Loch Kelly: Effortless Mindfulness

Loch Kelly talks about effortless mindfulness and how he sees access to awakening as the next natural stage of human development.
Loch is an author, meditation teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of the Open-Hearted Awareness Institute. He teaches in a non-sectarian human being lineage based on the earliest non-dual wisdom traditions, modern science, and psychotherapy.
Interviewer: Serge Prengel has been exploring creative ways to live with an embodied sense of meaning and purpose.

Transcript

So,

Locke,

You wrote a book about effortless mindfulness,

And what do you mean by that?

Well thank you,

Serge.

It's great to be with you and all those who are listening today.

I studied mindfulness in the Vipassana or Insight meditation tradition and actually went to Sri Lanka,

India,

And Nepal on a fellowship.

Did five-day retreats,

Ten-day and twenty-one-day retreats,

And then I really enjoyed Vipassana,

Insight meditation,

What is called mindfulness.

And then I went up north to India and Nepal and met a Tibetan Buddhist teacher there whose name was Tokul Ergun Rinpoche,

And he gave a little talk for like fifteen minutes and then did a way of shifting awareness that he called pointing out and that I call glimpsing,

And within three minutes I felt the same way as I did at the end of a ten-day retreat.

So effortless mindfulness is what he called it,

And what it's called in the Mahamudra tradition,

And it doesn't mean that it takes no effort initially.

It takes a little one,

Two,

Three let go,

But what effortless refers to is that you discover when you shift your awareness that there's an effortless awareness that's already aware without your help that you can be aware from,

And it's like a flow state or being in the zone.

So it's open-eyed and the way most people feel when they walk in nature or do something they love like gardening or playing sports.

So it's a natural dimension of consciousness and it's considered the advanced practice,

Deliberate mindfulness is first and then this is effortless,

But effortless mindfulness can be taught initially especially for those who have difficulty with concentration.

Yeah,

So there's a lot in what you said,

And what I'm hearing is something that says I've done effortful mindfulness,

I've also done effortless mindfulness,

And you can get to the same place with effortless.

That's right.

I'm hearing also something about a description of what that effortless mindfulness is and that you liken to that state of flow,

In a state of nature which is something that we come equipped with and we're in sync.

Yes,

That's right.

Everything feels right.

Yes,

That's it.

Yeah,

So that's the sense is that the premise of this kind of direct path introduction to effortless mindfulness is that the awakeness that we're seeking is already inherent within us as our natural capacity and so we can just learn to access that and then we're naturally living and seeing from this effortless flow.

Yeah,

So that capacity to be awakened,

That capacity for awakened awareness is within us.

Yes.

Do you want to talk a little bit more about awareness?

Yes,

So this is interesting in that awareness is not attention.

Attention is a type of awareness that uses the small mind to focus.

So I've done not only studies of wisdom traditions but neuroscience and psychotherapy.

So the one pointed attention that most people start with in deliberate mindfulness is focusing on the breath or one object and what it does is it focuses from the small mind and calms that small mind so that you get into a shamatha or peaceful abiding or calm state but it actually shuts down the more open creative internal world in order to get to that calm state.

So in effortless mindfulness the neuroscience shows that you actually balance this internal and external system of perception and so you're simultaneously aware from a kind of larger awareness but interestingly it's not just a detached witness position,

It's actually this open awareness that's both allows you to feel completely within your body and interconnected with everyone and open in a witnessing capacity.

So it's called unity consciousness or being in the zone or flow or kind of interconnected heart mind.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

So all of these various names including that open heart you like and so essentially we distinguish three kinds of awareness.

Something is that focused attention,

Something that's kind of a more open mirroring and that's usually the two things that people would normally think of but there is also a state where we can balance both and that's kind of that state of grace that you're describing.

That's right,

So it's called non-dual and the interesting thing is that some of the Advaita definition of non-dual is that we're operating from a dualistic small mind and that we become aware of pure awareness and pure awareness is non-dual awareness but the Buddhist view is that you recognize this pure awareness or this open spacious,

Boundless awareness and then from there you realize that's inherent within and that aliveness is arising from that and so non-dual means ultimate reality of pure awareness and relative reality of everyday life are not two.

So they call it the two truths.

