Surrender

A major benefit of "seeing" my headlessness (besides the wonder of seeing who we really, really are without distortion) has been the recognition that my true being is incapable of resisting what is. I've read Byron Katie's Loving What Is. Prior to "seeing" à la Douglas Harding, I could not really apply her technique with any success. I grasped it intellectually but could not be comfortable with the implications. --her approach is remarkably psychological--like the "cognitive therapy" approach of Aaron Beck or even the rational emotive therapy of Albert Ellis. (Fundamental assumptions about reality totally different, but methods are quite similar.) Also, when I "saw" that in reality "I" am incapable of resisting what is, it's a lot easier to "surrender." I find that word a lot less intimidating than I used to.

Don't get me wrong--the little guy still complains and moans a lot. Interesting, though, when "I" choose not to identify with him, he quiets down a lot. Is it possible he's clamoring for attention? J. USA.

Funny how all that happens when one 'gets it' is that one accepts it, accepts that the very cluelessness (this 'alert idiocy' as Douglas calls it) is IT - which leap of faith results in simply experiencing Oneself as ALL PRESENT AND AWAKE - truly 'WITH IT'. Everything jumps into focus.... THAT'S ALL - to begin with.

I remember flashing in and out of this, momentarily experiencing everything lit up in/as This, but immediately thinking: "What use is seeing the world so vividly, or (whilst driving) the telegraph poles moving through my stillness?" Striking as the vision was it didn't seem relevant to living my life, didn't tell me what to DO. It seemed to have no relation to anything beyond what I could SEE here and now.

This I now see was because I kept shutting down on It before It had a CHANCE to begin revealing Itself in other dimensions (e.g. in relation to the past or future, or politics or economics).

To the extent one gives in, or gives up, and starts accepting and enjoying the Seeing (and being clueless if that is what's given), attention expands beyond the merely visual into a kind of multi-dimensional brilliance or intelligence, experienced as much in the mental and psychological as in the visual/sensory realms in my experience. From this all-embracing perspective "Seeing" is understood as just a word, a pointer to something infinitely richer and quite unnameable, something which, unbelievably, IS what I AM. A.S. UK

Hello G. Good luck with your mini-retreat! I predict that Nothing will happen - just as IT's always 'happening'. Not being flippant, just trying to pre-empt any disappointment – notwithstanding that disappointment may be just what's needed of course.

For what it's worth though, from my own experience (everyone of course has their own forms of resistance and mine may not tally with yours), it's not that one doesn't see (e.g. one face looking back at no-face when you look in the mirror) but that, however committed one THINKS one is, some deeper commitment immediately dismisses what's being pointed out as unworthy of further attention; we're kind of schizoid about it.

In my own case, I just couldn't see what it was going to do for me. What USE was it? The ego kept popping right in there demanding to know what it was going to get out of it. In other words, my motives were mixed - and God never reveals his/her secrets to the competition.

One must first believe in the value of what one sees in its own right. ("How could this that I can see so clearly NOT be infinitely more valuable than what I THOUGHT was here?" might be a good question.)

I would just emphasise also that headlessness is not concerned in the first instance with EXPERIENCE (things that come, and therefore go, and are subject to memory) but, rather, the EXPERIENC-ER, the never-changing Origin (of satoris and everything else) - which, as such, HAS to be ABSOLUTELY PLAIN - i.e. Empty. (Just in case there's some little-self interest embedded somewhere in those Satori memories G., ready to jump in with "That's not it!".... Of COURSE IT IS - YOU ARE - IT!!)

Since one already IS IT, there's a sense in which we are all already profoundly familiar with IT, which is why so often It doesn't seem new or special or extraordinary: It isn't. To me, for many months, It seemed all too despicably ordinary. (Believe it or not, one eventually gets a taste for this.)

It's only as we begin to be willing to be empty for the truth AS A WAY OF LIFE, honouring the "grey matter-of-factness" of it for its own sake in respect of (and on behalf of) all that 'confronts' us that the necessary space is 'created' for the pay-off - by which time, 'pay-off' is no longer an issue! A.S. UK

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