An art professor once told me that when she taught figure drawing, students had a weirdly common tic of drawing their nudes faceless. She knew an artist who rendered his nudes with a renaissance-y sense of proportion and detail, but left the heads hairless and blank. She said it looked like a chimera: the body of a human; for a head, a grape. “You don’t have to do, like, a portrait, but bodies have faces.”
Yes I think you’re onto something. One way I think about this (or something similar at least) is that a common feature of many mainstream spiritual practices is to encourage “surrender.” Encouraging “will” is more often part of fringe practices. In my experience “full surrender” is actually not a good outcome. Some level of that helps and seems important, but will and choice seem important too, and in the end, I don’t think we are incarnated here in order to have no goals.
Mar 20·edited Mar 20Liked by sympathetic opposition
I think that there are often social incentives at work behind the thing you are describing here.
There are a lot of dateable people who are overly neurotic, intellectual, and stuck-in-their-heads. I think the amount of younger people who would self-describe themselves in this way is rising. I also think that a lot of people like this are attracted to people they perceive as the opposite to them: carefree, unneurotic, grounded, 'simple' life-livers.
The problem is that I think with the increase in too-cerebral too-neurotic people (partially social media stuff partially the cognitive and behavorial difficulty of functioning is rising), we are losing people that would have otherwise formed into the types of people that naturally pair with too-cerebral too-neurotic people. We have too many too-cerebral too-neurotic people relative to the types of people that tend to be 'good for them' (obviously 'good for someone' is subjective but pragmatically if you take a lot of personality characteristics to enough of extremes, they lead to people 'failing' and washing out of society, so most of us have a vested interest in finding and pairing with people whose flaws have opposite polarities to ours).
This means that, while it might not be right or overall beneficial to embodiment practice, I think that getting yourself to be the type of person that equates embodiment with headlessness is a great dating grift. Obviously I don't think that this is how many people in these circles directly think about it, but I think social groups naturally disseminate socially beneficial beliefs over time.
It's worth exploring the exercises his apostle Richard Lang is making available, I'm also interested in embodiment and find the headless tools handy for squashing ideation. Also, Harding and Lang have interviewed people who can not see and find they have a similar experience and relationship to headlessness. The waking up app has some marvelous brief headless meditations which may be worth exploring in terms of embodiment. YRMD, of course, 😜
I found On Having No Head really provocative the first time I encountered it but I do think its mileage is very limited. It’s useful to shock yourself into the absolute absurd strangeness of the world every once in a while but it’s impractical beyond that.
While meditation has been worthwhile for me I often struggle with inspiration and aspiration more than being at peace or being content and I’ve learned the hard way that you cannot (or at least I cannot) meditate my way out of that state.
Yes I think you’re onto something. One way I think about this (or something similar at least) is that a common feature of many mainstream spiritual practices is to encourage “surrender.” Encouraging “will” is more often part of fringe practices. In my experience “full surrender” is actually not a good outcome. Some level of that helps and seems important, but will and choice seem important too, and in the end, I don’t think we are incarnated here in order to have no goals.
I think that there are often social incentives at work behind the thing you are describing here.
There are a lot of dateable people who are overly neurotic, intellectual, and stuck-in-their-heads. I think the amount of younger people who would self-describe themselves in this way is rising. I also think that a lot of people like this are attracted to people they perceive as the opposite to them: carefree, unneurotic, grounded, 'simple' life-livers.
The problem is that I think with the increase in too-cerebral too-neurotic people (partially social media stuff partially the cognitive and behavorial difficulty of functioning is rising), we are losing people that would have otherwise formed into the types of people that naturally pair with too-cerebral too-neurotic people. We have too many too-cerebral too-neurotic people relative to the types of people that tend to be 'good for them' (obviously 'good for someone' is subjective but pragmatically if you take a lot of personality characteristics to enough of extremes, they lead to people 'failing' and washing out of society, so most of us have a vested interest in finding and pairing with people whose flaws have opposite polarities to ours).
This means that, while it might not be right or overall beneficial to embodiment practice, I think that getting yourself to be the type of person that equates embodiment with headlessness is a great dating grift. Obviously I don't think that this is how many people in these circles directly think about it, but I think social groups naturally disseminate socially beneficial beliefs over time.
It's worth exploring the exercises his apostle Richard Lang is making available, I'm also interested in embodiment and find the headless tools handy for squashing ideation. Also, Harding and Lang have interviewed people who can not see and find they have a similar experience and relationship to headlessness. The waking up app has some marvelous brief headless meditations which may be worth exploring in terms of embodiment. YRMD, of course, 😜
This is interesting and well thought out.
I found On Having No Head really provocative the first time I encountered it but I do think its mileage is very limited. It’s useful to shock yourself into the absolute absurd strangeness of the world every once in a while but it’s impractical beyond that.
While meditation has been worthwhile for me I often struggle with inspiration and aspiration more than being at peace or being content and I’ve learned the hard way that you cannot (or at least I cannot) meditate my way out of that state.
Appreciate the rumination on the subject.