Right effort means knowing what your capable of. It means applying will to the degree that maximizes results. Not too much, not too little. The Goldilocks zone. It means you have a idea of what you want to accomplish, how you want to accomplish it, and you accomplish it as you planned to. Your able to balance your various desires, impulses, and energies during the day as you execute your ambition. You are composed and the work you do is fulfilling.
It is an ideal. Yet I believe it is also an exact science. I think you can perform perfect action. You can act in perfect balance with the universe and yourself. Actions can be right in different ways and wrong in different ways. Ultimately right action means being totally yourself, completely unbounded in action and in thought. Yet it also can means simply to do what needs doing during the day, however you go about doing it. Righteousness is subjective, relative, and also absolute and objective. Right action is spirit or the essence of life. Chi or pure energy. It is the totality, the Whole, the One, Unbounded boundless consciousness. Its also basic matter, it is the Earth and humanity. It is life as it is now: raw, messy and untouched.
It is acting in accordance with principles, ideals, traditions, and conventions. Fulfilling agreements and plans; and maintaining relationships. It means being inspired, having desires, feeling, thinking, and being alive. Right action is ultimately us as we are now. It is life itself, working as it does, free and full, wild and alive. It is seeing, being, moving, loving. It is the here and now. It is beauty and ugliness. It is perfection and terror. It is the incredible system of consciousness that we inhabit, that we are. It is smells, sensations, sounds, tastes and sights. It means being whole as we are, yet also awakening to a deeper sense of who we are. Being right as we are, yet searching and striving for something more. Being right, yet also being wrong, and working to be better. To be more compassionate, able bodied and able minded. It is growing and expanding in form and being.
In the pursuit of good and greatness, we cannot push too hard or too soft. We must find balance in ourselves: in the expression of who we are; and in the force that wells up in us and out into the world. We perform right action when we are blind and we perform right action when we can see. The right action of the blind that we call good leads to the Good, the Light. And when we have found the Light, the right action we perform leads to God and the Whole, the One. Or the none. The Light leads to Emptiness, and the emptiness leads to the One: the Sea or the Multitude. Here we find ourselves and forget who we are in who we are. We remember that we are as we are. We stand wherever we may be as we are in the shade of the Sun. Asleep and awake as we walk in the twilight of ourselves. Empty and free, full and nothing. Everything and something. We melt into the stars: into thin air.
Until we dissolve into ourselves. We have action to perform. We have a sentence, or a duty. An obligation, or a responsibility. I think for most of us, we seek the ideal of balance. Whether or not we can achieve it, we can get closer to it in our lifetimes. Nearly all of us have desire, ambition, drive, things to do, and somewhere to go. In this case, this very human case, right action definitely means the action that we can take to strike a healthy balance in our life. Its not perfect, but it works. The more it works, the more it becomes right action: until we believe it is right action.
To perform an action is to manipulate the world. Manipulate or create or change. When we assess the meaning of right action in the scope of any single isolated action, it means manipulating the world(in the broadest sense) as we intended to: as we envisioned. The elements are mind(vision/plan/intention), subject, perhaps a tool(s), and that which is changed(world or subject). There must be an intention for their to be action and that intention must be made manifest by the act for it to be right. To perform right action, you must manifest what you intend to.
To perform right action within the scope of attaining a healthy balance in life, you have to perform many actions well in an integrated and thoughtful manner. You have to manage various interconnected elements of your life successfully to achieve adequate health. These elements are the basic components of a human being and a human life. You have to give proper attention to each of these elements. You have to know how these elements effect each other. You can't give too much attention to one specific element and neglect others. When one or several elements are neglected the integrity of the system is compromised. To achieve optimum performance, optimum growth, and to keep the system from collapsing, you must organize your life, your attention, in such a way that you keep each of these elements flowing in a healthy way. There must be balance and harmony in the system, in your thought, and in you action. Each element has unique and specific properties and requires unique and specific attention. You can't eat food to satisfy your need for personal attention. You need to feel included, appreciated, and loved to be well. Food doesn't solve that problem. An inclusive and caring social circle does.
We are not born aware of the complexities of life. We must learn what makes us thrive through trial and error. We are often working towards better balance and health. We feel and sense that part of us is compromised. We feel pain and we suffer. If we pay attention to these symptoms, we can discover why. We act from a compromised position. We act from partial ignorance and partial understanding. We must take risks. This is where right effort comes in. Right effort is learned through successes and failures. Through honing our abilities, understanding, sense, and intuition. It is a balance of vision (what we wish to manifest in our lives) and capability (what we actually can manifest in our lives). We may not pursue what is good for us, but we still wish to make happen what we want most; and refine our understanding and abilities to make it so. We refine our effort to manifest what we desire most, regardless of how it affects us or others, unconsciously or consciously.
