I have told myself a story for years that goes like this: I need to try hard - you know, so I'll be more likely to get it right and I'll be more right. From this story, I made up, come behavioral and emotional repercussions. One repercussion is I sometimes work with a sense of strain - feeling like I'm trying and trying rather than just doing. I may fixate on aspects of my work, my mind in overdrive. This leads to exhaustion and in turn, not working, or going so slowly (perhaps to try to counterbalance all the mental effort), it all becomes unpleasant. To do the things I most want to do in life, I must DO them but maybe I don't need to make an effort. The difference between doing and making an effort is that the latter involves mental exertion, a summoning of force and will, whereas the former does not have to. Several years ago, I saw a profile of a baby girl born with another head. This head was part of a twin that never took full form. Though the other head had independent feeling and thought, its existence was parasitic to the girl's system and over time would kill her. When Doing and Effort get accidentally linked, Effort becomes Doing's extra head - a superfluous mental process that drains energy. The idea of Effort is a story of Trying Hard - completely unnecessary to actual Doing. Effort is a pull on our natural balanced system, which already intrinsically knows when to begin, when to do, when to rest, and when to let go. If we allow it. I have always operated from the premise that the more effort, the increased chance of a better result. But now it seems I can allow myself to do things, or I can make myself do things. And one feels like freedom, the other - jail. In the ill-conceived conjoining of Doing and Effort, Effort appears necessary but is actually not. Because we are already right as we are - whole and complete - built to move, made to create and express, in this light Doing becomes synonymous with Being - and absolutely no effort is needed for that.
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From the Inside
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