I was on a Headless Way Zoom call earlier today, a daily one between Christmas and New Year. One of the topics that came up was sharing seeing.
When we share headless experiments with others, and they notice their nature, why do some value and pursue it while others don’t?
There is no right or wrong, or better or worse here. It’s just nature and life playing itself out in many different ways, but it is still interesting.
There may be several answers, as usual.
THE PSYCHE
First, what is valuing it or not? What’s interested in it or not?
It’s this human self with a particular psyche, personality, and orientation.
All of the answers below have to do with how our psyche responds to what’s noticed and the context of the noticing.
ORIENTATION
One answer is the general inclination of this human self and personality.
Some are more inclined to want to explore things thoroughly, including who and what they are. There is a natural curiosity there and an attitude of leaving no stone unturned. We are not satisfied with the answers our culture gives us and want to look for ourselves.
Others may be satisfied with the ordinary answers or not looking. Some may feel it’s enough to focus on daily life activities.
TOO FAMILIAR
Another is a common answer from Buddhism: It’s too close, ordinary, familiar, and simple.
It seems like this cannot be it since it’s what we already are familiar with and always have been.
The mind may want something “over there”, more complex, and more unusual. It has built it up in its imagination, and what it finds doesn’t match.
THE CONTEXT
I also suspect that the context of the noticing plays a role.
Our human self may value it more if…
It happens after a long period of exploration. We have invested a lot into it, and have wanted to notice it for a long time, so when it happens we value it more.
It happens in the context of a tradition and with a teacher we respect and admire. We respect the setting and what they tell us, so we value the noticing more.
It’s verbally set up in a way that resonates with this human self. For instance, we may share how it has helped us in daily life, and the person is interested. Or it may be phrased in a way that resonates with what they are already familiar with from religion or spirituality.
It comes with a lot of fireworks and side effects. There may be strong states, strong energies running through our system, a flood of insights, and other side effects, and these make us pay attention more. (We may also confuse the side effects with the essence and it can take a while to learn to differentiate.)
The noticing is strongly and undeniably in the foreground and any sense of being something within the content of experience gone or far in the background.
WHAT NOTICES?
Another answer may be in our experience of what notices.
Our nature already does everything, so it’s always our nature that notices itself.
The experience of it, and the way it’s understood, can be different.
In some cases, there may be an experience of this human self noticing its nature as space for the world, capacity for it all, what the world moves through, and so on. There is still fundamentally a sense of being a human self. If so, it may seem like a party trick and something peripheral.
Of course, there is an inherent contradiction here. If we are space for it all, we are also space for this human self so him or her is not what we fundamentally are. But that may not be noticed or taken seriously.
In other cases, we realize that we are space for all of the world, including this human self and everything related to it. That’s a profound shift. It turns everything upside down and inside out.
I imagine that when this is noticed, we are much more likely to take it seriously and want to continue to explore.
LIFE MOVING
As mentioned above, there is no right or wrong here. Any ideas or right or wrong, or better or worse, are created by the human mind. They are imaginations and not inherent in life.
What’s happening – a consciousness noticing its nature or not, and deciding to continue to explore it or not – is all life moving in different directions.
In one sense, this has to do with readiness. We can be ready or not to explore this more thoroughly, and if we are not, the experience may sow a seed that sprouts later.
In another sense, it’s all – no matter what it is – life, existence, the universe expressing, exploring, and experiencing itself in always new ways. It seems that the exploration is a goal in itself.
And it does make a difference for this human self. When it’s ready and explores its nature more thoroughly, it can and likely will change its life, in ways its personality likes (more ease, flow, sense of being home) and doesn’t like (all sorts of unprocessed material surfacing to be seen, felt, loved, and recognized as consciousness).
The image is from a video interview with Richard Lang, and likely originally from one of Douglas Harding’s books.