Awakening to Natural Consciousness: Beyond Mindfulness Practices

Witnessing consciousness transforms our relationship with ourselves and others in ways mindfulness practices only hint at. Unlike deliberate attention practices, true witnessing emerges spontaneously when we make contact with our deeper nature – pure consciousness itself.

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Chapters

• 1:42 Witnessing vs. Mindfulness
• 2:39 The Natural Phenomenon of Witnessing
• 4:24 Passing the "So What" Test
• 6:01 Noticing Patterns and Taking Control
• 9:19 The Innocent Nature of True Self
• 10:52 Addressing Our Unworthiness

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:55

The question about witnessing with our eyes closed. We're not witnessing with our eyes closed, right? This would make it mindfulness, even though sometimes I guess we do notice, but we're not expected to notice. There's no need to notice. We're not deliberately engaging in the practice of noticing, but that doesn't exclude noticing from occurring. You'll notice that you're noticing, you'll notice that the witness is there and that the experience of witnessing is being had. But it's something that's spontaneous and very natural, because that is the nature of the mind. At the baseline of the mind is the source of the mind. The source of the mind is pure consciousness, and the way that that pure consciousness expresses itself is witnessing, witnessing the experience that's being had. It's always happening. The experience that we are having as individuals is always being had. So, and you know, at the end of the day, a mindfulness practice is about awakening and triggering this natural phenomenon. Awakening and triggering this natural phenomenon.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Practicing witnessing is, you know, it's the best way to say it it's like the tail wagging the dog. It's a little backwards. We don't need to practice witnessing, we just need to make contact where the witness is and then witnessing occurs spontaneously and we don't have to get involved in the whole experience and the reason why we're taking this approach is that we want the witness to be there. When we're in activity, when we're thinking about the things that we need to think about, when we need to get on with what we need to get on with, we don't want to have to be thinking about the fact that we are witnessing, we just want it to spontaneously be there. What we notice in this particular technique, where we're transcending and making contact with being, being and witnessing they're synonyms when we make contact with being, the witness becomes enlivened in our awareness and we are able to notice. We are having an experience and we don't need to try and do that, it just is happening. We just notice it. I'm noticing that. I'm noticing, and the big question is well, how does this pass the so what test in daily life?

Speaker 1: 4:33

Because we're only really interested in practicing something that passes the so what test in daily life, with our eyes open, and the way that it passes the so what test when the witness is there, spontaneously, innocently, spontaneously, innocently, we begin to notice the way in which the mind and the body sensations that are triggered the mind and thinking as well as body sensations that are triggered by external stimulation, how they can. These influences can derail us from having a clear and coherent experience of ourself. We can notice when it happens, how it happens, why it happens. We can notice all of this, we can get all that data and become aware oh, the way that you behave causes this feeling to occur, which triggers this kind of thinking that causes me to behave in this kind of way. And despite the fact that I know that you didn't mean to trigger me, I find myself involuntarily reacting in this way and I get swept up in the whole story and in the early stages of establishing the witness.

Speaker 1: 6:14

We're noticing this. We're noticing ourself get caught up in something that has no good ending for us, and we know it, and yet we continue with it. We carry on, let the cascade continue until it eventuates in a very predictable outcome feeling powerless and, you know, having to clean up a bit of a mess. But as we continue noticing this phenomenon occurring, we're like ah-ha-ha, this again. I'm noticing you. Now I can just stop, I can just let go, I can just shush, I'm just going to stop.

Speaker 1: 7:10

Mid-sentence. I dare you Just drop it. Mid-sentence Look like a big weirdo. Be okay with that, let them go. You were saying and you say, yeah, I was about to go on a rant, I was about to hand over my power to you, I was about to relinquish my responsibility and I realized that I don't want to do that anymore. So I stopped saying what I was about to say. And there is nothing greater in a relationship dynamic with anybody than to do that, to demonstrate that you have anybody, than to do that, to demonstrate that you have the capacity to do that, because immediately they go, wow, I want to learn how to do that. Or they feel inspired by the fact that you just took responsibility for something you're about to vomit all over them. And this is a very exciting time. And this is all by virtue of establishing the witness, with our eyes closed and not ruminating on it.

Speaker 1: 8:33

The reason why we don't give special attention to it is because we want it to just be there innocently. If we're giving too much attention to witnessing, then it's no longer innocent, it's no longer spontaneous, it's something that we believe we have to kind of crank the engine of Right. I got the witnessing engine running, but I need to kind of keep my foot on the throttle. It's not the case. It's always running.

Speaker 1: 9:06

The witness is always there because it is the expression of our being, our true self. Our true self never ceases to exist. It's only that we break the tendency of ignoring it. And once we break the tendency of ignoring it, and once we break the tendency of ignoring it, we notice that it's always there. And we don't need to micromanage being ourself. We just be ourself. It's the simplest, most innocent, effortless thing to do and all we need to do is get along. Get on with acting on the powerful impulses of intelligence and inspiration that we feel, or confronting the pain and the self-loathing that we witness going huh, look at the way that I treat myself. Getting on with cleaning up that, addressing our unworthiness in a constructive way, because all of these things are the big inhibitors of us truly stabilising the experience of ourself, and they have to be tended to as a matter of urgency, high priority. And the beautiful thing is we can tender that and do chop the veggies at the same time.