A See Change

To live and not be curious!
Don't even get me started.
To live the unexamined life
Is for the chicken-hearted.

Seeing's only for the brave,
And though it's very simple,
A coward will not even look,
And certainly no wimp'll.

If nothing else has helped so far
To show you Seeing's total,
I hope I am correct somehow
In thinking that a goad'll.



Look within, then look again.
Look until you see the Sight.
If you say you see Nothing,
I say you're bang on right.

You see the True Location,
The place where all are One.
You see the Void that spins the world,
Suspends the stars, and shines the sun.

Here you see what wasn't born,
Nor lives, nor breathes, nor dies.
Stay with this One Awareness.
See how it ramifies.

See how it carries consequence
To be your destiny and source,
And keep on looking at the One
That everyone ignores.



Please try looking for yourself.
You are the sole authority
On who and what and where you are,
The singular majority.

In any situation
There's just one thing to do.
See the absence of your head
So plainly here on view.



Presence of Awareness
Is Absence of a head.
If you can see that This is so
That's all that need be said.

If you can see the two at once,
The Seer and the scenery,
Then you have seen Totality,
The Whole, the All, the Plenary.



You're not like your reflection.
You're clearer, and you're nearer.
You do not bear resemblance
To the stranger in the mirror.

You're Absolutely Proximate
Capacity and Clarity.
You are the One and Only,
The Peerless Singularity.



Life and death are grand events
This Emptiness contains.
While living things must perish,
The Nothingness remains.

So I take my identity
From what I see within.
How could Awareness ever end
That never did begin?



This is how I summarize
The headless way: I've got no top.
When I look in to see my head,
There's nothing there. Full stop.

But, looking out, I see the world,
The manifest, the myriad.
And so I always look both ways.
And that's the method. Period.



The world is so delightful
When I can truly See
I'm not a being in the world.
The world's a happening in Me.

The Truth is always here and now,
And so I take it at my ease.
I never have to miss a thing
Or overlook the One who sees.



True Seeing is available
No matter how you feel,
Embarrassingly obvious
And really really Real.

You must continue looking,
If you would reach the glory
Of living in the Steady State.
Seeing can't be desultory.



See the Seer! View the view!
Mark the two as One.
You have captured All there is.
That's it! Finis! You're done!



If you want to see the Void
Look in and see It instantly.
No better way to be employed
Than seeing It persistently.



There is but one existence.
No matter how I try,
I cannot split the One in two.
Everything I See is I.



Zero in on Nothing,
The vacant and the null.
Now you have the Plethora,
The occupied, the full.



This is really Nothing but
The Timeless Eternality,
The One that makes it possible
To manifest plurality,

The One that has Potential
To hold all things to view,
The One whose true identity
Is no one else but You.



If you want my best advice,
Listen up. I'll give it twice.
Don't abhor the throb and hum.
Don't ignore the Vacuum.



To you my face is real.
To me it's but a sham.
For Here Within I see the One
I really really really am.

And here I'm not opposed to you,
For here I lack a face
To spoil our relationship.
I'm gone without a trace.



How do I see my innerness,
My core and central locus?
I do not strain. I settle back,
Let go, relax, unfocus.



Can you see the vacant place
Where others only see your face?
See within you're open wide?
See without you're occupied?



It's really very easy.
You need not look askance
To See just what and where you are.
You are the whole expanse.

Both everything and Nothing,
The entire field of view,
The One Eternal Sameness
That holds the ever new.



What is has two directions,
And both are necessary.
What is within is permanent.
Without, it's temporary.



I see, within, the always-so
In glory and aseity
Sustain, without, the come-and-go
In grace and spontaneity.



Experience is total
When seen through proper prism.
Within I see the Stasis,
Without, the dynamism.



Can you see your missing head?
You're lucky if you care to.
I hope I can encourage you
Be brave, buck up and dare to!

Look to see your open Heart
Is noble and magnanimous.
Don't say you can't. Don't look away.
Don't be so pusillanimous!



I see I am positioned
Precisely at the junction
Of open inner quietude
And tumult and rambunction.

My view is simultaneous
Of inner peace and quiet
And outer agitation,
Catastrophe and riot.



When others take me for my face
They do not realize
That they are giving judgment
Designed to cut to size.

But I reject opinion
That leaves me so belittled.
I say the uncarved block of wood
Refuses to be whittled.



I know I am laconic,
Succinct and brief and true.
It's up to you to flesh it out.
I simply lay the pith on you.



See you are the Seer.
See it without let up.
See it when you're chillin'.
See it when you're het up.

See it always here and now,
And please ignore the foolish cry
That tells you that you have to wait
To see it in the bye and bye.



I see the open window.
I spot the common ground.
I'm going to keep on looking.
I don't intend to mess around.



