EXPANDING CONSCIOUSNESS

witness consciousness in direct experience

What is your current patterned experience of reality? Whatever it is: anxiety, overthinking, self-consciousness, shame, just notice. I get questions a lot asking me whether the goal is to get rid of this?

IS the goal to get rid of this feeling that produces suffering?

In many meditation practices, we are told to cultivate witness consciousness, watching the thoughts and the patterns come up, chose to watch instead of engage, and eventually pass away, like clouds in the sky.

The goal is to expand consciousness and increase awareness, to be able to have a direct experience of something larger than this repeated experience, so we can understand through direct experience that we are much larger than this repeating pattern. When we attach and identify with this repeated experience, it can be difficult to begin another route. But when we have an experience of something larger than that reality, the grip of this pattern is loosened. We now have more choice whether to engage the pattern or not. We can now be more free to try something else.

After a sound meditation with the gong recently, I had a client who was still noticing in their mindbody the anxiety they came in with, but from a larger perspective. They were able to notice the specific mindbody symptoms of the anxiety, without identifying with it. Have you ever had an experience like this?

To me, it sounds like they were having a direct experience of witness consciousness, also cultivated in mindfulness meditation practices and breathwork, and otherwise known as healthy detachment. Identifying with specific repeated mindbody conditions causes a feeling of being trapped in those patterns, and hence, the suffering that results from it. Noticing that you can still observe your experience in the mindbody from a larger perspective, you can then begin to notice the symptoms better, and have more freedom to chose small actions that might soften the pattern.

How is it affecting my body? Is there tension in specific areas of my body? Is it affecting my breathing? Is it affecting my thoughts, my emotions? How? Lean in with curiosity, and begin to notice these specific symptoms. You can even write down your list of personal symptoms, so that when you notice them at another time, you can see you may be on the path towards this pattern, and DECIDE to go down a different path instead. So, in other words, cultivating expanded consciousness, or increased awareness, provides more CHOICE for how to live.

Try using witness consciousness in action:

“My [specific] experience is not me, but mine.”

“The physical, emotional, and mental symptoms causing my experience is not me, but mine.”

FEELING this experience of witness consciousness, knowing that YOU ARE LARGER THAN YOUR EXPERIENCE, is direct learning, so when we find this in breathwork or sound meditation, learning can happen in a much deeper way, through direct and embodied realization.

Check out our consciousness expansion practices at AbigAUM.com and let’s find more freedom together!