The Art of

Effortless Living
HOW TO STOP SWIMMING AGAINST
THE CURRENT

L U K A B Ö N I S C H
“The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you
think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and
down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored,
and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long
time, and they begin to wonder, “Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?” And other
people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, “Hey, don't worry;
don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.”

– Bill Hicks
 Introduction

Hello friend,

Life seems ridiculously strenuous sometimes, doesn’t it? All the trying, grasping,
efforting, becoming, and chasing is making our lives feel like an upstream journey. If
we’d at least have a nice motorboat, it’d be a lot easier. But usually, we opt for the
swimming option…with our arms tied behind our back barely keeping ourselves afloat
and swallowing a whole lot of river water.

If you feel like I have described your life experience, you came to the right document.
Most of us are so used to the way we (and for that matter everyone else) live our lives,
that we rarely stop and ask ourselves if there might be a less fragmented way to live.
The truth is that you are an integrated part of the flow of life but your belief in being a
separate entity living life is keeping you from clearly seeing that.

So this means that when the belief in separation is gone, you’ll automatically be aligned
with everything. To make this even clearer, this is not about swapping the belief in
separation with the belief in integration. This is about seeing that separation is an
illusion, it doesn’t exist. When you see this then you’ll no longer need to function on
beliefs.

Effortless living is simply recognizing that you are an integrated part of everything.

Essentially, it’s about seeing that the you, you think you are doesn’t exist. Intellectually
understanding this however won’t help you. Understanding this for real is a shocking
yet ordinary non-event. Having said that, not many are ready to move from cherishing
your individuality to the annihilation of the person in one go, which no one can actually
be ready for.

The chapters are experiments and principles you can try and adapt to see the
effortlessness in everything. Use them as steppingstones to gently ease into non-duality
or an integrated state of being. But even steppingstones are an illusion because there
is just one step, from not-knowing to knowing. Yet this knowing can’t be forced so until
this non-event happens, allow yourself to play around and don’t take things so
seriously, life is taking care of you. Feel free to use everything at your disposal to live
life as it is supposed to be lived, effortlessly.

- Luka
Content

Introduction..................................................................................................................................2
Radical Acceptance .................................................................................................................1
Follow Your Excitement ........................................................................................................3
Screw Happiness .....................................................................................................................5
Take Responsibility, Then Release It ................................................................................8
What’s Possible? .................................................................................................................... 11
Would You Be So Kind To Tell Me The Truth............................................................... 14
Thank You ................................................................................................................................ 16
Do You Feel This? .................................................................................................................. 19
What Was I Thinking? ......................................................................................................... 22
Be The Co-Pilot ....................................................................................................................... 25
The Ordinary Miracle ........................................................................................................... 28
There Is No You...................................................................................................................... 31
Final Word: Just Be Who You Are ................................................................................... 35
 Radical Acceptance

“Acceptance is very deep, is infinite: and it starts here, in your own heart.
Whatever arises is accepted.”
– David Carse

Now the first important point to keep in mind when it comes to living effortlessly is to
stop fighting reality. Most of us are in a constant fight with the parts of our world we
don’t like as if that will make them go away. You already know that fighting doesn’t
make the unwanted go away but provides it with more power.

Even if things go away by fighting them, as it may happen at times, who knows, the
next thing to fight is already queued up. So you need to know that living an effortless
life is not about eliminating the things you don’t like but accepting reality as it is.
Although this sounds like I want you to be content with all the crap life offers you, that’s
not what I mean at all.

Because interestingly, the more you accept the already manifest, the faster will it
change into the thing you want it to change into. You need to know that control is an
illusion and the only way to be in control is to relinquish control. So radical acceptance
is not supposed to be some wishy-washy spiritual concept, but a hardcore facing reality.

And what is, already is, so why fight what already is when it is already that what it is?

If there is any way to influence reality it sure isn’t the molding of already tangible stuff
in front of you but the composing of what is potentially manifest. Yet as long as you
resist the already tangible stuff it will usually stay where it is. When you, however,
accept the stuff and no longer fight it, you allow life to do its thing, which means you
allow it to take its natural course and to turn one thing into another thing.

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Simply take a look at your life experience and see what you are in constant conflict with
and which doesn’t seem to disappear. Now could you be cool with the thing not going
away ever?

That’s what radical acceptance is, accepting the possibility of things being less than
optimal. If you can’t accept that, accept the non-acceptance. And if you can’t accept the
non-acceptance, accept not being able to accept the non-acceptance. As you can see,
acceptance never ends, there is always another layer to be accepted, meaning you
simply need to accept whatever is in your awareness right now, including the belief that
you can’t accept what you think you need to accept.

Here is something to get you into radical acceptance mood. Ask yourself the following
question. Would you choose a happy and effortless life but never get the thing you want
the most?

The truth is most of us are not ready because we would rather have the world than be
integrated with the flow of life, which you, by the way, already are but refuse to see.
This is a case of having your cake but not eating it. Although many New Age spiritual
teachers tell us otherwise, you can’t have an effortless life and cling to your
attachments. You have to choose, it’s either-or.

So, perhaps now is a good time to make a decision. Are you willing to drop all the weight
keeping you on earth so you can soar to the heights you are meant to soar, or do you
want to carry all the attachments around in the hope that carrying them everywhere
you go will somehow make the objects of attachment appear in your reality?

Know that when you no longer impose your will onto life that life will bring you exactly
what you need when you need it.

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 Follow Your Excitement

“Do what thou wilt, follow your stupid bliss, why not?
By what better start might you navigate?”