So non-dual means that you're not focusing from one point as you say,

That's one kind of awareness called attention,

The others is kind of a witness as if you pull the camera back then you can notice from a mindful awareness your thoughts,

Feelings and sensations coming and going and then the magic move of effortless is you actually let awareness look behind the camera or through the meditator so it opens until that awareness finds there's already a natural awareness that's aware without effort and has always been kind of a primordial consciousness that's in children before they develop conceptual thought and becomes the basis of wisdom mind because it's able to use thought but not have to keep orienting to thought to know what's going on.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So when you do it and the experience of it is as if you're looking from behind the camera or from behind or through the meditator but when we say this to people who have not had that experience it might feel something that's very a lot of foreboding and so one of the things that you do in your teaching is you actually bring it down to earth in very simple experiences and I like very much the concept of the glimpses.

Yes.

We want to talk a little bit about that as a way to get that experience.

Yes and just to say that when you open awareness behind the camera and then discover this awareness that's already here it's already embodied and natural and drops you into a place that most people do what they love to do in their free time in order to experience.

So in other words when I have a group and I say what do you love to do when in order to feel most alive and renew and refresh and people say well I walk in nature or I garden or I dance or I do play music and when you do these things you literally drop out of your small concentrated mind you open into this flow state or flow consciousness and are able to do something highly technical without creating an ego doer and without having this sense of efforting but you just naturally go at your own pace and so that's the feeling of it and so those are things that people are doing and they're doing one particular doorway or activity as a way to access some dimension of this effortless mindfulness and so the glimpses just teach a way to intentionally shift awareness or relax the small sense of self and go immediately into the new operating system so that you can do it on the subway in New York City.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So the idea is when somebody asked about effortless mindfulness the answer is you already know it.

Yes.

You just haven't named it.

That's it.

This is how you are.

Yeah.

And you do something you really enjoy doing so you're into it and you're not getting in the way of it and you're not efforting and it just feels great and that the idea and the practices are about to bring you there more often than everything is aligned in order to do that.

Yes.

And so yeah and just to say that we don't even realize the other operating system that we have developmentally thought was the only way to be which is what they call in Buddhism a small separate sense of self.

So the small separate sense of self which is at the root of what causes suffering is when we identify with that when we operate from there there's always going to be some perpetual dissatisfaction which is the translation of the word dukkha or suffering is often translated as perpetual dissatisfaction.

So that small thought based little habit pattern of thought and emotion that literally feels like it's behind our eyes in the middle of our head looking out of our people and listening to what you and I are talking about now.

If you feel where am I aware from most people will locate it in the middle of their head or some people just their head or others sometimes it can include like the emotional body a little more for some but that pattern of functioning is really kind of an ego function that's become an ego identity and my sense is it's actually just a developmental stage and that awakening is the next natural stage of human development.

Yeah,

It's so very interesting that most people when they talk about self it's something that is almost like an object or it's something that's very rigid or something that is you know solid and you're talking about it as an operating system or a pattern of functioning yes and so we're really into phenomenology we're into what is happening as opposed to things that are objects.

Yes and in some ways that's the real initial insight of deliberate mindfulness or insight meditation is realizing that what feels like I am thinking this thought can be observed as thoughts feeling sensations and mind objects in other words you can go into a mindful witness and when the thought I think I'm thinking this thought comes and goes you realize oh the just because the sentence starts with I'm thinking this thought that's not me that's a thought so you start to realize that there's an arising and passing of phenomena and as Buddhism in the deliberate mindfulness Theravada tradition starts with and there's a natta or no self so that's the first pointer to relief of suffering and neuroscience seems to agree when they look with an fMRI the best description I've heard is the brain is a symphony but no conductor can be found.

Yeah the brain is a symphony but no conductor can be found and so you mentioned what happens in the deliberate mindfulness traditions yes in what way is the experience in effortless mindfulness somewhat different.

