Bear Down or Ease Up in Meditation

The Great Masters of the past have never really been able to get around. This some of them will emphasize the bearing down aspect.

Certainly the Buddha was in that camp.

Some of them will emphasize the easing up aspect like Papa, GI love the title of his book call off the search that's my term for the sort of like.

Easy ease up and stop stop striving for enlightenment.

The so the talked about the Noble Quest.

Papa G talks about call off the search, which one is right.

Well, they're both right.

So then.

The question well. How do you know when to bear down? How do you know when to ease up?

I don't have any magic formula for that.

I can tell you how I in my own teaching attempt to deal with the paradox. My way of dealing with it is to give People techniques.

That allow them to bear down that would emphasize that aspect, but also to give them a very clear description of how to practice in a non effort ingwe and the non effort in practice, which you can read about on my websites. I call do nothing. It's basically my reworking of that whole choiceless awareness jam just sit with some People would call just sitting anyway.

That whole approach to things that call off the search approach. I call it do nothing and so my way of dealing with the paradoxes say OK.

I'm going to give you these techniques that involve noting you know touch sight sound or feel image talk, etc, etc.

There's some effort involved in that you're trying to separate phenomena and you're trying to soak your attention into the phenomenon when it arises so here's some techniques that.

Within which it's natural to somewhat bear down.

Here's another approach, which gives you a description of how to let go of the intention to do anything at all.

Without having an intention to letting go to let go of the intention, which is sort of tricky, but if you read the description of how to do nothing. You'll see how I try to get around that I give People both approaches and I encourage them to do both to try both my stock phrases if the noting makes you racy.

Then do nothing.

As I define do nothing if the do nothing makes you Spacey then go back to the noting so now you have.

Both approaches worked into the system worked into a system so that they can sample both and work with both. I think because it is a paradox. And because both are true that the single most important thing is to not get one sided.

It's an eye, I see this all the time.

Yes. Indeed, one of the characteristic dangers that you can get with.

Mindfulness practice is that People get goal driven and there is a drivenness in the way that they do it, you can actually get that in any spiritual practice.

The Medison for that would be to.

Learn that.

You don't have to practice that way.

On the other hand.

I have also seen People get addicted to the have no goal approach. They spend their whole life in daily life. There unconscious and driven but they're afraid to do any noting technique in their formal practice because somehow that's going to pollute their consciousness. They actually develop a an aversion or a phobia of any bearing down whatsoever.

Informal practice but as I say it's sort of ridiculous because in daily life. There constantly giving them their constantly giving in to those kinds of forces of driven of Drivenness, but they're afraid to have any even a hint of a goal in practice well. That's a kind of phobia so I think that my way of trying to deal with this is well get familiar with both ways of working so there's uh.

A kind of freedom that you could do either 1.

And in fact, I would say that the test.

For either of the approaches is your ability to do the other approach so if you have been doing a high effort ING approach? How do we know it's working well? You should be able to drop all effort if it worked.

And do a no effort no meditation form of meditation.

If you've been effort ingin you claim that it's been successful and productive. Then you should be able to do a non effort practice without any problem at all. It works, the other way too.

If you claim that you have been productively doing a non effort practice a call off the search practice.

Then you the result of that should be that you have very high concentration clarity and equanimity skills. Even though you have had no particular goal to develop those in any systematic way there for the.

The gold standard for testing in my mind, the efficacy the progress in a call off the search approach would be can you implement highly?

Systematic focusing techniques like noting are you able and willing to do this. Well then your call off the search has been successful. Conversely, if you've been searching very hard and bearing down that should result in the ability to completely let go of all direction and goal in practice if not, then you've been making efforts.

Without the progress that you should be making and maybe you need to balance by doing the other approach.