What Is It & How To Develop It

Before developing witness consciousness, we experience our beliefs, thoughts, and feelings as if we were ourselves. We are almost always completely merged with them. But when we begin to develop witness consciousness, we mentally step back and begin to examine concepts and beliefs from our perspective. awareness Or awareness. At this point we begin to identify with our consciousness and not with the experiences our consciousness observes. For a while, we will likely oscillate between feeling like we’re living our experiences and feeling like we’re just observing them.

Think about it this way. You know, when you’re watching a movie and you’re so absorbed in it that you forget yourself, don’t pay attention to the room you’re watching the movie in. Then the scene ends and you zoom out again. You again observe both the room you are in and the movie that is playing. It’s something like that.

All your life you’ve been completely absorbed or drawn into the movie of life, and now you step away from your life a little bit and realize, “Oh, I don’t need to focus so much on my experiences.” I can observe my life without having to constantly react to it.

The first thing we usually notice about ourselves Witness consciousness is our flow of thoughts (Ingram, 2018). Although we probably learned to identify some of our thoughts earlier in our development, now that we view our experiences from the perspective of observing consciousness, we can see our thoughts much more clearly. We start to notice the completely outrageous thoughts that constantly run through our minds.

At some point we come to the conclusion that we are not our mind. How can we be? We now watch thoughts come and go without having the ability to stop or change them.

Say your thoughts out loud
If we continue to observe the parade of thoughts, the loudest thoughts will likely be noticed first. Depending on our unique mind, we may notice a strong inner critic, a strong inner critic Furya noisy interior Obsessed with controland/or a variety of other voices of thought. Some of these inner voices may encourage each other, while others may argue.

Calm thoughts
Once we actually observe these noisy thoughts and give them our full attention, they quiet down. And some of them disappear completely. At this point, we will begin to notice calmer thoughts – thoughts that we may have never noticed before.

For example, we may notice the mind’s tendency to repeat what it is about to say – a process called mental rehearsal. The mind may even repeat the same phrases or expressions over and over again just to hear how they sound. Although these quiet thoughts are often less stressful than noisy thoughts, it’s quite strange how messy our minds are.

Now let’s talk about the declaration emotions. For many of us, feeling emotions is more stressful than thinking. Even as our witnessing awareness grows, we can still become completely absorbed in emotional experiences, especially when an emotion is strong. It’s like watching an intense movie: you’re more drawn to the intense or emotional scenes.

Once the emotion is exhausted, our witness consciousness will come back online. In other words: we zoom out a little. At this point, it can be helpful to reflect on what happened or to keep a journal of the emotions you just experienced. Even if we haven’t used our witnessing awareness at the time, we can still use our memory to bring attention to the emotions so they can begin to resolve.

Strong emotions
Our strongest emotions are usually the ones that trigger one of our childhood emotional wounds. For example, maybe someone we care about just gave us negative feedback about something we did, triggering feelings of inadequacy. At this point, emotions may still flare up normally, but once they have calmed and gone, we can use our memory to remember how we were attracted to them. These situations provide us with a great opportunity to see our emotions more clearly. And just seeing them is enough to release their influence on us.

For example, in this situation we might wonder why we are so upset. Do we really care about the negative feedback or did this situation remind us of something painful from our past? Once we find the true wound, we can recognize it, experience it, and ultimately heal it.

Calm feelings
Once we let go of the stronger emotions, our observing consciousness will be able to observe the calmer emotions. For example, we can begin to observe the subtle illness that the body carries as a constant protective mechanism. We can notice unpleasant sensations caused by craving, desire, and even aversion. We may even notice the disgusting feeling that accompanies our judgment of others.

In some ways, we will probably feel better because many of the strong emotions that have been present throughout our lives resurface less often. However, as our witness consciousness becomes quite strong at this stage, subtle emotions can still be very painful. Witness consciousness requires us to fully realize and feel everything, which can be quite an intense experience.

Perhaps the hardest things to observe are our beliefs.

Strong convictions
The strongest beliefs are those that almost everyone can see. For example, maybe we believe in God or that our favorite sports team will win the game. Other noisy beliefs are not so easy to spot. For example, most people believe that they are not good enoughthat they are not worthy and/or that there is something fundamentally wrong with them. Although these are extremely common and vocal beliefs, many people are unaware that they share these beliefs.

Although it can be painful, the more you experience these beliefs, the less compelling they become.

Silent beliefs
After realizing that many of our noisy beliefs are simply absurd, we Are No matter how good we are, we begin to embody this knowledge. Not only do we let go of our belief that we weren’t good enough, we actually do it. feel good enough and act on that feeling. Without these noisy beliefs clouding our minds, we can begin to observe more and more subtle beliefs.

At this point we begin to observe that we ourselves have beliefs about the nature of our being. For example, we might notice the beliefs that make our society function in a certain way. Or we can notice the beliefs that lead to basic behaviors like eating, going to work, or communicating with others. All of these stories ultimately lead us to look beyond the fundamental belief that produces our experiences: the belief that we are a distinct self.

• Ingram, Daniel. (2018). Mastering the Fundamental Teachings of the Buddha: An Unusually Hard Dharma Book – Revised and Expanded Edition. Books of Éon.
  
• O’Fallon, T. (2010). The development of the human soul: developmental practices in spiritual leadership. Excerpt from Masters in Spiritual Direction.