Landmark: Try Headlessness While Walking

From Everyday Enlightenment
Landmark: Try Headlessness While Walking
Landmark: Try Headlessness While Walking
BeaconsAssociation
RealmsEngagement
LensesThe Headless Way
GuidesWalking

The Landmark of Try Headlessness While Walking is a chance to practice Headlessness by simply opening up your perception to the entire world, and filling your entire consciousness with your visual field. The intended result is a mind clear of all thoughts, and an openness and vastness that comes from experiencing everything you see as it is in this moment. The Headless Way is mostly tied to the Beacon of Association, but these concepts are part of practices more related to the Beacon of Attention because as we allow our consciousness to fill with what we see around us, we become more fully present and have a new way to Experience the Now. This Landmark is within the Realm of Engagement, and is part of the Beacon of Association, more specifically the Lens of The Headless Way.

Landmark Lookouts:

  • Experience The World: Can you experience the entire world that's within your visual and audio field? Can you feel how vast and full it is?
  • Clear and Vast Consciousness: Can you allow your thoughts to drop away completely and be replaced by your experience of The Now? Can you feel the serenity and fullness that exists in that space?

Walking is a perfect time to try Headlessness because we are usually left alone with wandering thoughts - which we should learn to let go of. The Headless Way is not a beginner practice, and should be understood in the context of what you are trying to learn at any given time. For this Landmark, it is about trying it out and seeing our expansive perception and mental clarity.

  • As you walk, look out ahead of you, and become headless (if you don't know about this, follow the links, and then come back to this page later)
  • Become aware of your surroundings in an open, spacious way, noticing how that space includes the location where your head should be. Don't spend time on this part of it for now, but instead simply enjoy the spaciousness of the world around you and how good it feels to experience so many sights, sounds and other sensations.
  • Allow all thoughts to drift away and be replaced by the experience. This should feel much like any Mindfulness moment you've had, but one difference is that in this case you are explicitly taking in everything at once rather than trying to concentrate on anything in particular.
  • Continue on in this way, not attempting to digest anything or learn anything - just experience.
  • If you feel like it, you may also expand your headless awareness to your whole body, letting go of the sense of having a body that is moving around, but rather that there is a huge world that is in a constant state of motion and openness.