Our ability to act in ways that bring about our heart's desire, our vision, is right action. Our ability to apply force or will in necessary degree, to our action, to bring about our vision, is right effort. Our system or being generates force that molds, changes, or creates the world(including ourselves). The force is generated by the content of our being. Our state of mind reflects the content and sum of our being. Our state of mind is also constantly envisioning and acting. Creating our life through ceaseless interdependent vision and effort. The force welling up within us is intelligent. It is not simple Newtonian force with one direction and one strength. The force is one with who we are. It is generated by the content of our being and it is the content of our being. You could say every aspect of our being is intelligent and creative. Every aspect of our being is endowed with a creative force. This force is directed by our state of mind. Our consciousness radiates our creative will upon the world, upon the universe.
We learn through trial and error, consciously and unconsciously, how to modify our will, or effort, to achieve our vision. We achieve our vision by balancing the various aspects of ourselves through correct application of will. We must apply force appropriately in complex ways to keep the system in balance and harmony. This is the same as right effort. It is largely intuitive, imaginative, and speculative. You have a general sense of the order and composition of your self. You imagine what you want to achieve and you have an intuition(partially speculative) of the correct application of force or effort to apply in a specific way to realize your vision. You learn and sense based upon the result of your actions how to modify your efforts when you attempt the same actions again. You develop a sense of how to optimally expend your will throughout the day and through your life to achieve your goals. If your frustrated in life, your efforts are not succeeding in realizing your ambitions. You may be lacking in effort, overexerting yourself, or not taking necessary action. Its important to cultivate a realistic sense of what it will take for you to get from where you are to where you want to go. To do this you have to understand your strengths and your weaknesses as well as the worldly system you are working in.
You can know the action you need to take and not succeed in realizing your vision because you misapply will or effort. You can also know how to properly apply your will to manifest you vision, but you are ignorant of what you need to do to be well. Both are necessary to be successful. Both are necessary to achieve adequate health of the human being.
Your consciousness and life are sustained by a pool of qi. This qi is the force that you use to take action in the world. It is depleted through effort. We pursue right effort and right action to bolster this qi within ourselves and to use it as efficiently as possible, both furthering our ability to shape the world to our liking. The first gives us more power and the second makes our power go further. When we take wrong action, uniformed or unwise action, it may compromise the integrity of our system, compromising the elements which sustain our level of qi, power, health, or consciousness. The same is true for misapplying force, will, or effort. You can break down components of your system or ineffectively power them, both which undermine the integrity of the system. Without right effort we cannot perform right action. We cannot perform well unless we properly apply our will, qi or force, to the inter-working components that perform the action. This proper effort is itself a multitude of small actions taken to perform the task in mind. We perceive the effort as singular because the smaller actions are more or less automatic. It feels more like we are simply controlling the amount of power we apply rather than making each piece of the system work in sync to move the entire body in a specific way.
Right action and right effort are truly one and the same. We perceive them to be different because of the preconceived notions we have about them. We assume that force, effort, is itself unintelligent: unacting. The subject is the actor that applies varying degrees of effort, the power that moves through us in not intelligent, it is simply energy. In truth, any effort we take, any movement of power, is actually the action of intelligent systems: whether they are energetic or biological. Energy is intelligent. Effort perceived as using power is a subjective experience. The power that we apply is really a river or sea of action taking place. Action that doesn't necessarily belong to us or isn't necessarily caused by us. What we call action depends on a subject. What if their isn't really a subject? Or their is just one subject whose body composes everything? There would be no action taking place because A. there is no one to act, or B. there is nothing to act on. If everything is one or none, then their are no boundaries for action to take place, there is just undivided power and being. This is why right action and right effort are seen as no action or no effort.
Their is no effort or no action needed when you are one with the universe. You are the universe moving effortlessly acting ceaselessly. There's no change in position to require change in action. There's one movement of one body springing forth effortlessly. For nearly everyone we don't consciously exist in oneness permanently, we live in the dual projection of our minds where we are separate from the world. We strive. We take effort and action to better our position. We gather qi and move closer to one-pointedness. Right effort and right action are ideals and intuitions we work towards, not our reality. Thus, it makes sense to understand them in a dualistic sense as well as an absolute sense: so we know how to navigate the terrain we pass through and know what to gravitate towards.
