What Is Effortless Transformation?
Understanding Effortless Transformation
One way to understand this effortless transformation phenomenon is to use the old Snake and Rope story.
A traveler walking down the path sees a coiled snake on the path ahead and is overwhelmed with fear. The fear is a result of a stimulated belief, construct, or implicit memory which sub verbally says, “A snake up ahead means I could be poisoned and die!”
Upon closer inspection, the traveler sees the snake is not actually a snake, but a coiled rope.
All the fear subsides, and the traveler continues on the path. The fear subsiding naturally is an effortless transformation or an effortless self-correction. So what happened?
After the traveler experientially concluded that the belief “There is a dangerous snake up ahead” was not accurate, a mismatch existed in the traveler’s reality: “There is something to be feared; I could die,” versus “it is only a rope, and nothing to fear.”
Both Constructs Cannot Be True
After automatically choosing “It is a rope and no fear is required,” there was absolutely no effort required to move forward on the path. The only effort expended was the effort to inspect and engage the snake in a meaningful way, to the extent that the traveler concluded it was a rope.
I like to use this metaphor because it dramatically illustrates how effortless it can be, when there is a shift in a belief or implicit memory. This metaphor breaks down, in regards to inner work, because the emotional beliefs and implicit memories we hold are not as apparent as something external like a snake/rope and seeing our obvious misperception.
How Clients Experience Effortless Transformations
- “I don’t know what you did, but my life has changed”
- “I’m calmer and more at ease with myself.”
- “I no longer get triggered by so and so issue.”
- “The guardedness I had all my life is no longer with me.”
- “I have more inner space and the activity in my life has slowed down and is effortless.”
- “My relationship with my spouse changed, and we were not even working on that.”
- “My creativity is finally freed.”
- “The thing that was holding me back is no longer present.”
- “I can’t believe that used to be a problem for me.”
- “The addictive urges have fallen off.”
These are common descriptions of the effortless transformations that occur with clients. Their lives change dramatically, and they don’t know why. I’ve found real and lasting transformation doesn’t require as much effort as people mistakenly believe, it requires skill and precision to access the emotional constructs/beliefs held in the limbic system and bring them into the light of awareness and presence.
The Cutting Edge Frontier of Transformation
Unlike the rope and snake example, our inner world is a little more complex. Many of the beliefs and constructs we hold about ourselves and the world are buried deep in our subconscious as implicit emotional memories, or held in the body as fixations and are well protected.
The culmination of these implicit memories is called our sense of self, which we assume is as real as a solid object. So many enlightenment approaches try to transcend or deconstruct the self-sense, without acknowledging or understanding that this sense is mostly in the realm of the subconscious.
It takes skill and precision to create the conditions in which clients can discover and engage these subconscious beliefs and implicit memories in significant, transformative ways.
How to do this efficiently and safely, while relying on the client’s own innate wisdom and working within their own system of meaning, is the cutting edge frontier of transformative work. For more information here’s a short video about Effortless Transformation.