– Jed Mckenna

Doing what you want to do in life seems like the most self-evident thing ever. Yet most
of us prefer to argue why we can’t do what we want to do. We have to feed ourselves,
care for our families, pay bills, and all that stuff, so, naturally, we say these things have
priority over doing what excites us.

But what if you could follow your excitement and not starve? Well, the bold claim here
is that you can. You might protest by saying that there is no way you can only do what
you want. But have you actually ever tried doing only what you want?

It’s all really simple, follow your highest excitement in every moment, for everything,
even for the seemingly small insignificant things, like which socks to wear.

It takes courage to dismiss all the should’s and have to's and must’s but if you are
serious about living a life that is not a constant struggle, it certainly benefits you to at
least entertain the possibility.

After all, what do you really have to do? If we are strict about it, the answer is nothing.
There is nothing you have to do. You don’t even have to live.

This may be a scary or a liberating thought for you, depending on who you think you
are. If you think you exist solely as your body-mind organism, then you’ll probably be
scared as hell to drop the unfulfilling activities you consider your lifeline. But if you at
least intellectually see that you are not your body or mind, then following anything but
your excitement seems like a strange thing to do.

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Why would you want to live a life that is primarily filled with things you don’t like
doing?

Most of us are so involved in the character we are playing we never step back from it to
see the ridiculousness of it all. If you feel like you are a person with all the problems,
worries, and beliefs that come with being a person, then snap out of it right now, even
if it’s just for a second.

Imagine the person you think you are, is a character on a stage who has forgotten that
he or she is playing a role. Now, step off the stage into the auditorium. Take on an
observer's perspective and look at everything as if it’s happening outside yourself.
There is no rule on how to do this, just do this intuitively. A good sign is that things
look less serious and important, which, of course, they are.

We can say that nothing is as serious as we make it but that is a little inaccurate. Things
or not less serious than they seem, they are not serious to any degree. If you feel
seriously offended by these words, now you have a good opportunity to look more
closely. Most likely you have some moral beliefs about right and wrong and life and
death, which also lead you to do things you don’t like to do. The keyword in the previous
sentence is “beliefs.” That’s one of the big fires under humanity’s ass, the belief that our
actions should be confined by morality.

I already see you going bananas over the last sentence, so I want to clarify something.
This is not about suddenly going on a rampage of destruction because morality is a
belief. This is simply about recognizing that it is a belief. The more beliefs you scrape
away, the more natural and spontaneous will your way of being become, which includes
right action. Right action is kind of the true form of morality. Right action emerges
naturally, morality is imposed upon you through conditioning.

And right action is not just about your behavior towards other people, but the way life
expresses itself through your body-mind. If you let it do its thing, it will naturally follow
its highest excitement, which is always effortless and will lead you to exactly where you
didn’t know you want to go.

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 Screw Happiness

“There's only one reason for the absence of happiness: the false beliefs you have in
your head, beliefs so widespread, that it never occurs to you to question them.”

– Anthony De Mello.

Arguably, or rather inarguably, everything we want is because we believe we will be

happy in the having of it, which includes doing and being things. And although this in
itself is not something bad (because bad is just a label by the mind), what we think is
happiness is really a never-ending pleasure chase.

You get one thing and then you are happy for a second, minute, hour, day, or week but
then the happiness starts to fade and you go on a hunt for the next thing. That’s the
predicament most of us are involved in. And while we all know this, we all have had
experiences of rising and falling of “happiness,” we still keep that goose chase up
because we think that we might have gotten the wrong thing last time but now we have
found a worthy goal, for sure.

This is not how things work though. Happiness does exist but not in the form we think
it does. But to be in a state of true happiness, you have to first be a little big bit honest
with yourself. Look at your life so far and clearly see that nothing outside yourself will
ever make you happy. As long as you believe that the car, the house, the partner, the
dog, or the invasion of a moderately big country will make you happy, there is no hope
for you.

And you know this as much as I do but most of us are not ready to accept this. Instead,
we keep up a kind of doublethink where we know that chasing happiness in the world
leads nowhere, yet at the same time believe that happiness is found somewhere in the
world. Without self-honesty, you won’t get far.

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There is nothing you have to do first to see this. You simply take an honest look at your
life experiences and see that chasing pleasure after pleasure in the hope of a mirage is
not where it’s at. And when you have seen this, the desire for this futile chase for
happiness will start dropping away, at which point you’ll see how much effort you have
channeled into this chase.

When the world (aka your mind) is promising you happiness from some kind of thing,
it’s fooling you big time. Happiness isn’t found anywhere because happiness (the real
happiness anyway) is always right here. It’s in the recognition that you don’t have to
achieve, become, have, and do anything for it. Happiness is not found in some kind of
romantic hero story where you try to find your life purpose and then, eventually,
perhaps find it.

As you might have already suspected unhappiness is inherent in the story. There is no
lasting state of happiness inside the story.

You must drop the whole story right now and there it is, happiness, as plain as daylight,
always has been and always will be.

There is just one trap here, the mind will want to make the dropping of the story part
of the story, as the finale. But this is not dropping the story. Dropping the story is
recognizing there is no you to drop anything. What you think you are is part of the
story, so the you that wants to drop the story is inside the story and can therefore only
drop things in the context of the story.

The key is to stop feeding emotional energy into attachments, which severs the bonds.
But here again, attachment is basically what the you, you call you is. So what you’re
doing is pruning away on “yourself” to reveal the Nothingness or Presence that you are.
By Nothingness, I don’t mean human nothingness which we often deem as bad,
uncomfortable, or scary. It’s more of an ever-present and infinitely potent
Nothingness.

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You are the Nothingness right now whether you know it or not, so when you know,
you’ll know that in some sense you’ve always known.

This will result in no longer chasing illusionary happiness. But there will be another
happiness, one that naturally arises out of nothingness (like anything else), which is
the nothingness itself, which in turn is a kind of calm knowing that everything is the
way it is and could not be any other way.

This might sound very extraordinary but really it’s not, you have experienced this
before. It’s the most ordinary thing ever and it’s the most apparent thing when you stop
believing the story of the mind.

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 Take Responsibility, Then Release It

“Things are as they are and nobody in particular is responsible. The idea of
personal responsibility comes from the illusion of agency.”

– Nisargadatta Maharaj

Taking full responsibility in its most complete form is dropping not only the belief that
other people are responsible for what happens in your life, but also that other people
exist who can influence your life.

This may sound like crazy talk but if you take one honest look you will see that there is
no proof that anyone outside yourself exists. The only thing you know for sure from
your perspective is that you exist. Everything else is belief because it rests upon
assumptions, which cannot be proven.

Your experience of life might be a visionary experience you’re having after having
smoked alien drugs. Who knows?

Before anyone turns this into a moral dilemma, that’s not what it’s about. Mind you, I
didn’t say that no one exists, I said that the belief that someone outside yourself exists
cannot be proven. I’m not going to argue about, why you shouldn’t be a complete ass
to everyone if no one but you exist. If you want to be an ass, be an ass but don’t claim
you are an ass because you have read somewhere that only you exist.

See clearly that no one can be responsible for your life and it will be self-evident what
to do. And whatever is done is what is supposed to be done.

Anyway, back to the responsibility part. Most of us hold a very subtle subconscious
belief that someone will save us. No one will save you. The only authority who can help
you is you, no one can take the smallest step for you. If you want to figure out what is

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going on, it’s you who has to do it, no one else can figure anything out for you. No
amount of wise words from teachers and gurus will turn you into the teacher or guru.
You have to see for yourself and to do this you have to take responsibility.

Yet don’t confuse this with human responsibility. This is not about buckling up,
working hard, and digging yourself in even deeper. This is more akin to the acceptance
and surrender of chapter 1 because here is the thing, taking responsibility ultimately
leads to seeing that there is no one to take responsibility.

This is the next realization, that the responsibility you have apparently taken, hasn’t
been taken by anyone, rather it was simply responsibility arising. It seems like a
paradox to take responsibility just to realize that taking responsibility is an illusion.
But paradoxes exist only inside the dream. Outside the dream, there is no paradox.

Here is the thing, inside the dream, responsibility and someone to be responsible is
certainly a thing. Outside the dream, responsibility is simply an appearance in
consciousness and someone to be responsible is seen as non-existent. Yet because you
are the only thing that exists, you are responsible for everything. Another paradox,
huh?

Right now, I assume that you’re still identified with the dream character you’re playing
and no amount of acting as if you’re not identified with it will make the identification
go away. So all you can do is dream stuff and hope that it will amass to something,
which it may or may not will, and taking responsibility for your life is one of those
things.

I know what you want to ask, how does taking responsibility equate to effortless living?
Good question.

Well, it does so by allowing you to take an honest look inside, which will lead to all
kinds of realizations about not blaming outside forces for whatever you experience.
And, eventually, with some Grace falling upon you, you will then see that there is no

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one to be responsible at which point responsibility drops away and perfect
effortlessness is seen as the apparent expression of everything that is.

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 What’s Possible?

“The eternal void is filled with infinite possibilities.”

– Lao Tzu

Most of us meet the happenings of life with a very rigid and depressive mindset. Our
minds are confined, or should I say programmed, to linear thinking, which translates
into a limited and pretty lame view of life.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should venture down the road of wishful
thinking (though you can if you want to) but simply be open to the fact that you don’t
know what will and can happen. When we think of what’s possible, we are usually not
even remotely close. The scope of potential blessing and destruction in every moment
is so tremendously huge, that the mind can not wrap around the possibilities.

So, being open to infinite possibilities doesn’t mean trying to be aware of infinite
possibilities, which, I’m sure you know, is impossible. It means to cease assuming you
know what can happen or to put it differently, it means knowing that you can’t know.

After all, what do we know for real?

All I and you (if you even exist) can know is ‘I Am,’ Existence, Consciousness.
Everything beyond that is beliefs, yes even so-called facts. You don’t need to be an
enlightened master to see this, you simply need to question the basic assumptions upon
which all knowledge is based.

Although science would like you to believe that it has it all figured out and it’s about to
discover the secret of the universe while it’s dishing out cool discoveries at an
increasing rate, science has no actual clue. Sure, science offers relative truths that make

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sense if you accept the scientific model but apart from that it’s a belief system as much
as religion.

But please don’t just believe me, do your own math. Simply look at all the things you
believe are facts and look at the assumptions on which those facts are resting.

In the case of science, this is, for instance, the existence of a physical universe,
materialism, and objectivism. None of these are proven, nor can they be proven. Why?
Because our perception and all experience happen through consciousness and your
perspective will always be subjective no matter how many double-blind’s you insert
into the equation.

So why am I bashing science here? It’s certainly not because I hate science, I enjoy
science as much as the next person who doesn’t really care about science. I have chosen
science to bash because for many of us this has become the gold standard of what’s
possible in reality. But if science can’t even validate the fundament, it is built upon,
how can it have any saying in what’s possible in reality?

