Working With The Witness (Meditation for Sunday May 3rd)

Working with the Witness

There is so much going on right now, and there is no shortage of people who want to express their views on all of this. Some are good, some are useful. Many, many of them are uninformed, unloving and even dangerous. It is so easy now to go down the rabbit-hole of commentary, exposition and invective. Sadly, some of the most unhelpful, manipulative or dangerous commentaries at the moment are also those with the most persuasive production values.

This might seem a little ironic coming from me, as in some ways this message is just yet another one of these. You might be asking - in all the noise, why do I have to listen to what Chris says?

And the simplest answer is that you don't. The wonderful thing about meditation is that is empirical - you don't have to take my word for it, you don't have to listen to a YouTube guru, you don't need to read the latest blog post. You just have to sit, be still, and be aware of what your mind is doing.

This place of awareness - however imperfect - is an oasis away from all of the noise, anger, fear and strife that is around us. But it is much more than that. It isn't just an escape, a calm time before we go back to everything that is going on. It is a way to get perspective, to get a grounding in love and calmness that we can carry out with us into the crazy world. It is what gives us the motivation and strength to be positive forces in this world.

We start by watching, by watching our own mind, our own thoughts. Sometimes this is called being the witness, or observing, or simply mindfulness.

Observing is no passive activity. It trains and equips us for living in the world, however crazy it seems to become.

Below is a meditation on working with the witness. It follows on from last week's meditation on 'Being Here - Not There,' but if you didn't listen to that don't worry it is totally stand alone and you can just listen to this. As in most things in life it doesn't matter where you start, just that you start.

You can of course listen at any time, but a group of us have committed to press 'play; together at 7pm PT Sunday 3rd May. You are welcome to join us.

As always, I love to hear you thoughts. Be well,

Chris

cjrobson · Being Here - The Witness

Photo Credit:

Pim Chu