Witnessing Awareness

Witnessing awareness is an impersonal presence. It’s not something that we need to develop or cultivate. It’s there all the time.

You have probably sensed that every now and then you can witness your mind; or witness how the ‘me’ chatters away, reliving past events or projecting into an imagined future.

It’s a spontaneous and natural witness that is completely effortless.

The ‘me’ can get very lost in daydreaming, strategising, stressing about the future. These ruminating thoughts add strain to both our mental and physical health.

Once we start to recognise the witness, we will also start to notice certain habits, patterns and tendencies in our mind and in our lifestyle.

So, we start to pay more attention to the fluctuations of the mind and how this ephemerality should be acknowledged if we want to go beyond the mind, if we want to get free. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to live our life, enjoy our experiences, get sad or mad, but eventually we hope not to be controlled or feel damaged by these emotions. We want to live our life free from the shackles of our changing emotions.

The witness can be seen as your guide through your self-enquiry. The witness isn’t ever criticising or judging it’s just simply observing. It’s not involved in the emotions, it’s just watching them. It’s not one of your senses – it’s beyond that. It’s not the experience but your awareness of the experience – unattached; simply present.