes all that appears as an appearance of itself. If our attention (which is another term for awareness watching) is drawn to a bodily sensation, it is our true nature calling to itself. In other words, effortless being is how life actually is, despite what the mind thinks, that it is the master and is somehow controlling all events and must somehow try to practice something or do something to overcome something.
Effortless being, by its nature, is whatever is always listening and witnessing the mind. It is our very nature that understands all the patterns of the mind as interesting metaphors but not literal reality. Its safety is its own ever-present, never-changing nature and is not dependent on any patterns that are all transient forms. So the path to effortless being is pathless; it is simply to notice the natural noticing, witnessing, silent moments of peace, and understanding and to notice that this happens quite naturally all by itself, without any involvement from the mind.
Once this silence, witnessing, aware beingness is aware of itself, then all patterns of the mind are “apperceived” as a flow of itself. The mind is seen for what it is. Simply a process of metaphorical recognition, not a literal reality. Though this pattern-recognition process seems to project smallness, finiteness, and limitedness on all things, by contrast, our effortless being suddenly seems like a vast, boundless ocean in which these patterns are very small. It is the ultimate pattern reframing. So, we can continue to enjoy and work with the patterns but not lose ourselves in them. As our nature touches its own vastness, such love and aliveness emerge, and the pattern-matching mind can finally be at peace, like an adolescent relieved that its parent is home and can relax from frantically trying to manage the home.
Love,
Freyja