Bubbles

It may come as a shock but you are not your feelings or your thoughts or your values or your symptoms or your behavior or your body.  What you are is the observer of all those things. You are really much more than these physiological and psychological phenomena. You are a much higher entinty beyond the scope of imagination and speculation. One way to understand this anomaly is to picture the six phenomena (feelings, thoughts, values, symptoms, behavior, body) as expanding and contracting bubbles. Some of them are floating around by themselves while others may be clinging together and even coming together as one larger bubble, and you are simply watching them. You, in fact, are not any of them.

You are watching the bubbles float around in the spaciousness of the infinite universe - sometimes you get caught in the bubbles and sometimes you are far away from them.  Your distance from the bubbles depends on your consciousness and how aware you are of the bubbles. When you become unaware, you get closer, and when you are very conscious and aware, you get further away. When you get caught in a bubble you think you are that bubble. When you lose awareness, for example, you may merge with the feelings bubble and feel lonely because no one is around. Or you might merge with the values bubble and believe everyone should have your value of being a yogi. But when you are distant from the bubbles you can observe them and not be affected by them.  In fact, when you are pure, unmitigated awareness you might find it humorous how the bubbles float around in space without affecting you. You are unaffected by any of them and you can simply observe yourself.

This is what is meant by witnessing the self. The self is absorbed in some or all of the bubbles all of the time.  The self is so caught up in beliefs, values, judgments, etc. it doesn't have time to consider the fact that it is not any of those things. The inability to recognize these behavioral symptoms will wreak havoc on your psyche and physiology.  Over a long period of time these phenomena will produce hate, futility, pessimism, guilt, regret, and all kinds of negative thoughts. So, how do you develop the ability to observe the self and become free?  That is the discussion on my next post.