Do You See Yourself?

Until you develop a witnessing self, you will continue to identify with your thoughts, feelings, sensations and fantasies, mistaking these experiences for who, and what, you are. Your life will occur to you as an undifferentiated and involuntary set of stimuli and automatic reactions. You will lack the capacity to objectively observe the contents of your mind for what they are — the mere output of your body’s machinery.

You will be confined to a restrictive set of possible reactions to everyday events. Your reactions will be reflexive and without forethought. You may even choose to believe that life is deterministic and that you have no free will. You are stuck in an endless spiral of cause and effect, being blown this way and that by the winds of time.

There is a qualitative and quantitative distinction between a reaction and a response, in the context of the effects produced by stimuli. A reaction, by definition, is automatic and reflexive. It is impulsive and occurs within an instant. A response to stimuli, on the other hand, requires forethought and hence, a pause in the timeline. It’s a measured and voluntary action that occurs after a time of consideration.

“Freedom is found in the gap between stimulus and response.”

Viktor Frankl

To access the kind of freedom Frankl refers to, the ability to create a gap after stimulus, but before response, is required. This gap can only be created when we experience ourselves as the objective observer of our minds’ content. This objective observer recognises that there is a distinction between the thought and the thinker; between the feeling and the feeler. This distinction is what makes the gap perceivable.

When this is achieved, rather than identifying as the feeling, for example “I am angry”, it becomes possible to separate from the feeling and recognise as the feeler, for example, “I am feeling angry”. This ability to separate the feeling from the feeler is what’s required to create the gap between stimulus and response. If I am the feeling, then I have no voluntary control over my experience. If I am the feeler, then I can choose how I respond to the feeling. This gap provides the freedom for a voluntary and considered response to a feeling.

I recall a time when a close and dear friend of mine was expressing his considerable angry feelings towards me. I responded to his tirade with laughter. Not in disrespect, but rather in the light-hearted gratitude that I felt as he openly expressed himself. The surprised look on his face was accompanied by a cooling of his temper and we laughed out loud together.

How does one go about manifesting this well-developed witnessing self? What methods do we have at our disposal to train ourselves to become to observer of the contents of our minds?

This is the domain of mindfulness practices such as meditation, mantra, yoga and vipassana.

These practices have been around for thousands of years and have stood the test of time for their ability to deliver. They all have in common procedures for stilling the body and quietening the mind. Observing the breath is encouraged as a means to concentrate the mind on a single point of focus.

With the mind still and focused on the breath, it becomes possible to identify thoughts or feelings when they arise. As soon as a thought or feeling arises, the practise is to return to observing the breath and concentrate the mind again. With repeated practise, it becomes possible to observe thoughts or feelings without identifying with them, and to recognise oneself as the witnessing agent that is separate from the content of mind.

Prior to learning meditation and developing a witnessing self, my life occurred to me as an undifferentiated drama of unpredictable events and uncontrolled reactions. I recall feeling powerless and identified as a victim, being at the effect of life rather than at the cause of it.

Once I had created the gap between stimuli and my responses to them, I encountered a newfound freedom and power to move my life in the direction of my chosen destiny.

Your witnessing self has the ability to examine many aspects of your personality. It becomes possible to distinguish your persona, or social mask, as a self-created construct. Your persona is merely your public representation of yourself, and does not reflect all of you. Once you recognise you are not only your persona, you are capable of witnessing what lies behind this façade.

Now, you can encounter the hidden aspects of your personality, or what Jung referred to as the shadow self.