For me, meditation is effortless at its core, but that is the hard part. Mindfulness takes no effort at all, and I have found it has taken me years to learn to actually do it.
In the past two days, I’ve been reminded of this paradox. I was talking with a friend about meditation, and he said he had tried it. But he didn’t seem to be able to put that much effort into it. His mind is too active. Another friend has told me that she plans to meditate when she retires and has more time to devote to it. I listened yesterday to an interview with a known author who spoke of putting enough effort into not getting distracted during meditation. She spoke of the work of meditating.
I suppose that in some kind of back-handed way, meditation does take energy. However, most of the energy I experience is the intense excitement that comes with the rush of letting go. There is the burst of freedom of not being constrained by what my mind is promoting and prompting. There is the consuming glow of stepping out of my imagined world and coming face to face with a whole different reality.
My mind is active, inquisitive and solicitous. It is so good at what it does that even when I turn myself to moments of awareness, my mind wants to leap into action. It becomes an anxious host constantly suggesting what I might need. It wants to flash in front of my attention a myriad of suggestions about what would both satisfy and excite me. My only response is to smile a soft “not now.” “Later.”
I try to remember that my mind is just doing its job. There will be many times I rely on my imaginative, creative, insightful mind to guide me and help me solve problems or find my way. But there are times I simply need to say “not now” and slip into a moment of no-effort.
My moment of mental no-effort is like sliding down a narrow, dark chute. There is the exhilaration of no felt attachments to my mind / body. I see with a part of me that otherwise is clouded by a constant barrage of thoughts and images generated by my mind. My muscles are for the moment no longer at attention, ready to leap into motion. I am totally relaxed and at ease.
Then I can finally become aware and accept whatever there is.
Then I can smile at my puppy-mind which waits just outside my attention, ready and anxious to leap back into action. But this is not the time. This is instead a time of no-thought, no-action, no-effort. All those will come later.