by Ken Wilber (from One Taste)
Friday, October 31
People make two common mistakes on the way to One Taste. The first occurs in contacting the Witness, the second occurs in moving from the Witness to One Taste itself.
The first mistake: In trying to contact the Witness (or I-I), people imagine that they will see something. But you don't see anything, you simply rest as the Witness of all that arises—you are the pure and empty Seer, not anything that can be seen. Attempting to see the Seer as a special light, a great bliss, a sudden vision—those are all objects, they are not the Witness that you are. Eventually, of course, with One Taste, you will be everything that you see, but you cannotstart trying to do that—trying to see the Truth—because that is what blocks it. You have to start with "neti, neti": I am not this, I am not that.
So the first mistake is that people sabotage the Witness by trying to make it an object that can be grasped, whereas it is simply the Seer of all objects that arise, and it is "felt" only as a great background sense of Freedom and Release fromall objects.
Resting in that Freedom and Emptiness—and impartially witnessing all that arises—you will notice that the separate-self (or ego) simply arises in consciousness like everything else. You can actually feel the self-contraction, just like you can feel your legs, or feel a table, or feel a rock, or feel your feet. The self-contraction is a feeling of interior tension, often localized behind the eyes, and anchored in a slight muscle tension throughout the bodymind. It is an effort and a sensation of contracting in the face of the world. It is a subtle whole-body tension. Simply notice this tension.
Once people have become comfortable resting as the empty Witness, and once they notice the tension that is the self-contraction, they imagine that to finally move from the Witness to One Taste, they have to get rid of the self-contraction (or get rid of the ego). Just that is the second mistake, because it actually locks the self-contraction firmly into place.
We assume that the self-contraction hides or obstructs Spirit, whereas in fact it is simply a radiant manifestation of Spirit itself, like absolutely every other Form in the universe. All Forms are not other than Emptiness, including the form of the ego. Moreover, the only thing that wants to get rid of the ego is the ego. Spirit loves everything that arises, just as it is. The Witness loves everything that arises, just as it is. The Witness loves the ego, because the Witness is the impartial mirror-mind that equally reflects and perfectly embraces everything that arises.
But the ego, convinced that it can become even more entrenched, decides to play the game of getting rid of itself—simply because, as long as it is playing that game, it obviously continues to exist (who else is playing the game?). As Chuang Tzu pointed out long ago, "Is not the desire to get rid of the ego itself a manifestation of ego?"
The ego is not a thing but a subtle effort, and you cannot use effort to get rid of effort—you end up with two efforts instead of one. The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine, and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying to get rid of ego, which simply increases the effort of ego itself.
And so, the practice? When you rest in the Witness, or rest in I-I, or rest in Emptiness, simply notice the self-contraction. Rest in the Witness, and feel the self-contraction. When you feel the self-contraction, you are already free of it—you are already looking at it, instead of identifying with it. You are looking at it from the position of the Witness, which is always already free of all objects in any case.
So rest as the Witness, and feel the self-contraction—just as you can feel the chair under you, and feel the earth, and feel the clouds floating by in the sky. Thoughts float by in the mind, sensations float by in the body, the self-contraction hovers in awareness—and you effortlessly and spontaneously witness them all, equally and impartially.
In that simple, easy, effortless state—while you are not trying to get rid of the self-contraction but simply feeling it—and while you are therefore resting as the great Witness or Emptiness that you are—One Taste might more easily flash forth. There is nothing that you can do to bring about (or cause) One Taste—it is always already fully present, it is not the result of temporal actions, and you have never lost it anyway.
The most you can do, by way of temporal effort, is to avoid these two major mistakes (don't try to see the Witness as an object, just rest in the Witness as Seer; don't try to get rid of the ego, just feel it), and that will bring you to the edge, to the very precipice, of your own Original Face. At that point it is, in every way, out of your hands.
Rest as the Witness, feel the self-contraction: that is exactly the space in which One Taste can most easily flash forth. Don't do this as a strategic effort, but randomly and spontaneously throughout the day and into the night, standing thus always on the edge of your own shocking recognition.
So here are the steps:
Rest as the Witness, feel the self-contraction. As you do so, notice that the Witness is not the self-contraction—it is aware of it. The Witness is free of the self-contraction—and you are the Witness.
As the Witness, you are free of the self-contraction. Rest in that Freedom, Openness, Emptiness, Release. Feel the self-contraction, and let it be, just as you let all other sensations be. You don't try to get rid of the clouds, the trees, or the ego—just let them all be, and relax in the space of Freedom that you are.
From that space of Freedom—and at some unbidden point—you may notice that the feeling of Freedom has no inside and no outside, no center and no surround. Thoughts are floating in this Freedom, the sky is floating in this Freedom, the world is arising in this Freedom, and you are That. The sky is your head, the air is your breath, the earth is your body—it is all that close, and closer. You are the world, as long as you rest in this Freedom, which is infinite Fullness.
This is the world of One Taste, with no inside and no outside, no subject and no object, no in here versus out there—without beginning and without end, without ways and without means, without path and without goal. And this, as Ramana said, is the final truth.
That is what might be called a "capping exercise." Do it, not instead of, but in addition to, whatever other practice you are doing—centering prayer, vipassana, prayer of the heart, zikr, zazen, yoga, etc. All of these other practices train you to enter a specific state of consciousness, but One Taste is not a specific state—it is compatible with any and all states, just as wetness is fully present in each and every wave of the ocean. One wave may be bigger than another wave, but it is not wetter. One Taste is the wetness of the water, not any particular wave, and therefore specific practices, such as prayer or vipassana or yoga, are powerless to introduce you to One Taste. All specific practices are designed to get you to a particular wave—usually a Really Big Wave—and that is fine. But One Taste is the wetness of even the smallest wave, so any wave of awareness you have right now is fine. Rest with that wave, feel the self-contraction, and stand Free.
But continue your other practices, first, because they will introduce you to specific and important waves of your own awareness (psychic, subtle, and causal), which are all important vehicles of your full manifestation as Spirit. Second, precisely because One Taste is too simple to believe and too easy to reach by effort, most people will never notice that the wave they are now on is wet. They will never notice the Suchness of their own present state. They will instead dedicate their lives to wave hopping, always looking for a Bigger and Better wave to ride—and frankly, that is fine.
Those typical spiritual practices, precisely by introducing you to subtler and subtler experiences, will inadvertently help you tire of experience altogether. When you tire of wave jumping, you will stand open to the wetness or Suchness of whatever wave you are on. The pure Witness itself is not an experience, but the opening or clearing in which all experiences come and go, and as long as you are chasing experiences, including spiritual experiences, you will never rest as the Witness, let alone fall into the ever-present ocean of One Taste. But tiring of experiences, you will rest as the Witness, and it is as the Witness that you can notice Wetness (One Taste).
And then the wind will be your breath, the stars the neurons in your brain, the sun the taste of the morning, the earth the way your body feels. The Heart will open to the All, the Kosmos will rush into your soul, you will arise as countless galaxies and swirl for all eternity. There is only self-existing Fullness left in all the world, there is only self-seen Radiance here in Emptiness—etched on the wall of infinity, preserved for all eternity, the one and only truth: there is just this, snap your fingers, nothing more.
http://www.intent.com/deepakchopra/blog/developing-witnessing-awareness
Question:
I feel as though I have commenced my own spiritual
journey, probably in earnest since the beginning of this year (though in
reality for probably for a few years I suspect).
I have adopted a regular meditation practice which I thoroughly enjoy
and have definitely felt calmer, more settled and peaceful in daily life
though not necessarily more joyous.
Having also read quite extensively (mostly your books) I try to be more
mindful and aware throughout the day.
My question is as I attempt to live my life with ever present witnessing
awareness I am finding it difficult to reconcile my alertness to
negative egoic traits and dissociating from them and living life happily
and joyously. Instead I find myself pursuing calm and silence which I
seem to attain but I don't seem to have replaced worrisome/compulsive
thoughts with joy and happiness as such.
Am I going wrong here? Taking the process too seriously? Or is this
simply part of the process of a spiritual awakening. it's certainly true
that emotional shifts are taking place because I sometimes find myself
welling up, almost crying but in a kind of joyful way.
Answer:
I wouldn’t say you are going wrong at all. You are doing very well on your spiritual journey. Keep in mind that witnessing awareness is driven by your meditation experiences where your Self knows itself. You become identified with your true self instead of your ego-self. When your witnessing self is present in daily life, it is as if it is observing you and the situation without judgment regardless of what you are doing. Insofar as you are still attached to negative ego states, that is just old conditioning that takes time to dissolve. You can’t speed up the process by trying to dissociate from it, because that trying and wanting is coming from your conditioned self and that will only reinforce the pattern.
Love,
Deepak