The innate desire to better ourselves through wiser action and more efficient use of force is the undeterring awakening of being towards God-consciousness and beyond. It is an unstoppable force transcendent of our individuality. The awakening of God-consciousness is the highest achievement an individual can garner because it is the full awakening and expression of individuality, of the self. As we progress towards full awakening or liberation, our goals change; and what constitutes right action and effort changes.
As we awaken our system or self becomes greater in scope and depth. What constitutes right action and right effort becomes more complicated and more involved. The key to achieving success is to understand the extent of your ambition and desire: the extent of your heart and mind. Once you know what you want, you must understand the variables or components of the system that you are working in. The components you don't understand and don't have power over may or may not get in your way. Even if they don't get in your way, the more you don't understand, the more risk you take. A main component of the system you are working in, is yourself. Your own weaknesses often defeat you. They are in fact always defeating you in small ways. Until you understand that the components in your system are interconnected, you will always be blindsided. Until you fix your attitude you will always run into the dirt. Until you get educated, you won't understand the world your working in and the people you have to deal with. This is why it's necessary to adopt a holistic outlook if you want to succeed.
You have to have a holistic outlook and a growth outlook if you want to succeed in the long term. You have to be willing to change, and you have to see the world and yourself as a system of many interconnected parts. If you don't understand how each part effects and works with each other part, you won't know how to manipulate the system effectively or maintain your well being. There are countless dimensions/aspects/components of the world we live in. The more you are aware of them and understand them, the easier it is for you to navigate. If you are actively seeking to better yourself and your understanding of the world your chances of success are much greater.
Life is hard and what we learn from our communities and traditional/state education may often not be enough to set us or keep us in a healthy direction. This is more true for people who don't fit in and people who possess more depth than that of the environment they grow up in and inhabit. If we really want to rise above much of the potential suffering in life and make our dreams come true we have to have an integral understanding of ourselves and the world. We have to be able to take wider perspectives stepping outside of our traditional worldviews. We have to learn to see life objectively and accurately understand how our perspectives are limited. We are blinded by our egos, our biases, and our beliefs. To have an effective integral understanding of the world, we have to cultivate our critical thinking and introspection. We have to have a working understanding of the dimensions we inhabit. The physiological, psychological, interpersonal, cultural, political, environmental, subtle, and spiritual dimensions of life. You have to understand how you exist in each of these dimensions and how they interact to determine your health and wellbeing. The more you awaken, the more intuitive right effort and right action become. They evolve out of our traditional values into highly individualized and direct sensing intuitions. We go from believing in a way, to reasoning our way, to feeling our way, to feeling the way, to being the way, and beyond.
To optimize our ability to act and take right action, we must take care of our bodies, our minds, our hearts, our spirit, our communities, and the world we live in. We cannot continue in personal success if the world around us falters. We cannot continue to succeed if we let our communities collapse into fear, egotism, narcissism, madness, sickness, and hate. We cannot afford to pursue selfish interests without framing these interests in a wider perspective. We cannot continue to cower in the face of tyranny and oppression. We cannot continue to sacrifice our freedoms for continued pleasure and ignorance. We are maintaining pseudo-security and losing our willpower and sanity to slavery and madness. Our ways are being uprooted and violated. Our people poisoned and assaulted. We cannot continue to be disturbed and do nothing about it.
We have to sacrifice for the greater good. For those who can see, we have to be the leaders in a sea of disturbance. We have to lead the people into direct awareness of the senses and the sensed. We have to lead the people through chaos, delusion, and great change. We have to establish community in the Light of awareness and in the truth of Oneness and beyond. We have to integrate our sciences and technologies and arts developing integrated understanding and practices. The pursuit of truth and direct perception uniting us in discovery, evolution and expression. We have to go much further than what we thought possible, much much further than most of those that have come before us. I believe many of us were born ready for this task and are awakening to this spirit now in greater detail and engagement than before. For us, it is right that we come out to the world with what we know with great wisdom and care, and sow the seed of Unity throughout the world. We do this with ease of mind and harmony of self and spirit. We let it flow through us into the world. It is divine effort and divine will. Our success is being Whole and sharing our wisdom with the world in the Light of the Divine.
To achieve your goals, you have to know what action to take and how to apply your energies. To truly take right action and have right effort, you need to sense the Whole act act from awareness of it. Right action and right effort begin with our instincts to survive and procreate. They evolve into traditional beliefs, personal ambitions, feelings, divine intuitions, and self expression. They dissolve in singular perception of the universe and become supportive of the Whole and All. If we can truly succeed as an individual, it is by harmonizing our will with the infinite and awakening to our deepest natures: pursuing right action and right effort as they evolve in our lives.
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