03/07/2024
Eastern spirituality talks about an essential technique towards the development of higher consciousness usually referred to as the “silent witness”.
And it is the single-most powerful tool for everyday people wanting to develop a healthy relationship with their own emotions and minds.
It might sound strange to invoke things like Buddhism in mental health counselling, but not as much as you might think. The core aspects of that ancient religion – however much they don’t necessarily show up in many actual Buddhists – are more about mindset and our relation to the world and to our suffering than they are “religious” in any technical sense.
People often refer to Buddhism as more like a psychology than a religion, and I agree. That’s my whole interest in it. The core of Buddhism represented in The Four Noble Truths simply recognises the role of suffering in the human experience and how it’s driven by desires and attachments.
However much I ranged around in my earlier years trying to find a solvent to my woes, I inevitably arrived at the inescapable fact there’s no fixing the world. Instead, the key to mental health is to become okay with how the world actually is. And that’s the essence of Buddhism.
In practical terms, the silent witness is the detached part of the mind capable of watching our thoughts and emotions and the experience of our bodies and then remaining aloof, just witnessing, just watching, not buying into the stories and sensations that come up.
Obviously that requires practice, and as my greatest teacher says, “Whatever you practise, you get good at.”
In psychological terms, the silent witness is just that trained, detached part of the mind that simply watches what goes on within us and stays above it.
The witness also helps greatly in relationships. It helps the practitioner drop a lot of the reactivity and “heat” that dominates social life.
The silent witness helps us remain in reality, staying with what is actually said and done, and not flying to what we imagine, what that touches within us, or what we drag in from memory or imaginings about the future that can befoul the clarity of our relationships with other people.
The silent witness also doesn’t judge or analyse. That’s an important distinction, especially for us Westerners taught (if not indoctrinated) in our childhoods and schooling to think if we can understand something, we can fix it.
No amount of understanding ever healed a wound of the heart. That’s true wisdom, and as difficult to grasp as it is to practise. But in trying to understand and “fix” our problems, more often than not we’re actively engaged in avoiding what we feel.
And it is only in feeling it that we can heal it.
It’s actually good news, however difficult it is to sit with this truth: there is nothing to be done. The silent witness, when developed, simply watches what goes on and then brings acceptance, a warm okayness with the uncomfortable feelings we’re otherwise tempted to escape through analysing, problem solving and trying to fix things.
The silent witness can also be thought of as self-awareness. Being conscious.
When we become overwhelmed by our emotions or life difficulties, they can suck us in. We can disappear into them. We can become lost in them. And then at some point – minutes or hours or days later – something shifts and we come back into conscious awareness. We return to a degree of detachment and see how much we allowed our emotions to rule over us instead of remaining just another experience going on within our consciousness.
This return sometimes only occurs for us after catharsis. Reflect on the clarity and peace that comes after having a good cry or a swim in the ocean.
Losing ourselves for a time is okay too. We go unconscious – we get sucked into our suffering – and then when we return to awareness. We return to just witnessing these phenomena that comes and go. “And this too shall pass,” as the sages say.
The silent witness develops through practice. Practising anything involves failure, at least at first. That has to be made okay too. There’s nothing to be gained from beating ourselves up about our shortcomings.
Practise, practise, practise. Develop your silent ability to remain detached, just watching what comes and goes, and then you’re on your way to a kind of liberation more valuable than anything.