Are you always wanting more,
More things, more life, more stuff?
Do you see you're One and All?
Why isn't that enough?



I have no need to travel time.
I've found the open portal
That leads into the true sublime,
The timeless and immortal.

And when I'm truly present
I am not in a dither,
For here within the timeless now
I See both whence and whither.



If seeing you're the Seer,
The Heart and Core and Nub,
You seldom ever look again,
Well, there, my friend's the rub.



When I look in, what do I see?
I see the Naught, and by degree,
I see I Am, and then I see
Ten thousand things encircle me.

In what I see I find a clue
That tells me you are I Am too.
There's no divide. I see no wall.
There's only one I Am of all.



All but This must perish.
Each is born and lives and dies.
But I'm not each. I'm everything,
The Void in which the Plenum lies.



Make all haste to see both ways,
To see the whole disparity,
To see within, to see without,
To see your bipolarity.

Do it now. Behold within.
Proceed with all celerity.
Don't overlook or disregard
The central Void and Verity.



If you can see your nothingness,
You see it whole and clearly.
You cannot see it partially
Or see it pretty nearly.

There's nothing else in all the world
Upon which everyone agrees,
For seeing's always total and
Admits of no degrees.

And Seeing is rewarding,
A job you cannot botch.
It isn't really work at all
To keep the quiet watch.



Please pay no attention 
To those who say it's going some
To look at what you're looking at
While seeing what you're seeing from.

It isn't going some at all
If you can be so deft
To let the other penny fall
And see the place you never left.



We wouldn't be so timid.
We'd beat a louder drum,
If we could see we've never been
Inside a cranium.

We wouldn't be so stuffy,
So puffed and overfull,
If we could see we never have
Resided in a skull.

We wouldn't be so angry.
We'd take a different tone,
If we could see that we are not
Imprisoned in a bone.



Here I see the singular.
There I see plurality.
And happily I revel in
My asymmetricality.



Fortunate indeed you are
If you have got propensity
To watch your inner emptiness
Explode into immensity.

Fortunate again I say
If you have got proclivity
To see the central nothingness
Embrace the whole festivity.

I know I am repetitive.
I hope I don't harangue.
What joy and what felicity
To watch the steady state go bang!



There is no doctrine to promote.
That's why I'm rarely talkative.
The only terms that I employ
Are negative or locative.

I don't mind saying where to look
Or telling what you will not see:
Look in at voidness all the while
With dedication, ardently.

Look in at bare awareness,
And when attention swings,
Behold the glory of it all.
Be glad for added things.



See when it occurs to you
To see. That is the ritual.
For if you see repeatedly
It soon becomes habitual.



There's Nothing here to think about,
No mind to change or make up
Or analyze or deconstruct.
The thing to do is wake up!

 

One who sees and says "So what?" 
Can leave you quite perplexed. 
Still more puzzling is the one 
Who sees and says "What's next?" 

Nothing's next and Nothing's now
And Nothing's always been. 
Nothing ever goes away, 
And Nothing's here again!



Looking in I see I Am
Arising from the I Am Naught.
Looking out I see the world.
And that is everything I've got.



At center I am openness
And absolutely ample
To take on board what's given,
To welcome what's on sample.

With Nothing here to call my own,
No thing that could oppose you,
The only thing that I can do
Is welcome and enclose you.



I see that I am Oneness.
You see that you are too.
If I am One, and you are One,
Then I am One with you.





I am not small and motionless
And flat and set in borders,
But I am headless, upside down,
And terminate in shoulders.

That's the truth and falsity
On offer in the photo
Designed to show reality
And fact in brief and toto.

The next five verses point to facts which usually go unnoticed. The photo shows that what the verses say is true. Of course, the photo has reduced the body to a small, flat, motionless, and framed object. Look at your own body to see the real setup. What's above the bottom line for you? What's below?

If you can see you have no head,
Then you command my full respect,
For you are honest, brave and true,
And anatomically correct.



You say you're comfy in your skin?
You say you have your head on straight?
If that's the kind of shape you're in,
My friend, I must commiserate!



I do not have a nose or ears
Or cheeks or a chin or a gob,
But I have ten little piggies,
Two feet, two legs and a thingamabob.



I'm sure I've never moved an inch,
For even when I'm struttin'
If I check out the bottom line
I'm sittin' on my button.



When seeing I am upside down
I count it pretty neat
That when I go I go around
With pants below my feet.



I see my face is open wide.
I see it's full of light.
And where I thought I had a face,
The world is shining bright!



Everything's enough for me.
Everything will nicely do.
And when I see I'm Nothing,
It's then I have enough times two.



I've seen the One and Only.
And let me make it clear:
I did not need to search the world.
The One and All is now and here.



