Right Effort, Right Action and Success

     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.

Listening

     We live in a world where we attempt to reach out destination through effort. We believe we need to work harder and be more to succeed in ways we cannot succeed now. We need to focus more, to be more engaged, more committed, more disciplined, more intense. These attitudes can and often help us succeed and often are what we need to do, but I feel that often we have these attitudes because we are insecure.
     We are afraid of not succeeding. Of letting people down. We are panicking and we are stressed. We are on the run. We are running away from failure and from falling apart. We are holding on tight to keep control. The problem is, the tighter we hold, the more we actually lose control and the further we get from being happy and leading fulfilling lives. We end up running away from ourselves and our life. We lose touch with ourselves and with reality. We slip into deeper fear, deeper stress, deeper instability and unfortunately deeper insanity. We think by holding on we will remain safe and secure, when actually we are avoiding the senses that would save us. We hold on because we believe we need to. We have these beliefs because from birth we are programmed to be a certain way. We are told what to do, how to be, what is good, and where you will go and what your life will look like when grow up and keep on growing up. A lot of this is groundless. A lot of this is perverted sense by the corporate-consumer world. A lot of this is madness given to you by the insane and unknown. The unknown being people who don't know themselves.
     We consciously or subconsciously compromise our integrity and well being to fit into the world. We do it because we are afraid of being refused by the main current of society. We think we have better chances of survival if we don't listen to ourselves, but adopt other people's belief systems. This is true in a large sense. By compromising our values and integrating into the system, we gain the support of the powers that support it. We do gain safety and security. The problem is the long term trade off. The long term trade off is insanity, depression, dehumanization, and destruction of the planet. It means losing real friendships, losing real happiness, losing vitality of body and spirit. The problem is you've been duped, swindled and enslaved. Enslaved by the system however conscious the intent to enslave is, and enslaved by yourself, by your mind.
     The problem is that a lot of mainstream society is extremely negative and dangerous. A lot of it is not run by good people who care about you, who want to give you products that are good for you. They want to give you things in exchange for something worth more than what they give. They want to cheat you. And they do. Over and over and over again. This is the illusion. Look at all this cool good stuff. Of course its good for you. Of course you need it. It only costs the integrity of the entire planet and the sanity of the species. The reason it works is because it is one of the dominant forces on the planet. And they use their power to get as good as they can at manipulating and hypnotizing us. It works because we are sick enough and detached from our senses enough that we don't hear the alarms going off. Or we do, but we're too weak and too overwhelmed to do much about it.
     We cannot afford to be too weak and too overwhelmed to do much about it. Its now or near-total collapse of the good on Earth. We have to stop taking the red pill and take the blue pill. It's time to listen to our senses. To listen to ourselves. To turn off the tv and get to work. We may not even know where to begin to start. I have know idea what I really want to do with my life. I have no idea what my passions really are. The truth is that their is an incredible amount of good work to do right now. We may not know how to connect to life and society in original ways. That's ok. Figure out what you can do now and do that. Be open to the possibly of getting to know yourself more, of listening to yourself more and understanding your world and life more. If you open up enough, a torrent of wisdom, creativity, and sense will flood into your life. Life is ready for you to step up your game. Life is waiting for you to step up and hit the ball. We need heroes and we need leaders. We need people with big cajones who want to have fun. Our communities are thirsty for positive leadership and inspiration. Their are huge holes to be filled. Holes filled that will make life so much more fulfilling and easy.
     The key is being kind to yourself. Being patient and understanding and loving. This process is meaningless without love and consideration. It is not a ball to be beat, but a child to be nurtured. We need nurturing. Massive out-breaking of love. We need people to open their hearts to life and to each other. We need people to be brave with sharing their feelings and listening to the hard truths of the world. We need to understand that we can't get along by forcing each other around. We have to listen to each other until we find common ground to work from. If we listen to each other enough we will come to love and appreciation of one another. We won't be afraid, frustrated or hateful. We will understand and see beauty where we saw hate and division. We will feel like rejoicing and we will know what we need to do to solve our problems. When we don't listen to how we feel and we don't have people to truly listen to how we feel and what's going on in our lives with an open heart, we become afraid. When we don't listen to our fears, we begin to close off to the world. We don't stay awake. We start to get mad, to go mad. To get confused because we aren't seeing or thinking clearly. We get resentful and start to blame people for how we feel. When we blame them enough for our problems, we begin to hate them. If we think we're to blame we hate ourselves. We become sick and our perception becomes distorted. We get so sick that we want to hurt ourselves and others. We take drugs we don't need to take. We get into abusive relationships. We manipulate each other and do things we know are wrong. We become destructive. Self-destructive and world destructive.
