Much of my work and many of my sessions in the past five years or more have increasingly involved assisting clients in acquainting themselves with their observing self or mind.
Since not all of us understand this aspect of our consciousness, I will try to explain. I was probably about five years old when I first thought about thinking. I am guessing this thought is not that unusual for a person to have at some point but for some reason I remember it taking place when I lived in Los Angeles in the early 60s. It wasn’t a profound thought but it arose from my observing, not my thinking brain.
I remember being momentarily awe-struck to realize I had this brain that could think. I remember thinking, “I am thinking. I can think what I want.” For a moment I stepped back to see that I was seeing. It felt different to me, to see seeing. Instead of being aware of the world around me, I was suddenly aware of awareness itself. I didn’t know what to do with it at that moment but I felt changed somehow and I never forgot it.
We take for granted that we exist in this world but this fact is miraculous and astounding. How did we get here? I don’t remember choosing to become me and yet I am. And I have this mechanism for connecting my conceptualized self with external reality. This mechanism is a thinking apparatus some call the mind that is housed most of the time in this fairly small intricate, three-pound blob of tissue inside our bony skulls. Someone’s brain long ago called it “a brain” and other brains agreed and so the name stuck, like all the other names we have for everything that exists. Where would we be without language? Who would we be?
It is inside the brain that we experience the world but there is this other “thing” that is different. This other part does not think. It sees. It observes. It notices. As Robert Heinlein once wrote, “It groks.”
We are capable of pure awareness. This aspect of our self does not judge or evaluate. It does not label, qualify or quantify. It rests with what is like a pair of hands carefully holding a small bird or rabbit. Our observing mind accepts everything as it is. It is willing. It is open. It does not resist or avoid. It is “with” that which it experiences but it does not think about or judge it. It allows the core, unadorned, unelaborated truth of that which it sees, observes or notices to be received and known.
Our observing self understands. It gets it. It can observe the external world and that is very useful. It can also observe our internal experience and that is especially helpful when we are interested in decreasing our own suffering. We can see our thoughts without thinking about them. We can notice our emotions or feelings without getting caught up with or bogged down in or carried away with them. We can connect with our physical bodies without judging. We can notice our brain when it replays the past and we can observe how these internal movies come fully loaded with their own emotions. We can watch our urges and fears rise and fall without rising or falling with them. We can see regret without regretting. We can see envy without envying. We can see pain without hurting. We can allow whatever exists within or without to be, without clinging, grasping, resisting or avoiding.
When I look in the mirror and see my 58-year-old face, I can notice that he looks different from a picture of me when I was 22. But something has not changed. My observing self is still here and he is ageless. My awareness-self in 2014 is the same as it was in 1961. It is like a movie camera that can take hundreds, thousands or even millions of movies without being changed by the film or digital data that passes through it. It can film war or murder or it can film a wedding or the birth of a child. Our observing self is not altered by the constant change in our physical universe because it is changeless. It is not subject to time. It remains present in the eternal now and merely notes the passing show of our lives and experiences.
Sometimes we can ask ourselves who is seeing how we see. We can ask who is noticing how we notice. Who is observing how we observe? This is a method we can use with our thinking self or mind to turn and find this other self. If I say to myself, “I can’t stand this,” who is the “I” that can’t stand this? Is it my thinking self, my conceptualized self or my observing self? And can it be true with one self and not true for another self?
The truth is our observing self can “stand” anything. It is never affected by the physical world. It is our ego or thinking mind that wants to claim the “I” identity and most of us fall for this charade. Our ego is an “it,” not an “I”. Our thinking mind is a good servant but a lousy master.
It is useful to carve out at least five minutes a day to connect with this deeper sense of self that observes without judging. Notice how the judgmental, evaluative functions never stop. You can occasionally think, “Thank you brain for that thought.” When we step back from our thoughts, we sometimes feel more peaceful. That peace is always there but we can’t feel it unless we create a space for it in our minds.
Doug Craig graduated from college in Ohio with a journalism degree and got married during the Carter administration. He graduated from graduate school with a doctorate in Psychology, got divorced, moved to Redding, re-married and started his private practice during the Reagan administration. He had his kids during the first Bush administration. Since then he has done nothing noteworthy besides write a little poetry, survive a motorcycle crash, buy and sell an electric car, raise his kids, manage to stay married and maintain his practice for almost 25 years. He believes in magic and is a Sacramento Kings fan.
