I recently had the privilege of attending a Headless workshop with Richard Lang. But, that’s not how the day started.
It was February, Friday the 13th (just two Fridays ago) and it was also the release day for the latest in the line of Friday the 13th movies. My brother, and I, had a long standing tradition of seeing the Friday the 13th movies on opening day. We decided to resurrect the tradition on this particular occasion. We saw the 2pm showing, which was pleasantly uncrowded being in the middle of the day. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the movie, but such things were definitely more thrilling as a kid. One thing that the movie did have lots of was decapitations, of the involuntary type. That contrasted well with the evenings event, since they involved voluntary decapitations.
The drive to Berkeley was slow, the rain had proved (again) to be a problem for Bay Area drivers, and there was a minor accident on the Bay Bridge which had traffic backed up all the way to the city. It also didn’t help that I had left the city at 5:30 on a Friday. What would, on off hours, have been a 25 minute drive ended up being just under an hour. I assumed that my late arrival would not be too much of a trouble since I was going to a spiritual workshop (they’re supposed to be filled with nice people, ya know), and as it turned out I needn’t have worried. The rain, and it’s complications, was true for everyone else. Folks were milling around and chatting when I got there. Richard was talking animatedly amidst lots of smiles with some people he obviously already knew. Since I was there by myself I made my way to a chair in the second row and settled in.
Richard spoke with one of the organizers. I gathered that quite a few people who had reserved places at the workshop had also been delayed. We were going to wait for a few minutes to give them time to show. Richard stood at the front of the room, hands in pockets, and waited with a slight shyness about him. After a moment our eyes caught and he came over to introduce himself. He was making a point to meet everyone. When we shook hands and I introduced myself, he smiled, “Oh, Travis, yes we’ve corresponded. Great! Fantastic! And, here we are meeting in person, face to no-face.” He beamed a nearly impossibly wide smile and pumped my hand enthusiastically.
That phrase turns out to be an important one for Richard, and he used it many times (to good effect) during the workshop. After the attendees who had been delayed by the rain more than I arrived, Richard started in.
My first exposure to Douglas Harding’s headless way was after I’d read an article that appeared in What is Enlightenment? magazine. (They have recently changed their name to EnlightenmentNext.) The article was a few months after Douglas passed away, and was a tribute to his many years of dedicated work sharing what was, for him, a terribly simple and hugely profound mystical insight. After reading the article I did a Google search, and came upon Headless.org. There I was exposed to the finger pointing experiment. Richard started the workshop with the same experiment. Prior to getting things started, Richard had asked for folks to share something about why they were there that night. I said that I had done some of the experiments on my own, loved the work, and wanted to experience them in a group environment. My desire was completely satisfied.
The first time I had done the finger-pointing practice, I was sitting at my desk at work. When I turned my pointing finger in toward what I am, what I was looking out of, I remember blurting out, “Oh, you have to be f*cking kidding me.” Made for a bit of a scene. The experience was as fresh, and more powerful, with a group of fellow people unabashedly staring a the tips of their fingers. As Richard said several times during the workshop, “This experience is completely non-verbal, non-emotional, non-rational. But, it works.” We can all express exactly what the experiment discloses in our own language, but the moment itself is expressionless. Which is kind of the point. In that moment you are directly staring into what the Zen Buddhist call your Original Face. The effect is momentous, an without a thinking component.
Richard drew a useful distinction here. This is that we have, in a way, two lives. We have our public life, which we share with everyone and everyone can see. Then, we have our private lives, which is were we can be truly what we are and which no one else can ever see. One of the paradoxes of life is that while our public lives can be, and are, extremely distinctive with no two exactly alike, the raw non-verbal experience of who we are privately is teh exact same for everyone. This distinction is what Richard calls “being the One, and the many.”
For me, this non-experience of simply pointing directly at yourself gets to the root of one of the core principles of all of the world’s mystical/spiritual traditions (and most of it’s religions), which is that ultimately in the quest for finding your true identity, place in, and relation to reality; you’re on your own. No one can do this for you. The Buddha said, when nearing his death, “Monks, you must work out your own solution to suffering. Please work very hard.” When someone else points there finger in your face it’s just a confrontation. It’s only when you do it for yourself that you can see what is revealed as the truth of you.
The other really profound thing about the experiments that Douglas, Richard, and others have come up with to explore the truth of being headless is how silly and simple they are. One feels foolish pointing at one’s face, or peaking through a face sized hole cut in paper, or staring at a strangers face through a tube, or at their feet. They seem like children’s games. In a way, they are precisely that. They are methods for looking at the original, open, un-separated and fully connected state we all started in. Not as a way to return that state, and regress to some infantile personality, but as a way to re-inhabit that state with fully formed adult awareness and sensibility. It is precisely their simplicity which is their strength. It is how they can bypass years of habitual conditioning. It’s also an echo of the words of many, many great sages down through the ages who have repeatedly told us how simple seeing reality is, how much of a non-issue enlightenment is.
The workshop continued with the single eye, spinning the world, the tube, the no head circle, and a variation of the mirror. Richard weaved them all together while sharing stories about Douglas, stories about his own sharing of this insight, and fielding questions (and soliciting reactions) from the audience. He also welcomed responses to questions from workshop members by other workshop members. (If you know me at all you will be unsurprised that I was very willing to speak up. I also managed to do some good listening too. I can be good when I try. Heh.) Several times Richard lapsed into a semi-awkward shy silence, and while it was obvious that he can get nervous in front of crowds he was not only improvising the workshop, he was also doing a damn fine job of it! It is rare in these circles to find someone coming across so genuinely and with such skill. He had the crowd rolling with laughter several times too, which supports a pet theory of mine that mystical insight has a strong tendency to foster one’s abilities as a stand-up comedian.
All in all, one hell of a day.
I would like to close with the following quote from the Headless website:
Living From The Truth
There’s no occasion in our working or leisure life when it’s inappropriate or inefficient to live from the truth. Agreed that the truth, so easy to see, is so hard to keep on seeing. But is life without it less hard? Is life lived from a many-sided lie a practical proposition? Let’s remember, let’s take courage from the fact that our practice isn’t changing our lifestyle, but noticing how we’re living in any case as this Empty fullness, as this truly amazing union of perfect freedom and total involvement.
It’s never practical or healthy to live from a lie of any sort, but when that lie is about one’s essential Nature - look out! Or rather, look in! Attend, as if for the first time, to the one Spot in the world that only you are in a position to inspect, to the Point that only you have inside information about, and witness its immediate explosion to world-wide dimensions. (Douglas Harding. Look For Yourself.)
