This is the title of an interesting and fun book by Richard Lang.
Various meditation teachers describe our true self or true nature not as the incessantly chattering voice in our heads, but as the awareness that we notice is calmly looking on when our thoughts become quiet. I have been fortunate to experience this awareness spontaneously on a few occasions, especially when in beautiful natural settings. Lately, I can also get glimpses of it while meditating (either sitting or in motion). More than one author has described exercises that help us to get these glimpses, such as in the two books I described here. It can take discipline to practice meditation regularly. Glimpses like these can be motivating, by letting us know what it would be like if our everyday minds were quieter.
Richard’s book is also full of this type of exercise, and I found some of them to be helpful and fun. Richard is a follower of the work of Douglas Harding, who is most famous for the book On Having No Head. Douglas was serving in the British army in India during World War II, and while on leave he was hiking in an area near the Himalayas. His entertaining description of his experience there is told in On Having No Head, and Richard also discusses it in his book and on his website. Essentially what happened is that Douglas suddenly felt like there was not really a head above his shoulders, instead there was a vast expanded awareness looking out. This was a delightful and relaxing feeling. He spent a good bit of the rest of his life understanding this experience and trying to teach others to have it. Richard’s book has a series of exercises based on the teachings of Douglas. I found his version of the exercises a bit easier to follow than the exercises Douglas himself gave in his own books.
My experience is that everyone is different and some of these work for some of us while other people may respond to different ones. It reminds me of when I was learning to ski. The instructor wanted me to keep my upper body pointing downhill during a turn with my arms level. Telling me to pretend I was carrying a tray of drinks and not to spill the drinks didn’t work at all. Telling me to pretend my firsts were headlights and I wanted to keep the light shining downhill worked great (for me).
Two exercises worked especially well for me in Richard’s book. The first is the spectacle exercise. Touch your fingertips to thumbs to make circles with both hands. Then touch the circles together to simulate spectacles (see picture). Now bring the “specs” up to your eyes. Once your fingers touch your face, open your fingers and slowly pull your hands away to the left and right, trying to track them with your peripheral vision until you can no longer see them. While doing this, imagine that your awareness is expanding. When I did this, it seemed like my awareness became really large and covered 360 degrees. It was a very relaxing feeling.
The second exercise is easier to describe. While in motion, such as walking, biking, or driving, imagine that you are stationary and the scenery is coming to you. This works especially well for me while biking. For some reason this change of perspective (which physicists would refer to as a change in coordinate systems) is relaxing for me. Both this and the spectacle exercise can bring on the “calm awareness” feeling described in the first paragraph above.
Richard’s book is on kindle unlimited for free if you are signed up for that. Otherwise, you can get a free sample of the book which includes the first three exercises, and pursue it further if you have any luck noticing an “awareness shift” with those. Richard also runs a website “The headless way“. It has a lot of the exercises under “experiments”, for example the spectacles exercise is called “single eye”.
BionicOldGuy 