Why is witnessing important for my life and for Self-realization?
Dear friends in an awakening world,
Imagine standing next to a prickly tree, like a needle tree. You are standing so close to its branches that you can feel the needles pricking your body. Imagine you'd be standing so near to it for many days, months, years, or lifetimes. What would happen? You would feel a lot of pain, like a continuous pricking sensation. You might get used to the pain over the years, and you would think that the tree is a part of you, even though it really isn't. You would also not even see the tree clearly, nor know how tall it is or what kind it is, because you would be standing so close to it.
Now, imagine you were to take a step away from it. When you step back a little bit, you can see that there is distance between you and the tree, meaning you are not the tree, and you would no longer feel the pain or be pricked by it. Imagine the sense of relief!
You would also be able to see more of the tree, what kind of species it is, or things about it that can only be observed when there is some distance.
Now imagine you step further and further back, still looking at the tree but moving away from it. You would not only see the tree, but also many trees and the whole forest. Imagine stepping back onto a higher plateau; you would be able to see the valley, the forests, houses, and everything. There would be an enormous distance between you and everything that appears.
It's the exact same with your thoughts, your emotions, your sensations, and your perceptions. Because there is no distance to them, you neither see your true Self clearly, nor actually perceive clearly what is going on. You take on whatever appears and respond to it from this sense of being directed by the mind. And if what arises inside your mind are negative thoughts, or negative emotions, or negative sensations, you would also believe them to be you, and you would feel a lot of pain because of that identification.
When you start witnessing, you generate distance from the emotions, the sensations, and the thoughts. This distance is already there (between 'You' as awareness and thoughts), but because, for a very long time, you have been identified with what appears, in the beginning, it takes a certain effort to disidentify and create distance. You are no longer a follower of mind, you become an 'unfollower'.
To witness means to no longer follow thoughts, emotions, or sensations. It doesn't mean they are suppressed; it just means you no longer pick them up as instructions for your life or as things that pertain to you. You see them arising and ceasing, you see the grasping nature of thoughts, and you get to know the power of the mind to pull you into a constant thinking mode and generate experience. Witnessing means learning to let everything be exactly as it is, without needing to respond to anything that appears. Imagine a hard-wired conditioning of yours (to always respond in a certain way because of an ingrained belief) no longer being picked up or responded to. Freedom already right there!
As you start witnessing emotions, sensations, and thoughts, the same thing happens that happened when you were stepping away from the needles of the tree- the power of the mind to reach you starts to fade, and with it, the pain subsides. What a relief!
As you step deeper or more away from appearances in general and the distance becomes more naturally known, you start not only creating distance to emotions, sensations, and thoughts, but also to the constructed sense of Self and its filtered chain reactions. Because that constructed sense of Self is identified with what appears and has built its sense of self around it, life becomes about managing appearances. You try to control, manage, handle, react to, or enact what goes on in your mind. Witnessing creates clarity that what arises appears in a general emptiness of mind and that the mind is not you! Thoughts hold no substance and therefore don't need to be picked up or indulged in. Like a side table in a room, phenomena can still be there without your need to engage with them.
As you practice witnessing and it deepens, you start noticing the process of perception and the identified thought responses to it. You are seeing the person or whole situations arising through identification. It's what you see from spacious awareness (like seeing from a plateau), where even your perceived person is seen from a distance.
The witness itself is not the last step in Self-realization, but it's a very important step, because how can you know what you are if you still believe that your thoughts, emotions, and sensations are really 'you'?
When the distance is established, and thoughts lose their capacity to grasp you, at some point your interest in what appears diminishes naturally, and even the process of witnessing appearances makes way for an investigation - and a clarity- of that which is the Seeing, namely your Self as pure awareness.
