Tag Archives: Headless Way

Gain

The mind–or, rather, the organism as a whole–seems to be subtly after some gain. More peace, more wisdom, more enlightenment, more compassion, more listening, more improvement, more responsiblity, more productivity: more, more and more. And of course the current economic and cultural climate encourages this tendency to want more of “spiritually correct” things.

The mind seems cunning enough to even say: if I stop wanting more, then perhaps I’ll get more. If I renounce doership, I will gain more control. If I renounce ambition, I will gain more peace. And on and on it goes.

I guess I can only ask the question: can this dreamed seeker see its own illusory nature? And what will happen then?

Click

In experimenting with headlessness, we may notice that sudden “click” or shift in perspective when we move out of a very narrow and constricted mode of consciousness into a sense of something much vaster and freer. The surroundings stand out in relief, our senses become acute and something rigid in our psyche feels dissolved.

If this is our “natural” state, why then do we revert to a more self-preoccupied mode, one full of thought and rumination? This “opposing click” happens almost soundlessly, without our awareness. We seem to lose headlessness and the process of seeing, and this is an interesting moment as well.

Of course, we could say that even rumination and preoccupation happen within the vast space of the self, or of reality.

Are there ever multiple states? Or does only reality shine through in being?

Body

If I close my eyes and pay attention to my body, I feel sensations. Breathing, rising, falling. Tingling, pulsing. Heat and cold.

In a headless space, the world appears in consciousness without a “me.” Likewise, “the body” can arise in consciousness without the sense “this is a body” or “this is my body.”

“I am my body” is an intuitive notion, but perhaps this idea is the primal error. For it leads to a contraction of selfhood, a consciousness twisting and squirming in a limited space, when it can be abundantly free.

Nostril-gazing :-)

Gaze at the tip of your nose. No doubt it feels a bit strange to do so; you will probably see a fuzzy cloud protruding from your face which seems to shine quite a bit. If you close either eye, the orientation of this fuzzy shiny cloud vis-a-vis the background shifts too.

So far so good. However, now consider, or try to see, this nose not as protruding from “your face,” but as emerging from a void. This void contains everything: your nose, the bits of cheek and lips you can glimpse, your body, the surrounding environment with all its colours and smells and sensations and, if we pay attention, your thoughts, feelings and sense of self.

All emerge from and dissove into the void.

Forget navel-gazing. Nostril-gazing can trigger pretty powerful meditation and insight.