Although many of us would say that we are not materialists and we believe there is
more to reality than meets the eye, most of us navigate our day-to-day lives from a
materialistic perspective, which is a lazy and boring point of view.

This doesn’t mean that you need to reject science for every little thing. Science is good
at explaining and harnessing the dream world. As I said, some relative truths seem to
apply in the dream, but “seem” is the keyword here because we never know for sure.
Let’s use the dream analogy to drive this point home.

Imagine you’re in a dream that resembles your waking life experience. Sure, some
things might be a little different but nothing’s particularly out of the ordinary. Just a
good ol’ dream with good ol’ human dream characters doing good ol’ dream stuff. This
all seems like normal waking life to you, and you don’t expect anything out of the
ordinary. But then something wonky happens, a purple cat comes by on a bike and
everyone starts floating into the sky. Suddenly, it hits you, you’re dreaming! Now that

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you’re lucid in the dream what do you think is possible? Virtually anything. You can
materialize and dematerialize to your heart’s content.

Although this is an analogy and analogies only get you so far, it’s a pretty decent one.
Sometimes all that is needed is one strange occurrence, one synchronicity, one
paranormal experience to burst open the doors to a wider spectrum of possibility.

And the way this will happen is by becoming aware of the fact that you can’t trust the
mind when it comes to predicting what will and can happen. The mind is simply the
sum total of all thoughts, and what thoughts arise depends on the conditioning that
has happened for each of the individual body-minds we perceive the world through.
Yet even an unconditioned mind is still a limited thing, and a limited thing can never
perceive infinity.

So whatever the mind says, know that it’s usually pretty far off from what could happen.
And every experience of limitation is simply a story that the mind is telling, which you
can either believe or see through.

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 Would You Be So Kind To Tell Me The Truth

“Be kind and honest, and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.”

– Rumi

Honesty and kindness are principles of effortless living not because of some artificial
moral obligation but because they simplify your life. When you tell the truth you never
have to put any effort into coming up with lies, remembering lies, and keeping up
administrative work that comes with lying.

Similarly, by being kind to everyone you don’t have to think about how to act toward
this person or that person; kindness is self-evident and can’t be forced.

Also, by being kind to others you won’t create unnecessary drama with others.
Whenever you’re not sure how to be around someone or feel any kind of hostility
towards someone, simply be a friend. Everyone likes to be treated like a friend.

Even more importantly, extend honesty and kindness to yourself. If you truly want to
know what’s going on, self-honesty is a vital step. But this takes courage and a strong
intention as looking honestly at your prison of delusion could be quite painful.
Questioning your cherished beliefs, which make up your ego, is dismantling your ego,
which will in turn make you feel like “you” is disappearing/dying/dissolving. Yet your
ego has never existed in the first place, so nothing is really lost.

And because this process of honestly looking can be painful a general sense of kindness
towards yourself can be helpful. But this is not a fake good vibes flowery kindness, but
rather a firm kindness like a caring yet authoritative parent.

Kindness is especially relevant in the context of self-judgment, which is like a second

layer of thinking that constantly evaluates the first layer of thinking. So kindness means

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accepting the presence of these different layers without condemning them. But if you
do condemn them, be kind to that as well.

So, in the sense that there is always a deeper layer to extend your kindness toward,
kindness is like radical acceptance.

Simply look at your life experience and see how much effort is expended into figuring
out what to say to others, how to behave around them, and dealing with the petty drama
that results from dishonesty and being an ass.

Here again, honesty and kindness can simply be summed up as, be a friend. Note,
being a friend doesn’t mean being an ass kisser. Being honest can sometimes be more
uncomfortable and hurt others more than telling a lie but down the road, it will save
you a lot of hassle.

Similarly, kindness doesn’t mean faking kindness or letting others trample over you. If
you can’t seem to get along with someone, you don’t have to. Remember, extend
kindness to yourself, which can mean walking away from people you don’t resonate
with.

Many on a spiritual journey start to think they must get along with and even love
everyone, but this is a descriptive/prescriptive fallacy. You can’t convince yourself to
love anyone, it either happens or it doesn’t.

And here is something else to consider, there is no value and price in claiming you’re
getting along with everyone when you’re not. Stop pretending and be honest with
yourself. This leads to honesty with others, which then translates into kindness because
honesty in its truest form is the very kindest thing you can do for yourself and others.

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 Thank You

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to
give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your
advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

You may have heard or read about the power of gratitude before but before you get into
‘I know this stuff and will just neatly align it with what I already know’ let me quickly
pull the break here.

Gratitude is doubtlessly powerful for attracting wanted stuff and manifesting your life
vision, yet this is not about prescribing gratitude like a medicine. You don’t need to
force gratitude as it is most likely happening already every day. Simply be aware of it
when it happens and allow it to arise whenever it wants to arise no matter how trivial
the object of your gratitude is.

Thoughts, by the way, are not needed for this.

Gratitude is a feeling that will naturally arise and not something that needs to be
conjured like a spell. Sure, you can think about things you appreciate to then evoke a
sense of gratitude but if this feels like an obligation then don’t. We’re speaking about
effortlessness here, right?

And effortlessness is all about getting out of the way. To get out of the way, you need to
stop forcing things and allow things to arise naturally, which they already do anyway.
The illusion is that we can make things happen. Gratitude either is or is not, there is no
need to go deep-sea diving for it.

