Mi'sen

Coming from effort heavy meditation bias this piece was clarifying and insightful. Do you consider attentiveness effort? Personally feels like takes a fetter free mind to maintain ceaseless attentiveness effortlessly. Something I don't quite have.

attentiveness usually requires effort. How much varies. The advantage of metta based attention is that it's a lot less effortful. Same with fire. The other variable seems to be how narrow attention is: very narrow = more attention.

fetter or binding vasana free seems to make it effortless, yes. Hit the bliss point and close to effortless.

shutting various things off makes it easier. So for those who have "mental chatter" shut off effortlessly (like Vinay), well, that's one less thing to come up. Complete physical relaxation makes it easier, but there are two types of that: one concentration based, one not.

but some of this stuff is pushing out of my experience zone. So... Still, some of it seems quite clear. The distinction between permanent changes and effortful skills is very clear to me from experience, even though I don't/haven't had all the skills or changes.

there also seem to be "mode switches" where the change takes a bit of effort, but once switched is effortless. Some people have this with respect to "I am everything" vs."I contain everything"for example.