Accessing the Inner Observer Meditation Exercise

Sit quietly with your eyes closed. Take time off from thinking about anything. Just be yourself. Don't identify your mind with any particular problems or thought. Don't do anything. Continue to sit comfortably, appreciating whatever comes to mind. If you have a strong thought, even a gripping one, just let it go by.

What I want you notice is that there are spaces between your thoughts, like patches of blue between the clouds. When you notice such a space, record it in your mind.

In this space of inner silence where there is no impulse of fear, no strong emotions or sensations, the mind is just itself, being itself. At that exact second, there is a choice to have the next thought or emotion. Now ask yourself, who faces that choice?

To project a movie requires a screen. The images move and play on the screen; vivid emotions and high drama are enacted. Despite all that, the screen itself is not engaged. It is not part of the movie.

The difference between the mind and a movie screen is that we do not become engaged in the movie, because it is our life. The screen inside us becomes so soaked in compelling personal images that the sense of there being a screen - an unchanging, unaffected part of the mind - is lost.

One's inner sense of "me" is built from images of the past, all the fears, hopes, wishes, dreams, loves, and disappointments one calls "mine." If you strip all these images away, something of "me" is still left: the decision maker, the screen the silent witness.

Thoughts, feelings and sensations flow by, like clouds, against the sky. They are distractions The real you is the sky beyond. Every time you manage to witness that clear, open space, you will find a place that is safe, because it never had cancer to begin with. Here you come face to face with yourself - the witnessed is also the one who is the doing witnessing. n