by Kelvin Chin, Meditation Teacher and Life After Life Expert
Let’s look at the significance of effortlessness in the technique and the development of self-acceptance within the individual meditator.
As you have heard me say many times, effortlessness in meditation can and should be a key component of any technique. Here’s another important reason why.
Effortlessness in the technique means that we are not controlling, not manipulating the mind, or focusing it in any way. We are allowing the mind to experience itself in whatever way it wants to experience itself at that given moment in time. We are not directing the mind, we are not making it go this way or that way.
Our attitude is one of acceptance. And what are we accepting?
We are accepting ourselves. Our mind. Our mind at that moment, in whatever way it is thinking.
And in that acceptant, conscious yet undirected state, we overlay the easy, effortless meditation technique.
So, the result is greater self-acceptance.
Contrast this with meditation processes that are not effortless.
Those types of meditation techniques, for example, where they instruct you to focus the mind on the breath, on a word, phrase, a visual image, or look for some special experience or set of experiences, or try to clear the mind of thoughts – those are techniques of control, of subtle manipulation of the mind. And they are difficult, because the mind wants to wander, to think of other things. But those techniques typically do not allow that natural wandering of the mind. And the mind finds that uncomfortable, and on a subtle level starts to reject it.
However, if that meditator continues to practice that type of technique over a long period of time, it can often result in a lack of self-acceptance. And this can eventually lead to a harshness, an emotional “edge” expressed in that person's personality.
Instead, by practicing a meditation technique that promotes effortlessness, one ensures that one will promote one’s self-acceptance of one’s mind. And long-term, this promotes a resultant state of emotional acceptance, often expressed by a more nurturing, balanced, understanding quality to the meditator’s personality.
Along with this emotional sensibility comes inner strength, self-confidence. So this self-acceptance does not mean a “softness” of the mind, emotions or personality — but instead, a personality that is sensitive to the needs of others (and to oneself), with an accompanying strong mind that comes from “knowing oneself” intimately, and easily, through effortless meditation.
Kelvin H. Chin is a Meditation Teacher, Life After Life Expert, and Author of “Overcoming the Fear of Death,” “Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations On Living Life” and “After the Afterlife: Memories of My Past Lives.” He learned to meditate at age 19, and has been teaching Turning Within and coaching others in their self-growth for 40 years. He helps people understand their life challenges through their individual belief systems, and helps them find their own solutions. His past life memories reach back many centuries, and he accesses those memories in his teaching and his coaching in the same way all coaches draw on their own available experiences for perspective and effective analogies. He can be reached at www.TurningWithin.org.