No me, no mine, no hair

January 2012. Year of the pole shift.

I’m sitting in meditation. There’s a shawl around my shoulders. Early mornings are cold in Hanaertsburg. I’m trying to observe my breathing but one precise thought interrupts. For many mornings now I’ve been obsessed.

I stand and walk to the bathroom where I have a pair of nail scissors in my travel set.

And I start to cut my hair. All over. To a centimetre’s length.

The first set of feelings I have, after it’s all gone- just an untidy wispy pile on the borrowed bathroom floor- are an immense sense of joy and freedom as I run down to the little river nearby and launch myself into its earthy but cleansing flow. Washing away the last remnants of the hair I so earnestly wished to be rid of.

And that’s how I explain it now, to myself and curious others: just to get rid of the hair. At one point there seemed to be so many reasons to shave my head that I was no longer sure of the root cause:

Perhaps it was a physical manifestation of the grief I felt for the loss of both my parents over such a short span of time. In many parts of the world people do shave their heads after the death of a loved one and perhaps I wanted some kind of recognition of my pain. That, in spite of my ability to act just fine, acting that I feel is required of the grief-stricken in our society, underneath, not so far from the surface, my sorrow felt itself keenly and needed an outlet.

Maybe, after so many hours of meditation packed into a period of 4 years, and having closely witnessed some of the characteristics of my ego, I needed to see myself differently, more pared down, without the trappings of external identity. Indeed I have explored the questions of who I really am and my appearance was beginning to feel like a distraction from what is.

My reasoning was not merely practical but, at times, during my 5 years travelling and living out of a backpack, long hair has been nothing more or less than an annoyance. 5 years of salt and chlorine water and Indian shampoo had wrecked havoc on my once luscious locks. And yet more years of spending money I didn’t have on hairdressers and conditioners. Picking up the split ends of expensive broken promises, I had started to feel resentful. There was no way back but the razor.

5 years of exploring the differences between heart and mind, 5 years of spiritual practice. 5 years of doubting that a person like me, a person so identified with her mind, with her brain-centred work, her culture of intellectual dominance, could possibly ever live from the heart centre.

How refreshing and reassuring that, in this case, even though I did still think, imagine and weigh up, divide, dissect and analyse the consequences, in the end I cut my hair off one sunny morning in Limpopo because of a feeling.

And now- 7 months on- tempting as it is to allow the mind to re-tread its familiar and comforting paths of enquiry about what has been learned, about what can be deduced and decided and described about such an experience, I gently but persistently bring myself back to the sensations, the feelings and messages of what is now, in this moment. Allowing myself to feel, allowing my heart to continue its opening. To follow its nature, its dhamma.

May all beings be happy.