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Nonetheless, to contradict myself a little, you can, if you want to, sit down and reflect
on when gratitude or appreciation arises. This is not to artificially evoke them but to
simply be aware of their existing presence in your life. This is like looking for your
wallet to put into your pocket while it is already in your pocket. Be aware of the wallet
in your pocket and you won’t have to look for it.

A peculiar thing most of us do is express our discontent when undesired things happen
but not so much as flinch an eye when desired things happen. It’s as if we take the good
things happening for granted. There is a kind of subconscious air of arrogance around
the good things happening in our lives as if we’re saying: “Well, it’s about time that this
thing happened and now you expect to be grateful for it?”

Take this as an invitation to look at your life and see how this is true for you. Do you go
around telling everyone about the things you don’t like? Are you fretting over every
little thing that doesn’t seem to go optimal?

What about the cool things happening in your life, especially the ordinary everyday
cool things? Do you give them attention and appreciate them?

Listen, you don’t need to act like everything is optimal when it’s not but you can see the
things to appreciate in even a non-optimal situation. Recognize that so-called defeat
and failure are inherent to the dreamworld and not infrequently are they the
harbingers of success.

So that’s that. You can interpret and perceive things the way you want to. If you want
to see unwanted events as the road to more unwanted events, you can do so. But you
can also appreciate unwanted events (or at least the good aspects inside them) and see
them as the road to wanted events.

Gratitude ties in with all the previous principles because everything we have talked
about earlier will naturally increase the gratitude you experience. When you accept

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things as they are, follow what excites you, realize that happiness is ever-present, see
that responsibility is taken care of, are open to infinite possibilities, and fill your life
with honesty and kindness, how could you not feel gratitude and appreciation?

Eventually, you’ll realize that there is something to appreciate in every moment, even
the most painful ones. There is a present in everything, which will reveal itself when
you stop trying to subdue reality to your will. And as soon as that happens, you’ll be
showered with experiences, things, and people to appreciate.

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 Do You Feel This?

“An experience we have is valid because we are having it – because we are feeling it
– not because what we think about it.”

– Michael Brown

There is but one thing that leads to all the hiccups in our lives. That one thing is
emotion. Actually, it’s not emotion per se but our resistance to emotions. This
resistance comes in two flavors: thoughts and sensations. Thoughts about emotions are
the only thing that makes emotions seemingly wrong or negative. The translation from
mental to physical resistance leads to sensations which then feed back into thoughts.

However, emotions are nothing but feelings interpreted and feelings are nothing but
sensations. So the sensations that we have now called physical resistance are, in their
essence, not different from emotions.

You might be confused right now. That is exactly the point. Can you see how confusing
things get when we try to make sense of emotions by thinking our way out of them?
This is not to say that thought is the bad guy. I’m not one of those spiritual bliss bunnies
who demonizes thought. I love thought. Rational thought is our greatest spiritual
weapon.

But the power of thought is wasted on the task of trying to make sense of our emotions.
Reoccurring traumatic emotions aren’t reoccurring because we haven’t been able to
wrap our minds around them. They are reoccurring because we haven’t let them leave
our systems.

Many of us assume that we need to understand our debilitating emotions to finally let
them go. This is an ineffective and often fruitless approach. The understanding of

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emotions is byproduct of allowing them to freely move. And this is what is required of
us: to let the emotions move. In other words, the only way to deal with unintegrated
emotions is by feeling them.

Unintegrated emotions make our lives one big struggle. They make us think in
senseless loops, do things we don’t want to do, and create all kind of mess we don’t
want to create. In short, they make as fight reality.

To stop fighting reality, as we have already said, you have to accept reality. And
acceptance doesn’t mean you have to like or approve everything. You don’t have to be
a fan of debilitating emotions. All you need to do is keep your unconditional attention
on the felt experience of the emotion.

In other words, just feel your damn feelings.

Emotions and feelings can’t hurt you. Yet most of us spend our lives running from
them. In this context, however, it’s not the fastest runner who wins but the one who
trips and falls. There is no need to be afraid of emotions. But if you are, then feel the
fear. Just feel whatever is present.

Cry, scream, release, do whatever you must to process the emotions that have been
keeping you in the loop you call your life. Don’t resist. Feel any emotion that arises. By
doing so, you are integrating and the more you integrate the more to be integrated will
come up. Traumas and past painful experiences will arise. Rejoice! You are finally
willing to process and integrate them.

I know this whole approach seems deceivingly simple, but I challenge you to do it.
Wield your felt perception. Direct your unconditional focus on the energetic charge you
feel in your body. This is the way to give yourself the unconditional love you always

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wanted from others. Just allow everything that is to be the way it is. If that isn’t the
definition of true love, then I don’t know what is.

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 What Was I Thinking?

“Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.”

– Aldous Huxley

In the last chapter we have mentioned thought en passant but in this chapter we’re
turning thought into the main character. Most of us seem to have a big issue with our
thoughts. Usually because they do what they want and often say mean things to us
(poor us).

In all seriousness though, I know that intrusive thoughts can be a great source of pain.
They have been in my life for a long time. But what I realized is that the only reason
thoughts are such source of pain to me is because I believe them. Incidentially this is
also one of the main causes of suffering: that we believe our thoughts.

Thoughts however are not an accurate reflection of reality. Nor are thoughts “your
thoughts.” With a little bit of reflection it’s pretty obvious that most of the automatic
thoughts that run in your mind are not thoughts you have chosen. Instead “your”
thoughts are simply accumulated debris from your environment. In other words, your
thoughts revolve around the ideas and beliefs you’ve been programmed with.

