Reflection 70

Welcome!


Perfect From The Start

In 1980, or thereabouts, Douglas Harding wrote an article for a new magazine called Aware. I don’t think the title took off, but it had on its first front cover a photograph of Douglas’s Youniverse Model, which was a brilliantly designed three-dimensional model of what you look like at different distances. Well, not only what you look like, which is the many-layered view in towards you from way out in space to as close as others can get to you – the views that others have of you - but also what you are for yourself, which is your many-layered view out into the world from your empty centre out beyond your human body, beyond your social body, beyond your planetary body, beyond your galactic body... (For more on that subject, see the Hierarchy> pages.) The magazine’s owner had a stall at a new-age fair in London and I went with Douglas to help man the stall and try and sell a few Youniverse models. I think we sold one or two! (We’ve none left for sale now.)

Anyway, Douglas’s article, in line with the title of the magazine, was called On Being Aware. Here’s a comment Douglas makes in this article about the ongoing practice of headlessness:

“Seeing what you really are is just about the easiest thing in the world to do, and just about the most difficult to keep doing – at first. Normally, it takes months and years and decades of coming back home, to the spot one occupies (or rather, doesn’t occupy – the world does that) before one learns the knack of remaining centred, of staying indoors, of living from one’s space instead of from one’s face. Nevertheless, now you know how to get there, you can visit home whenever you wish and whatever your mood. And, once over the threshold, you’re perfectly at home: here, you can’t put a foot wrong. Practice doesn’t make perfect here: it is perfect from the start. You can’t half see your facelessness now, or see half of it. There are no degrees of enlightenment: it is all, or nothing.”

This is the marvellous thing about Seeing. Each time you do it you do it perfectly. What a relief! You can’t do it wrong. And if you find you are overlooking your true nature, you know exactly where to look to find it!

Aware of being faceless, you see you have no boundaries, are clear like pure water, empty like space – yet this emptiness is full of your view out, of everything that’s going on.

You can notice this wherever you are. Test this out today. In the supermarket, at home, at work - see you are space for everyone and everything. This is so accessible – just look for your face! What could be easier than this? Yet this leads to the Depth that is the source of all things.

Don’t miss out on the Depth you are looking out of, the Depth that you are. Though it looks like nothing, it is the greatest resource you have. Live from this emptiness and you will live well.

You can’t do it wrong!

Warm regards,
Richard


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