Cultivating Your Witness
Cogito Ergo Sum…nearly 400 years passed since Rene Descartes uttered these words. In the second of his Six Meditations on First Philosophy, even if an all-powerful demon were to try to deceive him into thinking that he exists when he does not, he would have to exist for the devil to deceive him. The idea behind this passage isn't the argue whether or not you exist. The purpose of this passage is to highlight the power of thought. Thoughts often have emotions attached, and depending on those emotions, the action quickly follows. Actions lead to a present moment experience which, as Newton points out in his third law of motion, garners an equal and opposite reaction. The back and forth between thought-action-thought becomes our reality.
As anyone reading this can agree, thoughts can be pretty overwhelming at times. Almost like being under the influence of a powerful demon. Thoughts and feelings can manifest a reality that can very quickly spiral out of control and thus manifest a devastating self-fulfilling prophecy. Many people in the world today who find themselves helplessly stuck in this loop. We thrive in a digital age where reality can be "curated" to your interests and worldview, thus keeping you in this endless cycle only reaffirming a distorted worldview. The path out of this loop is simple, not to be confused with easy.
Ram Dass puts it quite eloquently, referring to this process as "cultivating the witness." According to his teaching, humans have this unique ability to be in two states of consciousness at once. Witnessing yourself is like directing the beam of a flashlight back at itself. In any experience — sensory, emotional, or conceptual — there's the experience, the sensory or emotional or thought data. There's your awareness of it." This ability, like any ability, takes practice, and lots of it. This witness is the same part of your consciousness that "directs" you to act and work on yourself. Hence why they say that hindsight is 20/20. The issue with most people is that this feedback loop (or loops) can become quite aggressive and, for many, the cause of some pretty vicious spirals.
In less nebulous terms, to lightly borrow from Freud, imagine your unconscious like a mansion with many dark rooms and hallways. Your consciousness is a light source that moves around to illuminate areas of the subconscious. That illumination of the thing you are shining your light on is your awareness (by this example, it is easy to decipher why we call it enlightenment). To further expand on this example, when thoughts and emotions are out of control, they take command of the light, causing it to erratically dance around or sometimes create a fixed beam on the dark closet or the basement where we keep all that which is "unwanted." Actions as a result of this fixed awareness only intensify the light's focus. Cultivating your witness is the process by which we take back and willfully expand our light, perhaps finding the light switch in the room, rather than using our phone light to find our way out of the darkness.
Dedicate daily time to simple observation without judgement. Sit still and answer the following questions, either out loud or written on a piece of paper:
Is my body tense or relaxed?
Where is my tension being held?
What do I need in this moment?
What can I decide to let go of?
The yogic version of Descartes's quote: "When I stop thinking, I am."
Namaste.
Further Reading:
"Descartes Epistemology" Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Dec 3, 1997; substantive revision Fri Feb 15, 2019. URL: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes-epistemology/
Dass, Ram "Polishing the Mirror: How to live from your Spiritual Heart" Sounds True; Reprint edition (Sept 1, 2014)
Harris, Jules “Zen Beyond Mindfulness: Using Buddhist and Modern Psychology for Transformational practice”: Shambhala Publications c. 2019