This automatic thinking and automatic believing the automatic thinking is also what
sucks all your energy. If you wonder why you’re so tired all the time, chances are good
it’s because you’re thinking your life instead of living your life.

This is not to say that you should stop thinking – I’m sure if you could you would have
done that two decades ago – but that you should use your thinking productively. You
can for instance use it to question all repetitive thoughts that you so willingly believe.
“Is any of my thoughts really true?” might be a good thing to think about.

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To put it plainly. Start thinking for yourself. Do not have only these repetitive
regurgitated thoughts. Use your thinking for the one thing it’s most useful for – cutting
through delusion and beliefs.

Now there is one more inquiry that can help to release you from the grip of thoughts.

Where do thoughts come from? Can you control thoughts? If you think you can, how
about stopping them for a day? Is there a thinker behind them?

Ask these questions and then look in your direct experience. Can you find a thinker
who is controlling the thinking? Don’t think to find the answer. Look!

To clarify the difference between thinking and looking: Imagine I ask you what color
your socks are. There are two ways you can answer me. You can try to remember how
you got up in the morning walked to drawer and picked out a pair of black socks
(thinking). Or you can just look down to your feet and see that you are actually wearing
blue socks (looking).

Just looking one time might not be enough. You have to keep looking over and over
until you see without a doubt that there is no thinker anywhere in experience (more
about that in the last chapter).

One more way to see that you are not in control of your thoughts because there is no
you to be in control of is to ponder how we usually regard the process of thinking. Most
people think in terms of a thinker thinking thoughts. But what is the actual experiential
difference between those three?

In other words, can you find a clear point where the thinker begins and ends, the
thinking begins and end, the thought begins and ends? Spoiler alert: You can’t.

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You can’t find clear points of demarcation in the trifecta of thinker, thinking, thought
because the trifecta is only conceptual.

If you still doubt what I say here, ask yourself if there could be a thought without
thinking? Or could there thinking without thoughts? Or could there be thoughts
without anyone who is aware of the thoughts (thinker)?

But really, there is no difference between thinker, thinking, and thought. It’s one
function. And because it’s a function, meaning it’s not static, the best of the three
conceptual descriptions is thinking.

There is only thinking. (The same can be applied to your senses as we will see in the
last chapter.)

Take your time to really get clear on this. The moment you really understand this, you
will realize that thoughts are not separate things that have power over you. This doesn’t
necessarily mean that thoughts won’t make you feel bad sometimes. In the beginning
they probably will. But the more you let the implications of this non-separation seep
in, the less will “you” feel influenced by “your” mental content.

You will see how much energy and peace of mind you have wasted by engaging with
these automatic thought patterns. The fun part is when thoughts cease to be your
primary navigation through life.

It's important, however, that you do the inquiry yourself. So don’t skip this and look.

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 Be The Co-Pilot

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,
move with it, and join the dance.”

– Alan Watts

Most of us have an idea about what our lives should look like. We want to be that, we
want to do this, and we want to have that other thing. Desires are rampant and we
believe that if our desires are not fulfilled, life will be meaningless, and unhappiness
will be our constant companion.

Regarding that ‘unhappiness’ bit, we have already concluded that happiness is not
found outside. Regarding that ‘life will be meaningless’ bit, don’t worry about it because
life is essentially meaningless. Every meaning you find in life is a labeling by the mind,
which is never the real meaning because there is none.

And even if life had meaning it has to be beyond the mind. The mind can never perceive
the totality of reality, so it breaks reality up into parts and then assigns meaning to
those parts.

Imagine reality as an ocean. The mind can look at the ocean, observe it, investigate it,
and come to conclusions about it. So you might say the meaning of the ocean is to act
as an incubator for sentient life, or to be home to a variety of plants and animals, or to
enable humans to surf on its waves. These are all well and good, but does that
accurately describe the meaning of the ocean?

The meaning we ascribe to the ocean can never hold up to the raw reality of the ocean.

By now you might wonder why I’m talking about life being meaningless and how it
relates to an effortless life. Another good question.

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Well, first of all, I want you to know that meaninglessness is good news, not bad news.
It means that you don’t have to figure out life’s meaning because there is nothing to
figure out. You can spend your entire life trying to figure out what the purpose and
meaning of life are just to have the answer evade you indefinitely. Why? Because there
is no answer!

Now that we know that life has no meaning and that’s perfect, let’s see what that means
for your desires and your life in general.

First, it means that you can create your own meaning and purpose, and whatever you
choose as your meaning and purpose will be right because there is no one right answer.
This also means that you can change your purpose as often as you like because again,
there is no one right answer.

The next point to consider is that what you think you want is most often conditioning
that has been implanted with the help of a little bit of glamour. Virtually anything you
think you want will not give you what you think you want. Surely, you have experienced
this for yourself. You wanted something really bad and perhaps have even worked hard
for it, just to be disappointed when you finally got what you wanted. This is because
you have thought about what you wanted in terms of the glamour around it.

You think you want to be CEO of a large company because it seems like a high-status
thing, but do you really want 80-hour work weeks and all the responsibility that come
with such a position? Or perhaps you think you want to be a celebrity but are you really
ready to never go anywhere again without being recognized by fans?

So here again, honesty is the first important step.

When you see that your whole life was an attempt to keep up with the Joneses, fulfill a
status quo, and gain approval from people you don’t care about, then you are ready to
ask yourself what you really want. At the point of disillusionment, all your inauthentic

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desires will start dropping away. The things you thought you care about, you will no
longer care about at all.

