AN INNER LIGHT

Details: Created on Saturday, 14 February 2015 12:08; Written by Marian Moore

Marian @ Krysan

THE WELLBEING CONSULTANCY

Planting Golden Seeds in Northumberland, Tyne & Wear, and Durham

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The vision I hold is that we are a moment away from creating a world safe for our children, their children, and all generations to follow. - Debbie Millam

A N I N N E R L I G H T

THE HEADLESS WAY

Douglas Harding & Richard Lang

Dear Friends
Focus: The Headless Way

"Down the ages, across the world, and from many different perspectives human beings have wondered about and debated the true nature of the self. The Headless Way offers a contemporary and practical method of investigating this perennial question for yourself. At the heart of it are the experiments."

RICHARD LANG
Focus: Douglas Harding

... he wanted to find out who he really was before he died ...

As someone whose inner light was dimmed over a long period of time, I was intrigued and heartened to read of a friendship between Douglas Harding (the philosopher) and Richard Lang (his student) which has lasted down the years to become - in my eyes - a light that has never dimmed. Indeed, this is a light that continues to shine into the world as brightly as it ever did. The golden thread that links these two men is The Headless Way.

See A HAPPY PLACE.

So, here again I quote Richard Lang as he introduces Harding and, in his wake, a fascinating method of self-inquiry. This, perchance, sits well with my own lived experience and understanding of reality and what I see now as the truth of the matter. For those who have stuck around as I have roamed hither and thither on this website (and beyond) for years, this may indeed come as something of a relief! But enough of that ... suffice to say I am now joined at the hip to The Headless Way. Ask me.

As said earlier, the beginning of Harding's journey is worth repeating.

"In London in the early 1930s, Harding was studying and then practising architecture. In his spare time, however, he devoted his energies to philosophy - to trying to understand the nature of the world, and the nature of himself.

"Into philosophy at this time were filtering the ideas of Relativity. Influenced by these ideas, Harding realized that his identity depended on the range of the observer – from several metres he was human, but at closer ranges he was cells, molecules, atoms, particles … and from further away he was absorbed into the rest of society, life, the planet, the star, the galaxy. ... Like an onion he had many layers. Clearly he needed every one of these layers to exist."

But what was at the centre of all these layers? Who was he really?

"In the mid-1930s Harding moved to India with his family to work there as an architect. When the Second World War broke out, Harding’s quest to uncover his identity at centre - his True Identity - took on a degree of urgency. Aware of the obvious dangers of war, he wanted to find out who he really was before he died ..."

RICHARD LANG
Focus: an inner light.

... seeing now the Light within yourself, you are seeing as and for us all ...

Four Stages Of Life

By Richard Lang

Throughout our lives we’re always two-sided. We always have both a public and a private identity. On the one hand we are individuals in the eyes of others, on the other hand we are capacity for the world. However, we are not always aware of our two-sided nature. There are potentially four main stages in our lives, and as we move through these stages our attention oscillates between our public and our private selves. Sometimes our focus is on one side, sometimes on the other. The four main stages are the baby, the child, the adult and the seer.

1. The Baby

In the first stage we were unaware of our appearance, unaware of our public identity. We hadn’t yet learned to see ourselves through the eyes of others. Conscious only of our own point of view, our private reality, we were faceless, at large, space for the world, without putting it in these or in any terms.

2. The Child

In the second stage of the child we were becoming aware of our public identity. Seeing ourselves more and more through the eyes of others, we began learning to take responsibility for ourselves as individuals. In the process we began overlooking our private reality. But our attention was inconsistent. Often we would forget about our public identity, completely losing ourselves in whatever we were doing. But as we grew older, these periods of unselfconscious openness and freedom came less often and went more quickly.

3. The Adult

In the third stage of the adult we identify profoundly with our public identity. Seeing ourselves as others see us, we’re in no doubt at all that we are what we look like. In this stage we deny the reality of who we really are. It would seem that the price of genuinely becoming a person is the loss of our private self. We may not lose it for long, but lose it we must. Many benefits flow from becoming an individual, but though we may not know it, we’re now cut off from our centre and source. It’s not surprising if we find ourselves feeling that something isn’t quite right, that we’re missing something important.

