Could you talk about effortlessness?

Question:

Could you talk about effortlessness?

Nukunu:

To know who we are means living from marvelous space. We will not be able to say what it is, but still we will know.

Life is an “effortless activity” and enlightenment is to realize that! Why effortless? It is because there is really no personal doership. Even if we believe that we are egos, this does not change the fact that life is an effortless activity; and the ego game is a part of it. Look at a small newborn child. Before it develops a personality the child is totally effortless in its moving and acting. That is why there is a similarity between a newborn child and an awakened person. The illusion that “we” are acting does not change the fact that life is effortless. Even the struggle and pain we experience as an ego-mind, is essentially effortless activity. We, as bodies, are being lived whether we know it or not. Are we the ones that are doing the breathing of the body? Are we controlling the beating of the heart and moving the blood around in the body? We will of course say, “No, no”! Then why do we believe that the thinking, feeling and experiencing belong to some fictive “me”?

The “I” is a collection of thoughts that consciousness believes and identifies with. When the child is around four years old this identification is usually established, because by that time language is developed in the child.

In the East they say that Shiva –a symbol of pure consciousness – has lost himself in his own creation. There is also this beautiful saying from Yoga Spandakarika: “The Goddess opened her eyes and the world disappeared (enlightenment). She closed them (ignorance) and the world became manifest within her.” It is so beautifully said! When we are awakened the world is seen as having no intrinsic nature – it is impermanent. That is why the world disappeared when the Goddess opened her eyes.

Awakening is freedom, and this freedom is so total that the activity of the body is something that is happening for no one! It is just happening in a total freedom. When the realization goes that deep you can say with Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj: “I don’t bother what the body is doing”.

In lucid dreaming you come close to an understanding of how this realization is experienced, because in lucid dreaming you are both aware of the dream and yourself (the dreamer in the bed). It does not matter what the dream is about. You are out of it, but you are also creating it. It is the dreamer that creates the dream, but at the same time the dreamer is aware of being separate from the dream. It is the same with Enlightenment. That which you truly are is setting up the whole world and simultaneously you also know that you are beyond it.
This is what we call the non-dual.