Yeah so it kind of continues in some ways Siddhartha Buddha was in a time of he was doing Hindu practices and very deliberate strenuous renunciation practices and then when he finally realized oh this isn't getting me anywhere he remembered a time when he was a child sitting under a tree after lunch on a summer's day when he just let go and was just being and there was a sense of peace and well-being and freedom and connection to nature that was natural so there's the first kind of pointer even within that tradition but then he decided because of the times that were saying it's this it's that it's this it's that he said you know what I'm not going to say what it is I'm just going to say if you just let it go it will show up but I think what's happened is there's been a pointing to the no self but then what happens on retreats with people is they get flooded by their unconscious because they deconstruct the self and haven't yet discovered the new operating system and so effortless mindfulness says all right we're gonna have you shift out of the small sense of self but then we're really going to spend more time waking up from that then to the awareness that's awake then as that awareness then from that awareness back to include thoughts feeling sensations as interconnected rather than observing so there's a more of an embodied interconnected awake consciousness that is naturally effortless but also kind of grounded yeah yeah so so kind of a sense of more of a flow yes these different faces of the diamond as opposed to a sense of just kind of wanting to separate them in a rigid way yes getting into that flow yes yeah so that that I find you know a lot of people who who have done some of the initial practices are in a kind of witness position so they're a little outside of their body and they're able to you know eat mindfully lifting moving placing they can do yoga mindfully but it's almost from a detached observer a mindful observer that's not embodied or interconnected and so I call that getting caught in the witness protection program so that that can be an important first move and first stage but then the awareness that is recognized that's effortlessly here is also outside and within and interconnected and it kind of drops us from head to heart so this sense of open-hearted intelligence we feel more love and more natural compassion that arises as a in the you know in the Tibetan and later Mahayana that's not just absence there are actually natural qualities of joy and love the Brahma the Haras the equanimity are natural qualities of being human that arise without intentionally having to wish they were here or use imagination yeah yeah so so we have a very nice formulation of the the witness protection program yeah and and that from that place we tend to be a detached observer what I like about the phrase is that the witness protection program exists because the witness is threatened so what we're talking about is kind of a sense of safety and ease yes you know the result we're getting to as you say the result of open heart which is something which comes with with more ease and flow that's right I saw I see so I see that this is really intricately related yes absolutely and finding that trust and ease and flow yes beautiful yeah you that's so important the one of the keys to you know shifting to this awake consciousness as a new operating system to be able to not just have meditative experiences but literally to live from here which I think is possible and is kind of the new normal that I'm hoping to group of us can really begin to share and and live from is that when you come back from being kind of vast and boundless and open and discovering this pure awareness and then feel both embodied and interconnected there's a feeling of safety and trust and well-being open-hearted but particularly that safety that doesn't have to go back to the scanning mind to be hyper vigilant about you know am I okay is my body okay is my emotions am I going to be hurt there's this deeper more panoramic open view that can respond like a Tai Chi master if something were to happen but the baseline isn't neurotic anxious hyper vigilance as a way of safety it's deep open trust as the new safety feeling and then only then really can you live from there yeah yeah so so like that image that you suggest of that moving like a Tai Chi master through yes yeah yeah so that's the feeling you know that feeling that they would be able to obviously defend themselves physically and you'd be able to respond rather than a rack react emotionally if somebody you know started saying hey you blah blah blah blah and you if you were hyper vigilant and reactive you'd go into a small you know defensive part of yourself that would say it's not me it's like yeah I didn't do it you know but but here you're just like oh wow this other person's really upset what are they talking about and you feel like you can be here and you know wait until you really speak from from a more deep heart space yeah yeah and so so that's also a very nice way to point out that what we're talking about is absolutely not just a mental quality but it's a whole being quality because it includes that that not just you know calmness per se but calmness as a way to feel like you're swimming in the environment you're swimming in life in a place of harmony that's right yeah and even one of the recent there's a few neuroscience experiments of this effortless mindfulness that's different than the deliberate and in many of the deliverance they discover that there's this calmness when they use EEG that you move from beta which is kind of kind of a everyday chattering mind kind of fast moving energy to a calmer alpha and then when you do effortless mindfulness it actually brings on what's called synchronized gamma which is actually aha moments and creativity and joy and laughter so it's not just calm but it's actually dynamically more active while being calm so this is this is kind of the possibility it's really about living a full human life with full emotions rather than you know trying to transcend emotions or go beyond them or spiritually bypass our humanity yeah yeah so it's expanding the range of our ability to to interact in life that's right yeah and and we use this you know in psychotherapy I train people in kind of an effortless mindfulness based therapy that you access this open-hearted awareness or this bigger sense of who I am and then from there you can be with traumatized parts of yourself or shame-based parts or these protectors that are trying to keep control of everything and be very tight and from that more compassionate view you can unburden these parts and let them know that they thank them for all the work they've been doing and let them know you can you can help out as part of the team but you don't need to be driving the car anymore we've got a new a new you know self-driving vehicle capital S yeah so so in a way we come back to that quote you shared earlier about you know that sense of self and that sense of the symphony without a conductor yes where you are working in tandem with Richard Schwartz yes IFS and the concept of self-leadership which is not the same thing as a director that's right yeah and that's the new thing so that kind of is where this all goes is as we were talking in the beginning is it you know it's a little unusual you know because you know we're talking to highly educated smart people who are spiritually you know who have done you know some practices and done some psychotherapy that this model that the felt sense of safety and well-being is a more spacious open mind open heart literally feels not tightly in your body or smartly in your mind it literally feels more diffuse and yet more embodied because you're aware of your body from within and more dropped into your heart heart mind not your emotional heart and feels more interconnected with everyone so that's not the feeling that most people have as the marker of being you know okay with being myself you know the so that that has a little so getting people comfortable with that new normal that this is actually how it feels it does feel more open it does feel more interconnected but I'm not blended with everyone I'm not merged I'm not taking on their energy just because I'm connected I'm actually just not reacting to the to the emotions in a way that that lets them stick yeah yeah yeah so so more diffuse more interconnected paradoxically embodied yes it's not merged it's not disappearing it's not a spiritual bypass because there is a quality of embodiment yes and not reactive that's right and not reactive because there's more of that heart mind quality which again takes a little while so the glimpses you know within an hour and a half of doing a live presentation or certainly within a day a day long you know eight out of ten people will get a glimpse of their true nature or their awake consciousness or their heart mind in a way that they intentionally do it through you know doing a series of different doorways these different types of glimpses that some work for some people some don't but then when you glimpse then the main practice is small glimpses many times during the day rather than long periods of sitting with your eyes closed these can be done while you're taking a walk or while you're sitting on a subway or train or bus while you're taking a break at work and then you go right back to work from it and it takes a while because the habit is so strong of the first operating system of the small separate sense of self in the middle of my head looking out of my eyes that is thought-based and actually believes I think therefore I am so that needs to you need to feel what the alternative is for small moments and then learn to return and then train to remain.

