Witnessing

How does witnessing feel?

Witnessing sounds very much like observation. But when I get to observe, sometimes I also get somehow involved, affected. Sometimes, such involvement is so subtle that I get to think I am witnessing, and the only way to understand the lack of being a witness is the tiresome feeling that comes from observing a certain scene for a certain while; which scene, you may ask. Any scene, something that happens on the street, something that someone does, a thought, an emotion, a feeling.

I realized that since witnessing is a state of non-resistance, a state where energy is not wasted, a state where everything gets to be effortless, then no tiredness should come from witnessing. And then an example of witnessing came to me. When we have a certain physical pain there are mainly three ways to go: Indulging, Ignoring and Witnessing.

Indulging would be to focus in the displeasure of the pain causing the pain to reside or even increase. In other words you get to judge the pain as something that you dislike and then you resist it. And what you resist, either persists or grows. This indulging can either be very obvious or very subtle. When it is very obvious we are very aware of hating it. When it is very subtle we may even think we are witnessing such pain, but despite our aim, we still don't like such pain, we still want it to go away. We do not really accept the pain. We simply get to convince ourselves that we accept the pain, in such a way that it gets to flow off of our body. But thankfully the pain and discomfort remain allowing us to discern our not-witnessing.

Ignoring it would be to either search for distractions away from the pain so we forget it; or using pain-killers to get rid of it. In this ignoring state, we get to miss the opportunity of learning from such pain. Imagine that you did not feel pain at all... without it you would never have any indication of things out of balance within your body. If you had a broken finger you would not feel it and therefore you would continue using it, causing even more damage. You would touch boiling water with your finger and would not know that such is burning, killing your finger, until it was to late. You could get appendicites and never know it were there until you actually realize you were dying, if you even get to realize that. Without feeling the inflamed appendix, it never got treatment, and peritonitis got to be the result, which you do not realize either and therefore nothing is done, ultimately ending in death. The idea is that when you ignore pain, you are silencing the alarm, and therefore you are not solving the problem.

The other option is witnessing. This one is the wisest one. In this case you see the pain as it is, you do not take it away or complain about it. First, you acknowledge the pain, it is neither good or bad, it is the alarm: "Ohh, the alarm went off. Where is the alarm coming from? Uhmm, I see. Thank you for the warning". So far I neither like or dislike the pain, it does not necessarily mean that I am going to leave it there or get rid of it. What happens next is that one gets to look deeper: "so what is causing this alarm to turn off?, let's see, ohhh, a broken leg. It means then that I should immobilize such leg and then let it heal. Not keep walking on it, otherwise the leg may die". Fine, now by witnessing the pain I am discerning the steps towards healing, not towards getting rid of the pain. Eventually due to such witnessing I actually get to know what is best, and the pain goes away as it is not needed anymore.

Thus, witnessing is about being in a state of receptivity, not excluding anything but still discerning where the flow goes.

Loving and indulging

I was wondering once about I.

And I realized that people can hate you or love you, and either way it does not really matter to you. It does not really change you on getting to be, unless you get to be by your own will.

Reading a Manga, a comic called Naruto, something that most would not consider trascendental I got to see a very contrasting way in which this was was shown.

Naruto, the main character, was a kid that was hated in his early years due to the fact that he is a containment vessel for a great malignant force, thus people would also identify him with it. Despite this, and not very much talent, his will always carried him to reach objectives that only a few or none would have reached before. Over the years, people's hatred changed to love and admiration. However, despite Naruto being so loved there was something still missing: the great malignant force was still posing a danger in case that he would loose control of himself. Sages told him that this force was only able to take him over if he had seeds of rage within him, hence he would have to eliminate such dirt and became pure. For such, he went to face himself and found that there were two parts, the observer and the one that carried his whole story, with resentment about the past and distrust for the present. Initially he taught that to become pure and eliminate such seeds of rage he would have to destroy such by fighting. But upon doing that, he realized that it was impossible to either lose or win, both sides had the same fighting power. This troubled him, but a demonstration of compassion from someone else gave him some light. The next time he faced himself, he instead of fighting realized that the only important thing was to believe in himself, love himself thus not minding what others thought, thus not having any reason for resentment. The self that carried the resentment felt threatened and asked him whether he was just something in his way all this time. Naruto, the observer, told him, that he has not been in his way, in fact it is very much likely that because of him he has been able to be where he is at that moment. Because of this Naruto the observer, embraces and thanks the other side of himself with love, with compassion, and therefore dissolves the seeds of rage and resentment he had.

I considered the above of relevance, as many times we fight our "bad" emotions, thus perpetuating them, instead of embracing them and giving them love. Love not in the sense of the needy love, which indulges, but in the sense of the letting be love, the witnessing love, that lives and lets live; never getting obsessed with something or anything. Love allows these emotions to be without nurturing them, allowing them to flow through their natural flow.