How could I merit praise or blame
Or be ashamed or proud,
When seeing I'm the mystery
Behind unknowing's cloud?

For when I drop the lump of self,
Let want and expectation go,
I see that all is Oneness
And I'm living in creation's flow.



I'd rather See the One I Am
At center indestructible
Than focus on periphery
And battle with the ineluctable.



Awareness of awareness,
To some it may be bland.
To me it is the total truth,
No if or but or ampersand!



Within is bare awareness,
Without, the things of time.
I see the two together,
And I shift my paradigm.

Without, I'm clad in splendor,
The dazzling contrapuntal.
Within, I'm pure awareness,
Uncovered and full-frontal.

Within, I see my nakedness,
Without, the world I'm wearing,
And when I'm seeing both at once,
I cannot lose my bearing.



I stay with two-way seeing.
Though some will find it risible,
To me it is the one true way
To parse the indivisible.

It's what I'm always on about.
I'll say or scream or whisper it:
If you would see the Unity,
You have to see the disparate.



Here is the crux,
Minus prolixity:
Look out for flux;
Look in for fixity.



There I am the temporal.
Here I am eternal.
There I am peripheral,
Here the nut and kernel.



Point within at Emptiness,
A mark you cannot miss.
You've seen the splendors of the world.
Now get a load of This!



The grand design is orderly.
The setup's neat and tidy.
And I can see it for myself
With no one's bona fide.

Within I see the I-am-not.
Without I see all isness.
To see the two together
Is my one and only business.



When I look sincerely,
When speculation ceases,
My energy divides between 
Potential and kinesis.

I like the situation.
I look for no improvements.
I am the unmoved mover
And the unmoved mover's movements.



Without I see the shifting scene,
Within the steady and serene.
Without I see the fungible,
Within the inexpungible.



Look in and see the yin. 
Look out and see the yang. 
Look in and out and see the tao, 
And now you see the whole shebang!



Nothing is, and Nothing was,
And Nothing ever will be.
And when the world has lost it's buzz,
Nothing's going to still be.

Some say nothing should exist.
I say that Nothing does.
Look within to see the place
Where Nothing ever was.



The truth is not so difficult. 
It's really just a simple scheme 
To see within the way things are 
And see without the way they seem. 

Anyone can do it. 
One needn't be a whiz 
To see within what-isn't 
And see without what-is.



Never speak of long lost past
Or dear dead days beyond recall,
For now is made of what has been.
The present's never less than all.

Never point to choice or chance,
But see that now is potent seed
Where nothing's lost and nothing's gained.
The flow of nothing's all indeed.



The past is more than memory.
Tomorrow's more than dream.
There is no change to what things are
But only to the way they seem.

Don't ask me what is current,
For nothing's ever new,
And currency is but the flow
That's given me and you.



Who am I to say I see?
An article? An entity?
When Seeing from the Vacant dome,
There's simply Seeing. No one's home.

And if you hear me say I see,
It doesn't mean I think a me
Is needed when I see or say
Or think or pass the time away.



What do I do to merit This,
This vision of the Free and Clear?
Well, absolutely Nothing!
I simply disappear.



Let's stick with two-way seeing,
Non-stop and unabated.
Seeing's always salutary,
Never contraindicated.



Some people just refuse to look.
And do they make me weary!
Is Seeing way too simple - or -
A threat to pride and precious theory?

And even if you do not look
And go your way with no regret,
Until you see your missing head,
You ain't seen Nothing yet!



What-isn't really really is.
What-is can only seem.
What-isn't isn't Nothing 
Without the presence of a dream.



No need to talk about it.
Just See it ever fresh.
Words always cause confusion,
But Seeing is the word made flesh.



I am not what I'm told I am
By boisterous majority.
On what I See myself to be
I am the sole authority.

And what I See when gaze goes in
Toward Center, Heart and Soul
Is simply Nothing, simply put,
A Gap, a Void, a Gaping Whole.



I do not long for liberty
When Seeing from the absent face
But find abiding freedom as
A prisoner of the flow of grace.



Whenever I encounter
Animosity and rancor,
I find safe harbor in the Void,
A firm and steady anchor.

Whenever there's a problem
I look within and see
I'm sitting in the only place
That's ever problem-free.

When circumstances trouble,
I turn attention's arrow,
And quietly I watch the One
Whose eye is on the sparrow.



No one can ever harm me.
I've seen the grand design.
No harm can ever come to one
Who's dreamed a dream like mine.



That is all I have to say.
I've seen the shine. I've seen what shone it.
I'm so sure it is the Way,
I'd bet my aspidistra on it.

Headless Tao   Jim Clatfelter's Interpretation of the Tao Te Ching

The Headless Way   "Official" Headlessness Web Site

Published, 2002 by Jim Clatfelter

Visitors since February 10, 2002