You might be interested in the work of Thomas Metzinger [0]. He works on consciousness and addresses some of the issues you mention regarding effort & different

You might be interested in the work of Thomas Metzinger [0]. He works on consciousness and addresses some of the issues you mention regarding effort & different states that people have experienced/described w/ meditation etc. Eg [1] works towards profiling "pure awareness" experiences among meditators of various stripes. Scroll down to '(3) Peer-reviewed articles' on his page for addl recent research. He has a dense academic tome called "being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivity" that works through a theory of an 'emergent phenomenological self' [2]. A shorter book discussing the issues is "ego tunnel: the science of the mind & the myth of the self" [3]. It is intended for lay audience & is very readable. fun stuff. [0] https://www.philosophie-e.fb05.uni-mainz.de/institutes/theoretical-philosophy/thmetzinger/ https://www.philosophie-e.fb05.uni-mainz.de/institutes/theor... [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0253694 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=de&user=x_CsYPMAAAAJ&citation_for_view=x_CsYPMAAAAJ:u5HHmVD_uO8C https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl... [3] https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=de&user=x_CsYPMAAAAJ&citation_for_view=x_CsYPMAAAAJ:d1gkVwhDpl0C https://scholar.google.de/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl...