Witnessing

Back on New Years Eve, I saw the fireworks from my windows. I was rather touched that so many people had bothered to have their own displays as surely there was nothing organised. But then, I guess, plenty were glad to see the back of 2020.

Myself, in my home, looking out on a world over which I have little impact. There's something about this analogous to the witness in my mind. Though that perhaps has more of a say over what the being called Crone says and does. Not always. Sometimes the commentary is just irritating background noise, ignored and erased by my conscious mind. Or that bit of my conscious mind that, at that moment, has taken the reins of the Crone-being.

My friend in California and I were talking of the witness. He says his is incredibly active - all the time drawing parallels and offering reminders, making connections and offering better courses of action. He wouldn't be without it. He sees it as a sign of mental health and maturity. The better part of him. His conscience and will and guide.

Richard spent years engaged in Zen meditation but never felt the loss of ego or the loss of duality. The witness was always there. He stopped when he realised that he didn't want to lose the witness. Why would anyone want to be without their best self?

As I listened to him, I understood what he meant. I may have asked him about flow states, but maybe not, when the self is not divided into doer and watcher. I asked something similar and he said that even then the watcher adds to the experience, making it more not less rich - as when he watches a meteor or stars and Jupiter and Saturn through his telescope.

I was pretty convinced by his argument. But when I next meditated I saw something different. For me, meditation is not the loss of that witness, but putting everything into the witness. One is in the moments of attention only the witness.

This makes me wonder what happens when I see, say a kestrel hovering. Then I am not drawing parallels and connections, I am just and only watching the kestrel. Is the witness silent then or am I only witness? When engaged in painting, reading, writing, a conversation, the same question. Something is lost - the sense of duality is lost. But I think the bit that's lost is the flippertigibbet ego, not the constant witness.

Take that out, zoom out, me and the world. When I watch through the window, I am the critic of the childish antics. But when I am engaged in life, I am part of a living whole.

The nature of the witness changes when it is engaged. It loses some cynicism. It finds its meaning in actions that matter. Only by doing is its being transformed from meddler to meaning-maker.