Then, your authentic desires will arise and fulfill themselves naturally.

I know what you want to know: “Can I do anything to fulfill my desires faster?” The
answer is yes, get out of the way you silly goose.

We think we have to do this and that to achieve our desires. We think we need to use
our intellect to figure out how to manifest them. We take responsibility. This is the true
block. Not that we don’t know how, but that we believe we need to know how.

So for this, you need to surrender the illusion of control. Most of us will have difficulty
relinquishing control but only because we think we have control. This is the point, you
never had and will never have control, yet to be in control you have to release control.

Now, how do you simplify fulfilling desires so that you don’t need to think about your
desires all the time? It’s quite simple. You align with the universe.

Look at it this way. You want what’s best for you, right? So far so good. Now all you
need to do is to trust the universe, which has been here way longer than us, to know
what’s best and how best to make it happen. Leave your brain out of the equation. Do
you think your brain knows better than infinite intelligence how to get things done?

Yet we are not trespassers or uninvited guests on a spinning globe, as we so often

assume, but co-creative partners. When you see that this is a magical place and that
you are not only part of it, but you are it, then manifesting your desires will be as
natural as breathing for you.

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 The Ordinary Miracle

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we’re so used to them we call them
ordinary things.”

– Hans Christian Andersen

The following directly ties in with recognizing yourself as the co-creator of your world.
This talk about manifestation and co-creation is all well and good but if it’s not how
you experience reality what use is any of it?

But here is the thing, co-creation is the world we are living in, if we have eyes to see.
And we do have eyes to see, it’s merely a matter of learning to use them more and
better, which is not that hard to do.

Like I said earlier, most of us live our lives from the lowest and laziest perspective –
the materialistic perspective. We look at the world through the materialistic lens
because we have been conditioned to do so, and because no one ever taught us that
there is more to see. Many of us might have adopted spiritual beliefs and claim that
we’re not materialists but our thinking and behavior doesn’t reflect that.

But what more is there to see? Where do you have to look? How can we see beyond
materialism if everything seems to be so…material?

I’m glad you asked. Behold, the Ordinary Miracle.

When we think of miracles, we think about moms lifting cars to save their children,
cellphones deflecting bullets, or some guy walking on water. But what we like to ignore
are the everyday ordinary miracles, like when the phone rings and it’s the person you’ve
just been thinking about or arriving at a full parking lot and suddenly a car right next
to you leaves.

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You can’t prove it and you can’t reproduce it but you know it happened and it’s not a
coincidence because it happens way too often and you experience enough of it to know
that there is more than meets the eye.

And that’s exactly where you look, the places where you know there’s more than meets
the eye.

If you want to know yourself as an integrated part of everything, look at those weird
little glimpses behind the curtain that show you what you really are. Most of us manage
to dismiss or ignore these micro-miracles and that’s how most of us maintain our
materialistic and segregated view of the world.

You, who are reading this right now, are familiar with the mystical dimension of life.
You know it’s plainly visible and it’s time to stop convincing yourself that you don’t see
it and embrace seeing it even more. When you truly let the implication that miracles
are happening all the time in, everything can change for you.

Commonplace miracles are your invitation to a higher state of being and you accept
this invitation by paying attention. Respect the little miracles that might not even seem
miraculous, like a déjà vu, intuition, or a penny on the ground. Open your eyes to this
in a way you’ve never done before and the world will start to look transparent.

Nurture this part of you that sees these tiny miracles. Use tools of divination like
astrology, Tarot, or the I Ching if you like but don’t stop there. It’s not about divination
or the miracles per se, it’s about following the white rabbit ever deeper, about piercing
through the artificial layer of segregation.

Start with the little miracles and progress to watching for a pattern. See how things
unfold along certain lines. Watch the relationship between your thoughts and emotions
and your environment, between inner and outer, between wishes and outcomes.
Observe all the ways something didn’t work out and the one way it did. Feel your own

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energy within the larger energetic environment. There is no barrier; the barrier is the
illusion.

You’re already aware of it, so it’s just a matter of seeing it more and better. Make a note
of all the miracles and synchronicities, journal about it, do whatever you must to
sharpen your focus. You have already come this far, now let your natural attraction
take you further.

That’s how you elevate your perspective and start to see that the separated materialistic
worldview is incomplete and inaccurate. From the integrated perspective, you can
understand the dreamworld not as a multitude of parts but as a unified whole. The
more you see it, the more you will see it, until, eventually, you see it in everything.

Simply follow the ordinary miracles and the white rabbit will lead you, not deeper
down, but up and out.

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 There Is No You

“Why are you unhappy?

Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for
yourself—and there isn’t one.”

– Wei Wu Wei

Now at this point, you might as well forget everything you have read in the prior
chapters because here is the only key that leads to an effortless life.

The key is the recognition that there is no separate individual self existing anywhere.

Yes, you read that right, the you, you think you are, is an illusion, a phantom, a fata
morgana.

The belief in being an individual is the mother of all unquestioned assumptions.

Everything and everyone try to convince you that you are a person, an individual, a
human with dreams and hopes.

You might have heard past and present spiritual teachers and gurus say that we are all
one and that separation is an illusion etc. But this is often mentioned in such a
nonchalant way as if it doesn’t mean the annihilation of everything we believe to be.
“We are all one” doesn’t mean that there are individuals who form one big collective, it
means that there are no individuals, there is just one, just this.

