Loch Kelly – Effortless Mindfulness

Effortless Mindfulness is both a natural capacity and a skillful way to connect with ourselves and others. It is a way of being mindful from a different level of mind than we are used to. There is more to Effortless Mindfulness than meditation.

Effortless Mindfulness is primarily an off-the-meditation-cushion way of weaving together contemplation and compassionate actions. Effortless Mindfulness begins by opening to a natural spacious awareness in order to become wiser, more embodied, and more creative.

Effortless Mindfulness will help you immediately shift out of your cloud of thoughts and emotions, and into the spacious, embodied, interconnected loving Self you have always been.

In his book, Rainbow Painting, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche says “There are two types of mindfulness: deliberate and effortless.” Mindfulness could be described as the ability to become focused and connected. Deliberate mindfulness is usually considered the introductory practice. Effortless Mindfulness is an advanced, yet simple form of mindfulness designed to relieve the deepest levels of suffering.

In this module, you’ll:

• Deepen your understanding of the differences between deliberate mindfulness and Effortless Mindfulness
• Receive a map and methods for shifting through the 5 levels of awakening
• Discover how to taste awakening immediately through small glimpses and shifts of awareness
• Move from a thought-based separate self to an awareness-based loving Self
• Understand how your awake Self allows you to be compassionate with the parts of you that are hurt or protective
• Move beyond the traps of being too mindfully detached or too energetically enmeshed
• Realize that the innate unchanging ground of wholeness is already installed within you

It takes practice to upgrade from thought-based small mind to your awareness-based open mind. In this second class, you’ll explore ways to shift out of small mind and small self into your awake, loving Self. The primary way of shifting is to feel how local awareness can move from being identified to returning home to open-hearted awareness.

The main approach of Effortless Mindfulness is small glimpses, many times during the day. A glimpse is a micro-meditation that takes a few minutes and is often done with your eyes open.

In this module, you’ll:

• Discover 5 distinct foundations of Effortless Mindfulness
• Learn about wordless, timeless, awake awareness as the boundless ground
• Discover “local awareness,” the tuner for changing consciousness, which is different from attention
• Feel local awareness shift out of the cloud of your mind and into spacious, awake awareness
• Feel local awareness unhook from your small mind and drop down into your heart-mind
• Experience the difference between being aware through thought and being aware through awareness-energy

Discover how to access your effortless, awake nature and know the intelligence of your body from within. Embodying Effortless Mindfulness allows you to work, move, and relate to others from an open-hearted presence.

Just as we can become too “spaced out,” we can become too “blissed in,” or caught in subtle energy. For empaths and highly sensitive people in particular, Effortless Mindfulness is the way to experience the support of awake awareness as the boundless ground of interconnected consciousness that is compassionate but does not take on other people’s energy.

In this module, you’ll:

• Distinguish subtle-body energy from interconnected awareness energy
• Know your body from within and all around from Simultaneous Mind
• Discover your Ground of Being as a supportive, effortless sense of wellbeing
• Feel boundless awareness, interconnected energy, and relational boundaries
• Find out how to shift your awareness and return to your true nature in the midst of daily life

It is important, in order to embody awakening, to discover the non-dual relationship between formlessness and form. We begin to experience open-hearted awareness as the foundation of Self.

Our changing experience shows up in everyday life not just as thoughts and emotions, but as subpersonalities or parts of us. We can learn to discover the foundation of our awake Self that can welcome and love all parts back to health.

Loch will guide you from the traps of small self and into your awake Self so you can heal shadow parts with Effortless Mindfulness.

In this module, you’ll:

• Access open-hearted awareness as the loving intelligence of Self
• Identify and ask a part for some space, and shift into awake Self
• Feel Self as the foundation of “who I am,” which also includes relationship to parts and people
• Discover natural, loving self-energy toward all parts, whether hurt or powerfully protective
• Discover ways to listen to and unburden parts so they are part of the team

Mindfulness meditation is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Over the past 20 years, scientific research has shown that mindfulness alleviates stress-related symptoms, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain, and has also been proven to improve cognitive function, boost immunity, and lower blood pressure.

More recent studies of the Effortless Mindfulness approach show measurable changes in our body and perceptions. Awakening is possible.

In this class, you’ll learn how to do mindful glimpses that “reverse-engineer” the neuroscience findings to:

• Move from initial empathy to compassion — instead of empathetic burnout
• Balance the default-mode network of the brain so you feel seamlessly interconnected
• Stop trying to be in the present moment, and discover how to be in the Now
• Do the “Drive Yourself Happy” open-eyed glimpse to shift into a flow state

From effortless heart mindfulness at this stage, we sense that we can know information as needed without referring to thought. We can remain at home in our heart-mind and have thoughts come to us from the office in our head via wifi.

From this stage, many people report that they feel the coming together of a boundless heart and a tender human heart. Many say that they feel like they are looking out of “the eyes of the heart.” This heart-mind is not the physical heart, heart chakra, or emotional heart, but compassionate intelligence that is like continuous intuition. They describe an experience of unconditional love, free from fear, worry, and shame.

In this module, you’ll discover how to:

• Shift from head to heart, from thought-based knowing to open-hearted awareness
• Feel compassionate intelligence and make choices from that state
• Talk and relate to other people from effortless heart mindfulness
• Return and remain at home in the heart, welcoming and healing all parts of your Self

Over the past sessions, you’ve learned to shift through five levels of awakening and access a loving Self that is compassionate with the painful and angry parts of you. You’ll continue to see that no parts are bad, and that they are all looking for love in the ways they thought were best.

It is important to keep this simple, new orientation and do small shifts of awareness each day to discover the wisdom within you.

Loch will guide you to heal and unburden the shame-based parts that try to convince you that you are not worthy of your birthright of love and awakening.

In this module, you’ll:

• Recognize when you’re caught in small mind —and know how to drop down into your heart-mind
• Integrate small glimpses into your daily life and restart your day anytime
• Navigate the traps, detours, and protective parts that keep you from living an awakened life
• Connect with your community and find new motivation for compassionate activity