First Move

Become The Observer

The Observer Aware of Itself as a State of Mind

When you become the observer you will notice that your thoughts arise all by themselves. You will notice that your mind thinks all by itself and you can sit there and listen to it and watch the images it projects. In the beginning of noticing you will often have reaction to the chatter of internal dialog. There might be thoughts wishing it would quiet down, or that you aren’t meditating very well, or confused as to why they don’t stop. At this stage you are having too many reactions to really be the observer yet, but you are a step closer to that state of mind. After a while you move on to observe the reactions as well as the initial impulses. This is another state of mind for extending your mindfulness practice.

One of the byproducts of this process is that you realize that you can sit and listen without responding to the initial impulses, or the reactions to those impulses and thoughts. When you are doing this you realize yourself as something separate from these impulses and the mind that is doing the thinking, talking, and reacting. You are calm and conscious of your self while around you the mind is busy with chatter and impulses to do something. You become aware that your mind is separate from you. With this awareness you also become aware that you are separate from your mind. This can be both a very interesting new sense of self, and uncomfortably unsettling at the same time. The unsettling part will soon pass.

As you practice becoming the observer you will notice more subtle things that affect you. In the beginning you might notice you are procrastinating. Over time you will notice the different things you are doing to procrastinate. With progress you will notice how when you think of starting on a task that your mind jumps to checking your email, or calling a friend.  With more practice you might observe a kind of automatic impulse down your arm that moves your hand to your computer or phone. You will become aware that you really barely thought about doing something and your body was already in the action. You may begin to wonder what is making this happen and why does it happen? This kind of curiosity will help with motivation to practice more and diversify your mindfulness practices. In this state of mind there can be a sense of curiosity about all these subtle things happening. You might have a state of wonder, or watchfulness while watching your mind, as if you were waiting at a coffee shop for someone you are interested in but have only talked on the phone.

Resistance to this Mindfulness Practice

At the same time, the ego part of your mind will likely be doing things to push you away from further investigation. Becoming the observer of these resistance dynamics such as procrastination challenges the status quo of the ego and unconscious belief system.  This may cause uncomfortable feelings. This will lead to the next layer of practice for an observer. You will need to observe these uncomfortable feelings and refrain from acting on them. You might notice that these feelings send the signal to your mind that you should get busy doing something so you feel better. The result of acting on these feelings will likely be that you become so busy that you don’t have time to practice being the observer as intently as you were doing. You might notice that this is a kind of defense by the belief system to stop the changes in new behavior you are making. What I am saying here is that your ego mind and unconscious beliefs will put up various kinds of resistance and roadblocks to your practice of becoming the observer. And of course each person’s experience will vary.  Some people might find it easy, but I have found those people to be rare. Sometimes it happens that a person is in a place in their life that such a self awareness happens quickly and easily. For most people becoming a self aware observer is to be worked at.

As a practical exercise, begin sitting still and noticing all the sensations you feel with each inhale and exhale of your breath. Then begin to observe all the things that come to pull your attention away from observing the sensation of breathing. This will give you a good start for developing the skills of a conscious observer.