The Key to Awakening is the witnessing. Witnessing is an alert
watchfulness of whatever is happening moment to moment without mental or
emotional engagement. In other words, it is the detached, unidentified, and
non-judgmental observation of what is. When you experience that you are not
your mind, body, and emotions, you are in consciousness. The only way to
understand this is to observe your body, mind, and emotions. Through
self-observation, you can see that all of your sensations, thoughts, and
emotions are impermanent – they always change and move like passing clouds.
Seeing their impermanence helps you understand that your pain and suffering is
created by your ego-mind. All your problems exist because you are unable to
witness and disidentify from your thoughts and emotions. When you don’t witness your mind and emotions, you remain caught in
the story created by the ego-mind and continue to suffer. When you witness the
mind and its story, you realize you are not the story but the observer of the
story. When you simply observe your body and its sensations, thoughts,
emotions, and everything that happens around you, you are out of the story. You
heal into consciousness with each moment of witnessing and disidentification,
no matter how brief. Once you know you are nothing but consciousness, you are
healed out of suffering. Your ability to witness is innate. The witness is part
of your being. It is with you eternally, even after your body dies. Even though
the witness is always present watching everything coming and going, your
awareness goes in and out of it. Witnessing is like a muscle that you need to
strengthen through experience and practice. Meditation is the practice. Meditation is the tool for strengthening the Inner Witness. Although
there are many meditation techniques, meditation is not a technique. Meditation
is the practice of witnessing. Meditation gives you an opportunity to
disidentify from your body, mind, and emotions and experience your inner
consciousness. It allows you to step out of the chattering mind and transform
your beliefs and conditionings into pure consciousness. The essence of
meditation is a pure witnessing of whatever is perceived inside and outside the
body, mind, and emotions without reaction or judgment. Through detached
observation, you stop fueling your ego-mind and find the stillness and silence
of your being. A dedicated practice of meditation leads to inner silence,
relaxation, and improved health as well as increased self-acceptance,
confidence, and understanding of oneself and others.
Awakening or self-realization, does not
mean that you no longer have a mind. As long as you have a body, you will have
a mind because the mind is part of the body’s survival mechanism. Awakening simply means that you have come to
experience your being and have realized that your mind was creating the
illusion of separation. The experience of awakening liberates you from the
psychological pain and suffering created by the ego-mind and brings a clear
understanding that you are not your ego, body, thoughts, and emotions, and that
your being is untouched by anything external. With awakening, your
attachments to things and people, as well as the existential angst that kept
you searching, drops. Awakening frees you of insecurity and fear of the
unknown. The growth and expansion of consciousness does not end with
awakening. Evolution of consciousness continues eternally through new
experiences and learning. Each day brings many opportunities to learn something
new. There is no end to how much we can learn. An enlightened person continues
to learn and evolve just like everyone else, but his or her learning arises out
of joy, creativity, and compassion, not out of resistance, fear, and suffering. An enlightened person longs to share out of
pure joy and abundance, not out of a need to receive something in return. Whether you are enlightened or not,
as long as you live in a physical body, you need to clean your house.
Meditation is a way to remove the dust that the mind accumulates. The dust of
the mind clears just by sitting and watching your breath. Because the mind is
goal oriented, from its perspective enlightenment is the end. The mind cannot
comprehend that by being a detached witness you can know what action you need
to take the next moment. |
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