Meditation is the "Effortless Effort"

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Meditation, the Effortless Effort of Letting Go?

 

Meditation is the Process of Learning About Who You Already Are

Anything that you do, whether it’s learning to play the piano or learning to meditate, takes time and practice.

In learning to play the piano,  you may or may not have a natural talent for it. But in learning how to meditate, you’re accessing a quality that you already have within you, a quality that we all have.

Even though it may not always seem to be true, anyone can learn to meditate. That’s not true for piano (or at least, that wasn’t true for me!)

Whether you’ve recognized it or not, you have a “meditative mind” that has always been with you and will continue to be with you through the rest of your life…even if you never use it!

Meditation isn’t about trying to become someone who you aren’t through making a tremendous effort, meditation is about letting go of trying to meditate and coming to know who you already are.

Meditation is the Effortless Effort

The “effortless” part of learning to meditate comes from getting to know your meditative mind, again and again. And that comes more frequently when you let go of all of the ways that you think you should meditate.

If this all sounds too confusing, I think that I can make this point clearer by using the following definition of what meditation is.

This definition is based on the teachings and information that I’ve been given by my teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche, and others teachers, as well as what I’ve gained through my experience of learning to meditate.

This definition captures the most important elements of what meditation is and how meditation can benefit you.

Meditation is a process of gradually coming to know your own mind, coming to rest in a state of non-distraction where you release all sense of hope and fear, cease to alter your mind’s habit of following after thoughts, sensations and emotions, and learn to simply be, mindful, aware and spacious.

Let’s spend a brief moment with each aspect contained within this definition.

  • Meditation is a process of gradually coming to know your own mind. Gradually coming to know your mind isn’t really about doing anything, it’s more about recognizing something that’s already present within you. And it’s gradual, so enjoy the process. Each time that you practice working with your mind, you increase your familiarity with its true nature
  • Meditation is coming to rest in a state of non-distraction. Coming to rest in a state of non-distraction is about allowing rather than doing. You don’t try to be non-distracted, that’s just being distracted by trying not to be distracted. Non-distraction occurs as a process of your learning to meditate. You find that with each meditation session, over time, you become a little less distracted.
  • Meditation is about releasing all sense of hope and fear. When you release something, are you doing something, or are you letting go of the doing? Releasing hope and fear about whether you’ll ever learn to meditate means letting go of thinking that you have to “do” anything.
  • Meditation is about ceasing to alter your mind. By “altering” the mind I mean that we’re used to following after our thoughts with other thoughts about our thoughts. Meditation is about ceasing this pattern, coming back to your practice once you realize that you were “thinking about thoughts.”
  • Meditation is about learning to simply be. As you become more engaged in your practice of meditation, gradually coming to know your mind, resting in a state of non-distraction, releasing all sense of hope and fear, and ceasing to alter your mind, you’ll arrive at a “place” within your mind where you are simply being who you are.

How Do You Meditate Without Having to Make an Effort?

So, do you just sit back and “allow” meditation to happen? Do you just “let go” of how you normally work with your mind? That may work for a very few people but for most of us, we have to work at learning to let go of our habits. Learning to let go is what effortless effort is about.

We need to practice meditation because we’re not used to remaining undistracted. Letting go of a desire to get something and stopping our pattern of altering our mind with thoughts about thoughts takes time. Therefore, we’ve got to put an effort into it, we’ve got to try to meditate, and we’ve got to make the time to practice meditation, both in a formal environment as well as in moments throughout our daily lives.

The effort is about sticking with whatever you’re doing in learning to meditate, realizing that as you begin to get the hang of it, you’ll find that meditation becomes less of an effort and more of a natural “time out” that you can do whenever you want to. That’s the magic of meditation, the more practice you get, the less effort there is in practicing.

Meditation Resources

Here are a few items that can help you to meditate whether you’re a beginner or already have a practice. All of these resources are aimed at helping you in your meditation practice and to do so with less effort and more success. Please let me know what else you need, that’s what I’m here for.

MEDITATION POSTS:

MEDITATION AUDIO DOWNLOADS:

This site has tons of tools for learning how to meditate and be compassionate.

I encourage you to look through the HUNDREDS of articles that I’ve written and especially check out my weekly meditation tips and other useful meditation materials provided for your health and well being. Please let me know if you’d like to discuss anything with me, have any questions or need clarification regarding anything that I’ve written about.

Other Great Meditation Resources and Information:

Download Free Meditation PDFFor More Information on How to Meditate

Please view the Related Stuff below for help getting started in your meditation practice! Also don’t forget to download my free e-book, Can Meditation Change the Way that You View Your World? and download the free e-book, How to Work with the Four Distractions to Meditation and get started learning how to deal with some of the major obstacles in meditation.

As always, please feel free to share your comments on meditation and contact me if you’d like to see additional content or other discussions on this site.

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