Let me say that again, everything you ascribe to be you is not you. And yet at the same
time there is nothing but you. But this doesn’t mean you as an entity. But you as just
this.

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When you truly see that, you will see that there is no you to see anything. Life will be
effortless because there is the recognition that you are not the doer of things. You have
never done anything, are never doing anything, and will never do anything. Your real
self is no self.

The illusion of a separate self is simply being kept up with the attention to it. But here
is the fun part, to see that there is no separate self takes seconds. All you need to do is
take a hard honest look.

Where is the ‘I’ you believe yourself to be? Can it be found anywhere? When emotions
arise, do they refer to anyone or do they simply arise? Is there a perceiver/witnesser or
is perceiving/witnessing just happening? Are you in control? What is behind fear?
What is fear trying to protect?

Ask these questions and then take an honest look. Simply look at whatever is arising
and see if you can find a separate entity to whom all this is arising. Everything,
including your so-called personality, is appearance in consciousness, which is a
popular way of saying what you really are.

But consciousness is not an entity. Consciousness is the manifest universe. They are
one the same. There is nothing else.

Listen, this is the real deal.

There are no prerequisites to this understanding because there is no way from here to
here. You are already that, there is nothing you can do to be more of that what you
already are. All you can do is question the beliefs that claim the opposite.

If you are a girl, how long does it take you to become a girl? No time because you are
already a girl.

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Likewise, how long should it take you to be who you are? No time because well, you are
already what you are, which is the eternal ever-present awareness (to throw in another
popular term).

Another way to inquire into this, as we have hinted in the chapter on thinking, is by
investigating your senses. Similarly, to how you saw that there is no difference between
thinker, thinking, and thought, you can see that there is no difference between seer,
seeing, and seen, or hearer, hearing, and heard, etc.

Can you see something without seeing? Can you hear a sounds without hearing? Can
you feel without feeling? Of course not. You might think, “Well duh.” But where does
it lead you when you let this fully in?

There is no you seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, thinking.

Now the last step is to ask yourself what the common denominator is. What is the one
“thing” that doesn’t change when you shift your attention from one sense to another?

Consciousness/awareness. Congratulations, you have arrived at home. Welcome to

non-duality.

When this is seen, and you only have to see it once, you can’t unsee it. Now all you need
to do is to keep coming back to it. Confirm this over and over until you are abiding in
non-dual awareness.

With time all questions you have about life will start dropping away. You’ll recognize
that there is no one more capable to answer your questions than you are, which will
make the questions redundant because the answers are implicit to the questions.

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Conditioning will also start dropping away because it has no place to hook into
anymore as you no longer believe the fabricated story of the mind. Yet don’t think that
by seeing this you will suddenly be a radically different person. This is not an
outstanding experience but a simple recognition of what has been here all along.

I want to make clear that this whole no self/non-duality thing is not a philosophy but
an ego-eating virus. And it’s so simple and obvious that it’s a miracle that most of us
miss it our whole lives.

Now, if you’re ready to look, all you need to do is to take an honest look. When it is
known that there is no you, how could there be any effort when there is no one to make
an effort?

And although effort might still arise, you’ll know that it’s not you who is making it.
You’ll be able to relax into it.

Then your journey has come to an end, not because you have reached a goal or because
life stopped but because you have dropped the story of being on a journey.

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 Final Word: Just Be Who You Are

Welcome to the outroduction, my dear reader.

Some of what you have just read might have been triggering, enlightening, shocking,
or even amusing to you. Whatever you have taken from this little book, I’m sure it’s
what you need.

Yet I don’t want you to just believe what I’m saying. The things I’m offering are simply
what has become apparent in my life experience. Your experience may very well tell
you completely different things, which is absolutely fine.

Nothing that is said here is supposed to be a final absolute truth and it is well in your
right to reject everything you have read here. After all, words are never beyond doubt.
Feel free to look somewhere else for answers if the ones here have not satisfied you.
But before you do, let me say that what you’re searching for, you’ll only find in the
secrecy of your heart.

No one can give you what you want but you.

Most of us are embedded in a neurotic society that teaches us to constantly strive for
something beyond ourselves, to struggle for a place under the sun, to fulfill a purpose,
and make everyone else happy by doing so.

But the thing is there is nothing you must do. There are no rules you must follow. No
one can force anything upon you. Whatever purpose you might have, you’re already
fulfilling it perfectly and no one else is doing a better job.

So all that is left to say is, just be who you are.

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And I hope that you, in your own view, are the coolest, most awesome person ever.
After all, why shouldn’t you, in your own view, be the coolest, most awesome person
ever? You are the universe, the totality and it doesn’t matter whether there are billions
of us or just you.

This is not the special snowflake story that says you’re special because we’re all special.
This is the literal truth. If you are self-aware, then you are the One, which is all.

So relax and allow your authenticity to flow. Don’t hide your “flaws” and
“inadequacies,” don’t try to be something that feels unnatural, simply allow effortless
expression. You don’t have to prove anything to anyone, there is no how-to’s when it
comes to life.

Life is living and expressing itself and if you let it, it will do what life does, be effortless
in every way.

You are already a master in the art of effortless living, and you know it.

Much love,
Luka
Founder of mindfulled.com

More information on next page:

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If you want to step up and upgrade your internal operating system, I recommend to
check out my ebook experience 101 Steps For Transformation.

If you have any questions or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out to me at
[email protected]

And if you want personal assistance in your journey or struggle with anything in your
life right now, feel free to check out my transpersonal coaching offers:
https://mindfulled.com/transpersonal-coaching-2/

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