Yeah so get that experience and then from there just like riding a bicycle.

Yeah.

It's easier to come back to.

That's right.

Yeah and that's a beautiful metaphor that bicycle because one of the so some of the gaps like in my my new book the way of effortless mindfulness the last chapter is called the traps detours and rerouting instructions so that people can get caught when you unhook awareness or detach awareness or have awareness shift out into kind of an openness you can get caught in this kind of gap of don't know mind or know nothing or absence so then it's important to keep going until you realize oh it's not just space but the space is awake and I'm awake from space and so that those pointers and those literal movements where awareness starts to recognize itself in its full capacity is something that you're the small me is not doing that literally the glimpse when I say can you unhook awareness and have it drop from head down through your body and know your body from within and then know your heart space and know from your heart space that who I'm talking to is you as the awakened consciousness that's inherently within you and I'm asking you to move yourself as awareness and relocate from identification with thought to to drop or to open to return home to the subtler dimension of already awake effortless mindfulness that's embodied and can then you can then learn to talk and walk and that feeling of not knowing that knows is feels like riding a bicycle so if I if people do these glimpses and then I say where are you aware from you can't go to thought to answer that question yeah yeah so they're saying like well but I'm here but as soon as you ask me a question like where are you aware from I go back and create a thinker and then I'm out and I say yeah that's right so see if you can almost like when you're riding a bicycle and I say to you are you balancing you could go to thought and think about it but do you have to or can you can you just feel it yeah yeah yeah so so maybe I want to take that part of what you just said is there is a sense of space is awake yes awake from space yes so maybe to suggest to listeners to to simply sense into that notion that space is awake yes try to figure it out but to to look feels listen sense into space yes sense that space is awake yes and just explore that what it's like to be in that kind of mode yes that's right yeah and those are the first the very good summary of the glimpses that I start with just just allow awareness to open from being attached to thought and just simply let it open out drop down and rest back until it perhaps notices what it's like to not orient to thought to be aware from wordless awareness and then just feel that the space that you're aware of now you're aware from so just that little feeling the new feeling and then the key is just to not check with thought for a second opinion to know whether you're aware from space it's just a new feeling like balancing and then to see whether being awake from space that the space is both outside and within so there's kind of a seamless continuous field and that the dancing movement that you don't have to particular eyes or pinpoint or know what that is but just welcome it as movement and change and without getting on the train of thought just let it all be experienced but primarily trust the awake awareness to be where you're aware from and what could decide what to think about or what to do thanks log

Reviews

Would like to learn more

Interesting concepts on mindfulness.

Very accessible and informative! Really enjoyed and learned from this, thank you 🙏🏻

Thank you, I look forward to learning more. Namaste