4. The Seer

Fortunately this need not be the end of our journey. We can go on to the fourth stage of the seer where we discover the reality of our private self and begin drawing on its immense healing power. Seeing who we really are at centre we now begin living a truly balanced, two-sided life – private as well as public, public as well as private.

One of the good things about losing touch with our private self as we grow up is that when we return to it we see it with fresh eyes. It seems that we have to leave Home before we can really appreciate how wonderful Home is. And because our individuality doesn’t disappear when we see who we really are, we can now celebrate our one consciousness with many voices.

The Awakening of Humanity

These stages are a map for each of us individually. They are also, in general terms, a map for our species. In the distant past we were not very self-conscious: not having yet developed the art of seeing ourselves from outside, we didn’t have a strong idea of being separate from the rest of the world. More recently we have become highly conscious of our appearance, of being human and therefore separate from other species and the planet. (Identifying with the objective view of ourselves, we dismiss our original subjective view as ‘primitive’.) However, this narrow, exclusive, one-sided view of ourselves is now giving way to a combination of the objective and the subjective – a two-sided view.

As well as being aware of what we look like at a certain range – our human identity – a growing number of us are also seeing who we really are, our central non-identity that, infinitely wide and deep, includes all beings, all things. This development suggests that as a species we are now moving into the next stage of consciousness. If you are seeing your true Self, you are evidence of this evolutionary change.

Hopefully enough of us will see who we really are quickly enough to transform the way we as a species see ourselves – before our narrow, one-sided view causes us, and the rest of life, irreparable harm. Surely we can no longer go on with only a few of us enjoying Enlightenment. We need it to be the norm. The survival of civilisation and life as we know it may well depend on, if not the majority of us, at least an influential minority, awakening to and acting from our central, all-inclusive Self.

However, important as numbers are, it’s not really a numbers game. When just one of us looks within and sees the one indivisible Self that we all are, then she (or he) is seeing as and for all of us – though we may not know it, she knows it for us. We are all within the One that she is. In this sense, when any one of us awakens to our true Self, then that one – that One – gathers the rest of us up in his or her awakening – in the One’s awakening to itself.

Seeing now the Light within yourself, you are seeing as and for us all.
You are gathering us all up in the Light.
Thank you!

The above illustrated article by Richard Lang was taken from The Headless Way APP - a wondrous and creative adventure for your tablet, one not to be missed.

RICHARD LANG
Focus: a website for your information and pleasure

... the prize is the experience of the one-ness of life ...

My contact is with Richard Lang who runs The Headless Way organisation/website in the UK and who recently participated in the SAND conference in California - October 2014. Whilst there, he was interviewed by Ben Berry of www.consciousvariety.com. The interview (25 mins) is now on YouTube.

Click on link below for the Lang/Berry interview:

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Fe9d_&m=Idy89gptu2lX2P&b=xIZ6EfRDH5Tt60WNgYj1

Go to http://www.headless.org/ to learn even more about this useful method of self-inquiry pioneered by the late Douglas Harding and thereafter freely shared with humankind by Richard Lang, his friend through eternity - and that's a long, long time ...

http://www.headless.org

Dear Friends
Focus: The Headless Way

Over to you.

Marian Moore
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Saturday 14 February 2015

ENDS

813 hits @ 2015-07-22

Reflection 245

Welcome!

Working For The World

When, therefore, I see this true and ultimate identity (how could I miss it?) I see it for and as the One we all are, the One who is. To realize this is at once altogether humbling and altogether exalting. It means that the double ‘work on ourselves’ that you and I are doing together here – seeing into and valuing our true Nature – is work for the whole world. The best work, ever. Our enlightenment cannot help but spill out on all beings, for the simple reason that we are them. (Douglas Harding. Head Off Stress.)

News Flash!

The Four Stages of Life is also now available with French subtitles. Please click on link below:

http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=Fe9d_&m=JABTSvSVi2lX2P&b=ta2IzLuswBP7AehsUIrjqA

Yours,
Richard