The witnessing state arises quite naturally whenever we are anchored in inner stillness.

In stillness, there is an awareness that we are in the body, but that we are much more than the body, and that the body is simply the vehicle that allows consciousness to experience itself in many different ways as a human being.

With this awareness, there comes a natural separation of our inner being from what is occurring on the landscape of our life in the present moment. This separation allows us to witness what’s happening in our life, which is the ability to see what’s happening in a detached manner.

Though we are completely present, deeply involved, and fully invested in what we are doing, we are not attached to any of this as our identity.

While the outer happenings of our life, which we think of as our “story,” are important, they are not who we are.

When we approach life from the witnessing state, we are aware that what we are observing is both important and simultaneously not that important. The reason it doesn’t become all-important in our life is that we don’t make what’s happening a part of our identity. 

The event is important as part of our human experience, yet on the larger scale of things it isn’t that important. Why? Because we are so much more than our human experiences.

At first our experience of the witnessing state tends to be short and fleeting. We may initially enter this state after sitting in stillness, as we slowly open our eyes and look around us.

One reason sitting in stillness is helpful is that when we come out of deep stillness, it’s easier to see the separation between our inner presence – the state of no form – and the physical world.

As we continue our practice of sitting in stillness, we experience lengthier and more-frequent episodes of being a witness. This allows us to choose to observe a situation from the witnessing state so that we can better see it as it truly is, free of the mental and emotional screens of the conditioned thinking mind.

Opportunity for Self-inquiry and Sharing:

A.    Can you recall an early experience of finding yourself simply witnessing what was happening in your life, observing without being attached in terms of your identity?

B.    Describe a time when you deliberately chose to bring your witnessing presence to a situation. How did it change your experience of the incident?

This ends Section 5

The next section will be posted April 19