Also we get to think that "bad" emotions are just something in our way to happiness, and despite being temporarily true, it is not really true in the eternal. As "bad" emotions are just indicators of our beingness or not-beingness, thanks to them we can realize that this is not beingness. Instead of being what stops us from being, they are alarms to wake us up. However if we indulge in them then we create an internal chaos. For instance, if a fire alarm turns off and we get to see the fire, we have two options, get crazy and out of control due to our fear and therefore not know what to do; or we can breathe and start calmly searching for the exit were we are again safe to live.

"Good" emotions, feel good, but indulging in them can also lead to "bad" emotions, thus the clue is not to indulge and instead love, let be, be free without falling into the addiction of indulgement.

Nature and humans

I have wondered for a while how our interaction with nature is supposed to be.

I have come to learn that our role when interacting with nature is to give the intent. But what is this?

Nature is everything we can think about. And because of that it is difficult to understand what nature is not.

Thoughts are nature, the body is nature, the mind is nature, ideas are nature, so how is it that I am a being to direct nature if it seems I am also nature.

Well, that I have no idea yet. But what I have seen is that in some ways we have already interacted with nature in a way where we both add our gifts.

Tamed animals have allowed us to interact with nature in the very way we are meant to interact with all of nature.

A real domesticated animal loves his owner as much as its owner loves it. A horse and its rider, both add something to the co-creative process of transportation. The horse without the rider would have no aim, it would just do what it does. But when put together with its rider they both can reach an aim which the horse would not have and that the rider would not easily reach without the horse. The horse thus gives its power and the man gives the direction. The direction in this instance is what is carried, and where the load is going to be taken to.

In this association, neither of them is more important or less important than the other. If the horse dies or feels bad, then the rider won't be able to reach it aim. And if the rider dies or feels bad, the horse won't reach the aim either. Furthermore, if the two of them are by the desert and one of them gets sick or dies, the other will probably get sick or die as well. Hence, both the horse and the rider takes care of the other.

The interesting thing about this is that, we humans as individuals have understood this for thousands of years, but as a community we have forgotten.

We have gotten to think that earth and humans are separate. We think that earth does not require our care, or protection. We instead of giving direction to a possible association with earth, we have gotten to only take from it.

It is like if the rider got to kill the horse just for a snack when standing in the middle of the desert. It is true he would calm his hunger but his odds of dying would increase. Also, he would not be able to reach his aim or enjoy ridding the horse.

Earth is far more stronger, but eventually it gives up and "dies" on us.

We should reconsider our techniques of dealing with earth and become associates as we have done with other beings. Where we both serve and love each other.

Thought Process Overuse

Uhmm, sometimes I wonder.

I wonder how the most important things we do require no thought process at all. For instance, we walk without thinking on how to walk, we learn to walk without thinking, we just aim to walk and that is how we learned and how we continue walking now. We see, we smell, we kiss, we eat, and most of the times we just do it, we never say " Ohh, I am going to eat, and for that I have to take the food and put it into my mouth and if it is a big chunk then we chew it and then we swallow", nope, we do not do that, we just do it as it goes.

Is it because we have done it too many times and it has gotten to be automatic. Well, it could be but then again we learned many of this automatic things when we were babies, and certainly we did not think about how we were supposed to do these things, we just did it until we perfected it. There was never fear of walking, we kept doing it until we got it mastered.

Thinking for a minute just about walking; we realize that it can be a pretty scary action. We continuously allow ourselves to fall until we stop the fall we one of our feet, and the we do it again and we stop it with the other foot. Incredibly we mastered this without thought.

As we grow older our mind starts talking control of our actions and everything else. It always wants to know how things are supposed to be done, step by step, thinking that it is the only way to learn and understand.

And you, the master of walking, eating and other thoughtless actions, believe that this is true. Forgetting that you already understand much of the world without knowing how but just surely knowing.

Because of this belief in our mind demands, we many times feel fear. The lack of step by step process, in many cases, makes our mind contraint us from pursuing something. As we get fear that there is no way I can reach the objective for sure or that we can get harmed in the unknown quest.

When we were babies we never thought that we were not going to talk or walk, we just aimed for it every time, and if it had not happened within the time we were mind-free we would have not given up, we would have continued pursuing such aim. Why? Well, our mind had not taken over, and therefore we did not believe it or it could not tell us we were not good enough, or that there is no way to do this, we do not have a manual; or if you continue trying at this pace you won't get anywhere; you have failed at something everyone does in no time and many other fearful thoughts.

When we are babies, our mind is mainly a servant, which we can use to visualize, explore and question. But we do not use it to destroy or to put things into boxes by defining them.

I have been wondering about this, the thought process overuse. It seems to me that all of us overindulge in thinking about everything and anything. To me, it seems that we can get to save a lot of energy if we start discerning when thinking is useful and when it is just in your way.

It seems to me now that thinking can be useful for planning, to explore and question, but not for doing, enjoy or being.