The stage after Ego is
a radical shift in the evolution of consciousness. From this moment on, you’ll
never be the same again. Once you’ve tasted the open space and peace of the
Witness, the ego feels even more claustrophobic.
The ego is a set of
ideas and concepts: the idea that you are who you think you are, that you’re in
control of your life, that you’re the same person today as you were yesterday,
and will be tomorrow. When we transcend the ego we’re letting go of these
ideas. We discover we’re not who we think we are, we’re not in control of our
lives, and we’re not the same person from one minute to the next. Our
consciousness no longer magnetises itself around the ego, but is drawn towards
a new archetype of unity, the Self.
This doesn’t happen
overnight. The process of shifting from one to the other can be precarious and
protracted, and can take years. The ego’s way of making sense of reality starts
to break down. You realise you never knew who you were and were never in
control, you just thought you were. What you need is a new way of making sense
of reality, but if you replace the old ego concepts with shiny new concepts
(like “I am one with All” – yes, that’s a concept too) you haven’t changed
anything. You’re still conceptualising reality and still functioning through
the ego, the thinking mind.
Someone To Watch Over Me
You need a whole new
way of being, beyond thought. The
Self represents this new way of being and acts as a bridge, or transitional
identity, for the developing individual. It’s an archetype, a symbol that
represents the idea of unity or wholeness. If you feel yourself to be
fragmented and incomplete then what you need is unity or wholeness, so the Self works as a magnet in the psyche to
pull you towards integration and wholeness. It’s often called the Observer or Witness Self, or the Transpersonal
or Higher Self, and sits at the
centre of the psyche and witnesses all that takes place.
You can’t be what you
observe. If you can observe your body, feelings, thoughts, actions, the roles
you play, and so on, then you’re not those things. You are what is doing the
observing. This is the Self, but you can never know the Self as an object in
consciousness because the Self is the subject.
You can’t observe the observer or experience the experiencer.
When you shift to the
Witness Self, you can watch the flow of life, the changing feelings and
thoughts that weave their merry way through you. This is a process of
increasing detachment and dis-identification from all the things you used to
identify with.
At this stage you might
start to notice how your feeling states and attitudes influence the
circumstances of your life. In basic terms, if you approach a situation or
person in a positive frame of mind you tend to get a more positive response,
things unfold smoothly and work out for the best. But if you approach a
situation or person thinking the worst, you get exactly that, and it doesn’t go
so well. This is over-simplified, but broadly true.
You get what you ask for, but remember, this also includes your
unconscious assumptions and expectations. If you consciously think things will
work out fine, but unconsciously believe you’re doomed, then – well, you’re
doomed. The unconscious is more powerful than the conscious mind so it always
holds the trump card. This is why it’s so important to become as self-aware as
you can stand. The more of the unconscious that you can make conscious, the
less likely you’ll be to sabotage yourself with hidden doubts and negativity.
By identifying with the
Self you can learn how you create your own reality through your thought
processes and feelings, both conscious and unconscious. But you also start to
realise that if you can observe this process taking place, then you are not
that process. Therefore you can change it.
You can begin to choose
new ways of interpreting reality, new creative responses to life. You begin to consciously co-create yourself
and your life. This is a powerful position to be in and can be a relief after
all the shenanigans of the ego.
"It's almost like talking to someone, only you can't quite hear them, and you feel kind of stupid because they're cleverer than you, only they don't get cross or anything... And they know such a lot... As if they knew everything, almost!" - Lyra talking to Farder Coram in Northern Lights, Philip Pullman
Always Present
But we’re not there
yet. Before we get too excited and think we’ve found the answer to all our
problems, there’s one more hurdle to jump.
If we enquire into the
nature of this Witness or Observer Self, what do we discover?
We know we’re not our
bodies, feelings, or thoughts, because we can observe them, but we can’t observe ourselves observing.
Does the observer
exist?
If there is an observer
observing your actions, how would it know it was the observer? You would need
another observer observing the observer, and so on ad infinitum.
"There was a young man who said though
It seems that I know that I know,
What I would like to see
Is the I that sees me
When I know that I know that I know." - Alan Watts
There’s still a split
here, a schism in the mind. The Observer Self is still conceived as being separate
from that which it observes – me in here versus the world out there. But if you
try to grasp the Observer it slips through your fingers and away from your
mind, all you are left with is the observed.
What is this so-called
Self?
It is Awareness itself, like the screen onto
which images are projected in a film theatre. It has no characteristics of its
own. As with all archetypes, it’s empty of content until it becomes conscious.
Everything that you can
observe changes and you know you’re not those things. The only thing that
doesn’t change is Awareness. Sensations, feelings and thoughts come and go, but
the awareness of these things is always present. The circumstances of your life
change, people come and go, you find a job, lose a job, get fat, lose weight,
feel happy, feel angry, and so on, but the awareness of those changes is always
constant.
Without something to be
aware of, awareness is nothing, it’s empty. Awareness is the mystery of Life.
And we’ll have a closer look at what that means next in: True Nature
Image: Holes in theWall
