Effortless Being

Just imagine what it would be like if you were the featured character in this story …

… You are in the ocean, out of your depth, struggling to stay afloat. The more you struggle the less buoyant you feel. Each effort feels more and more exhausting. Fighting what is, you believe the answer lies in trying harder … reaching, grasping with your whole being, striving with your body, harnessing your mind, trying to focus all of your energy to stay above water … you fight for your life. Your activity becomes frenetic. A sinking futility starts to creep in but you realise you can’t give in, no matter what. You force your mind into high gear. You struggle with all your might. Your striving becomes frantic.

A kind person throws you a life preserver, but it lands just of your reach. Safety is but a few feet away, if only you could grasp it in time. Certain that effort is the only answer, you harness every fibre of your being, desperately trying to grasp the answer to all your prayers … knowing that all peace, all rest, life itself is just an arm’s length away … just out of reach … if only you try harder, the prize of freedom, relaxation, safety will be yours …

But with each fiercely desperate stroke, you end up pushing the life preserver further away. The fight intensifies. You feel your mind is starting to spin out of control. You force it into line … everything depends on this final struggle to win … But your very striving is driving it further … and further … and further away …

Finally, the kind stranger jumps into the water, and when he bobs to the surface all movement ceases. He is just floating. He appears motionless … as if he is just resting, simply trusting. Gently, under the surface, his legs are flowing in the quietest of movements; effortlessly treading water, trusting completely in the ease of Grace. The water becomes still and the life preserver, which is no longer being pushed away by the thrashing around, is free to drift his way … Resting … trusting … relaxing … lap … by lap … by lap … the life preserver finds its way into his hands, and with almost no movement – more a softly whispered prayer than an actual motion, he glides it your way.

You frantically grasp for it and, once again, it drifts just out of your reach. The desperation becomes unbearable …

You hear a reassuring voice say, ‘RELAX … Just RELAX … you’re safe … Trust … All safety is here … everything you need is already here.’ Then, once again, the kind man who trusts the ocean, trusts life, trusts grace, softly floats the life preserver in your direction.

It is only one arm’s length away. The desire to reach for it is fiercely strong. The impulse to grasp arises. ‘One last struggle and I’m there,’ you hear yourself say, but before you can thrust out your hand, you hear the stranger say again, ‘JUST RELAX.’

And something penetrates … it happens in a heartbeat. Against all instincts, against all ingrained beliefs and all societal conditioning, against everything you’ve ever held to be true, you decide to do the impossible. You choose to cease striving … You relax. You relax your mind … you give up all struggle and relax your whole being. You feel your body softening and, miraculously, the life preserver begins to effortlessly drift your way …

Just before it’s ready to softly touch your chest, something happens. Time stops … everything becomes still … Your breathing slows down and becomes easy … The contraction of your mind softens and every ounce of activity ceases. Your body releases all tension and you become aware that you are being softly supported, embraced in an ocean of trust … In the still centre of the silence, you realise that all grace is here, surrounding you, supporting you. All peace is here, all rest is here … And you relax deeply in the restful embrace of grace …

You become aware that the life preserver has just tapped you on the chest … and in that instant you realise that you don’t actually need it, you never needed it. You’re already safe, already whole, already free. You’re floating in an ocean of trust. Life preserver, no life preserver … same, same.

Gently, one arm floats to the side of the preserver, and you look around to see if there is anyone else struggling needlessly in the water … And you become the kind stranger.

A soft smile of irony creeps across your face as you realise the ludicrous insanity of struggling against life. It’s like some big cosmic joke. Everything you had been seeking is recognised to be already here the moment you chose to stop the struggle, relax and trust. This that had seemed so far out of reach is realised to be everywhere, in everything. And that ‘something out there, if only I could get hold of it,’ is realised to be right here, as a vast embrace, constantly supporting you in an ocean of presence.

And so it is with grace. The more you struggle, strive, fight, reach, grasp or force your mind, the further away you push the very peace you are seeking. And the moment you stop, soften the mind, relax your body, cease striving, give up the struggle, the peace you are seeking is directly experienced to be here as a spacious presence of effortless being.

The very nature of grace is effortless ease. It is already completely complete, whole, free, vast and open. It intrinsically knows how to care for every aspect of your life, and it is always in flow. Like a river flowing over water-smoothed rocks, it has a natural ease. Yet it’s as if there is no one doing the doing, or ‘flowing the flow’. It just is. It is simultaneously supremely restful and scintillatingly alive: it loves to give birth to creation. It is as if this flow knows the right action in each moment. There is no ‘somebody’ there controlling, managing and directing its natural momentum. With effortless ease it flows through life.

As children, so often we heard, ‘Try to do your best.’ And our focus went to the trying. We struggled, we strived, we fought. Had we instead been told, ‘Relax little one – you are already whole and perfect, and there is a huge potential that is longing to create through you – just relax,’ we would have relaxed, opened and allowed our genius, creativity and love to shine. We would have just opened innocently and allowed our wisdom to arise naturally, and would have been delighted to simply be part of the process of creation.

Unfortunately, most of us became conditioned to the idea that struggling is good and makes us strong, and we feel guilty if we take even a few spare moments to relax. But ironically, it is only when you completely let go into full relaxation that true genius and creativity become available.

Have you ever tried to remember someone’s name and felt that the word was just on the edge of your awareness, if only you could grasp it? And no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t come up with the name? Then do you remember what happened? How you gave up the struggle, relaxed, stopped reaching with the mind, and moments later, when the mind was totally at ease, the name just popped into your awareness.

So it is with grace. If you force yourself to meditate, setting your mind into a certain groove, focusing on an object, concentrating and repeating mantras, your very efforting keeps away the peace you are seeking. Yet when you just relax, become aware of all sounds, have no purpose other than to close your eyes and ‘just be’, not caring whether thoughts come or go through consciousness, letting yourself naturally glide into a spacious awareness, you find yourself soaking deeply in a restful ocean of healing presence. Then, when thoughts come through, you realise that the stillness is untouched by anything that comes through it.

The moment you grasp or grab onto a thought and try to interpret it, understand its significance, all awareness of the ocean drops into the background and your whole being goes to the thought. It’s only when you choose to stop reaching to analyse the constructs of the mind that you find yourself falling again … back into the ocean – the ocean of effortless being. All struggle, striving, efforting only takes you away. All letting go, opening, accepting, trusting allows you to fall deeper and deeper into the embrace.

Cease all activity and just rest.

— continued —

Any effort made in meditation just pushes Grace and true freedom away. Indeed, this is true of all life.

Credit Line:

Based on the book, Freedom Is by Brandon Bays. Copyright © 2006 by Manifest Abundance Unlimited. Reprinted with permission from the publisher, New World Library. www.newworldlibrary.com

Author Bio:

Brandon Bays is the international bestselling author of The Journey. She travels all over the world conducting seminars and speaking engagements on The Journey, sharing her teachings of healing and awakening to thousands of people each year. She pioneered her transformative work through her own experience of healing naturally from a large tumor. Her website is www.thejourney.com. She currently resides in the United Kingdom.