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Human spirituality is a curious thing.
We walk around in small purposeful circles from one spiritual practice to another always avoiding the one thing that needs to be looked at.
The Truth.
At least that’s what I did in the last few years. Always reading the books and trying some new fancy technique. But if I’m ruthlessly honest with myself, this was just another escapism habit.
We think spirituality will liberate us, but if we feel obliged to listen to gurus and do a zillion different practices for the rest of our lives, where does that get us?
To me, that no longer sounds like liberation, but like a fancier prison cell – a little bit incense here, a little bit of mantra music there, perhaps a little buddha statue in the corner for good measure.
If that is what we call spiritual practice, then it’s no wonder that so few people are waking up.
Ironically, many who claim to be awake, are the ones most deeply slumbering.
I know it all sounds a little harsh, but this is not to say that all these things are wrong. They just don’t serve the purpose we have been made to believe they serve.
If someone has been meditating for 20 years with the intention to be free and is no closer to being free from the torment of his mind than he was when he started, is he really on the path to liberation?
And I’m not necessarily talking about spiritual enlightenment here, but about being an awake human being.
This is about being a lucid dreamer, instead of an unconscious dreamer.
But please don’t hold yourself back from doing spiritual practices, just because some guy on the internet says they don’t serve you in the way you hoped they would.
All I’m saying is to think for yourself and be honest with yourself.
If you’re after freedom, then don’t let spiritual practice become your crutch.
It’s so easy to turn these practices into the means and the end and completely forget why we have started these practices in the first place.
Having said that, for me, there seems to be only one spiritual practice, and if we vigilantly follow it, then all else will follow.
Witnessing
Ultimately there is only one spiritual practice. If you do just this, you will start to awaken in the dream.
Witnessing. Observation. Awareness.
However you want to call it, it essentially means seeing things the way they are. And the most important thing to observe is yourself — the character you’re playing in this dreamworld.
You step back from yourself. You’re not just living your life, you’re also observing it.
Transfer your primary awareness out of the character you’re playing into the actor playing the character.
Be the actor more than you are the character.
This means to be somewhat self-conscious but in an impartial way. You’re not judging your character, you’re sitting back and watching all of it.
This is not a meditation practice but a way of being.
In the beginning, it might be a little strange but just start by observing yourself as you would other people. Eventually, it becomes your second nature and you will be almost always in witnessing mode.
You’ll see yourself from the same impersonal perspective you see other people.
When witnessing becomes your new way of being, you’ll start seeing more clearly.
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant by saying, “Be of the world but not in it.”
Why Should You Witness?
First of all, there are no “should’s.”
You don’t need to do anything. But by living unconsciously we’re relinquishing our sovereignty to other people. We give responsibility for ourselves to parents, teachers, gurus, priests, doctors, politicians, and corporations.
Living without awareness is the breeding ground for all bad habits and addictions.
When we live without awareness we eat the wrong things and too much of them, we buy things we don’t really need nor want, and we raise our children in the same way.
So witnessing or awareness is essential to rid ourselves of all the emotional baggage we carry around.
Now, let’s see what else witnessing will do for you.
Alertness And Presence
Witnessing as your spiritual practice will get you in the habit of being alert and present in your life.
I’m not necessarily talking about mindfulness here but about training yourself into wakefulness.
You develop the habit of not sleeping your whole life away.
Just shift from character to actor as often as you can. Do this in all kinds of situations, so that it becomes a smooth transition and doesn’t disturb your performance.
Disidentification
Another thing that witnessing will do for you is to train you to disidentify from the character you’re playing.
As long as you identify with the character on stage, you can’t make any progress.
There is a you behind that stage persona and this you is the actor playing the character.
Keep Going
Now it’s easy to get stuck after the first step. But you have to take this whole witnessing thing further. Always further.
This is not a passive thing, where you just sit back and observe.
Essentially, you’re not just observing your character, you are deconstructing it. Feel free to be a little aggressive about it.
This way you can somewhat simulate the enlightened perspective which will help you be a lucid dreamer in the dreamworld.
How to Practice Witnessing
Here I want to give you an example of how you might use witnessing.
Yet this is not supposed to be a you-have-to-it-this-way kind of thing. Rather it’s to exemplify how far you can take the process of stepping back and observing.
Let’s take the character you are playing for example.
So you might believe that you are a human being, subject to physical laws, living on a little planet in a big galaxy in an infinite universe, existing somewhere in time and space.
You believe you are a man or woman having a nationality, being part of a community, playing the role of mother or father, a friend, a teacher, or any other identity.
But everything you think you know about yourself, no matter how true it seems, is just another layer of your costume. Everything we know, no matter how sure we are, is really just belief.
And all beliefs are limiting as they reduce the truly infinite to the falsely finite.
Now make it your spiritual practice to step back from all of that.
Whenever you find something that you think defines or contains you in any way, you can step back from it. Observe these beliefs and attachments.
Here is something else you can try.
When you watch the news or read anything about the current state of the world, for example, you can look at it like it happened yesterday, last month, or last year. The news is like a snapshot of a river. It’s instantly obsolete as we get served a new snapshot every day.
Pull yourself out of the character that believes today’s happenings are more significant than yesterday’s.
Distance yourself from local and national world events and see them as abstractions.
Allow yourself to see them as no more personal as if they were happening in a different time, in a different land, or on a different planet, even if it’s happening right outside your window.
This is not about denial, but about seeing the false idea of your localized nature.
The anchor that holds you in this specific time and place is just another emotional attachment, like any other.
Witnessing allows you to detach, to focus your mind on all the false attachments, and thus stop seeing what is not.
By continuously stepping back and shining the light of awareness on all these false attachments, you are undoing all beliefs.
When we start the spiritual journey, many of us try to replace our old beliefs with new beliefs. And while acquiring expansive beliefs may allow us to believe greater things, beliefs are still beliefs and beliefs are limiting.
If you are serious about this spiritual practice, then you don’t stop. You always go further and ruthlessly dismantle any belief that appears.
No belief is true and it’s all beliefs.
In the end, it’s really nothing more than observing; seeing what is by learning to unsee what is not.
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“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” – Anthony de Mello
Luka
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Thank you for this article. I’d really benefit from practicing this more often.