     To heal these wounds, we need wide open tender-loving listening hearts. We need non-judgment and appreciation. We need people who are ok being as they are now. People who are ok with how you are now. People who love you as you are now. Wars don't solve these kinds of problems. Violence doesn't solve these problems. Hate doesn't solve these kinds of problems. Fear doesn't solve these kinds of problems. If we want to unite the world, or even to unite ourselves,our family, or our community,we can't do it without love and kindness. We can't do it without listening to the pains in our hearts and having the strength to do so. Without loving ourselves, our family, and our community more than we hate them and more than we are afraid of them.
     It takes strength to open your heart to the truth. It takes strength to turn to love. It takes fearlessness and self sacrifice to walk the path of Christ. To turn away from darkness and to be vulnerable in the Light. Its not easy being true. But is is harder living in a world without order, without decency and without good will. If you want to pursue the Good and the True, you have to face your feelings. You have to face the pain inside of your heart. You have to resist the temptation of evil in your life. You have to stand up for yourself and for those around you. You have to learn the word of God. The Word of Truth, the Way of Christ. Christ lives in your feelings. Christ lives in your heart. Christ belongs to the world, so you too must belong to the world. You must be prepared to follow the Light into darkness to liberate your Soul and the Soul of the World. You must be prepared to redeem the world. In order to redeem the world, you must first redeem yourself.
     You must grow beyond means of might and compulsion. You must grow beyond the conventions of your people. You must step outside of the box and you must put aside the security that you know. You must continually face the unknown as consciously as you possibly can. You must let the past die and be willing to let your life fall apart. You must give up everything you have and know for the presence of this moment. You will not find your life in your thoughts and ideas. You will find your life in yourself as you are now. You will find your self in yourself as you are now. In your pain, in your confusion, in your misery, delusion, fear, suffering and ignorance. In your goodness, in your love, in your laughter, in your happiness and in everything.
     It all begins with the heart. It all begins with a choice to listen to how you feel rather than to ignore how you feel and who you are. It begins each and every moment. You can rise and you can fall in each and every moment. When you do not or cannot listen to your heart, you fall. When we do not or cannot listen to the hearts of each other our society falls. Its not enough to have policies to govern us. We need wise and willing hearts to sow our lives together with listening and love. We can't know how to solve our problems if we don't listen to our hearts. By listening to our hearts and to the hearts of each other, we can learn why their is hate and why their is suffering. When we turn towards hate with hate we don't listen. When we turn towards people we don't agree with, with judgment and with certainty that we are right and they are wrong, we don't listen. When we don't listen, we don't solve our problems. When we don't listen, we stay angry, we stay afraid, we stay divided. We don't learn. We have to have the heart and the strength of character to face what we don't like for the sake of the integrity of the human species and the integrity of life on Earth. We don't need to win. We need to work together. We need to hear what is being said. We need to listen.
     Love will change this world. Love will change our hearts. Love will bring us together and make the bitter sweet. Love will turn rubble into roses, rust into shine, carelessness into carefulness. Love will end hatred. It will end fear. It will end suffering. It will end division. It will end sorrow. It will bring the Kingdom and the Seat of the Lord to the mountains and the seas of Earth. It will bring the Kingdom of Christ into our hearts and into our lives. It will bring Heaven to Earth. We must not be afraid of what we cannot control. Not be afraid of what we cannot see. We must not be afraid of monsters and demons. Of sickness, death and darkness. We must not be afraid of each other or ourselves. We must not be afraid of what has happened to us, what is happening to us, and what may happen to us. We must know that we are Children of God and that we are not of this world. We must listen to are hearts and answer the call to live the life we must. We must stand together in freedom and Justice. We must stand up to tyrants and dictators. We must cast down unfairness and cast Light onto the world. We must sow evenness into the foundations of our buildings, into the foundations of our hearts and our sight. We must sow evenness in the words we speak and the steps we take. We must listen to the Word of God and see it live in our lives.
      Listening is the way to the truth. It is recognizing the deeper harmony of life and being able to act from it. It may stand out in a world where people are asleep. In a world of violence, force, and abuse. It is dancing with life instead of dominating it or being dominated by it. It is seeing things as they are, seeing through what you are taught to believe. It is being still in crashing waves. It is seeing yourself in the other and it is letting go of hate and bitterness. It is the melting of winter ice and the coming of spring. The flowing of a stream through green fields. It is openness and evenness without form or ground. It is being without thought among thought and form. It is recognizing what you know and what you don't. It is being the seen and the seeing. It is as you are now, walking and waving speaking without saying. Listening is the return to the field. It is seeing your legs and feet in waving green grass. It is seeing where you stand without stepping away from where you are. Where the end of your sight is the beginning of your sight, and the beginning of your sight is the end of your sight. Where the apple falls onto the grass and makes a sound. And the sound on the grass is the grass waving in the wind.