The Buddha Habit (tm) - The Watcher, who is it anyway?

Image: Pixabay

If you're new to Buddhist spirituality you come to realize it's not really a religion, it's more a method of living your life. One of the key goals is to get out of your Egoic mental thoughts and become the Watcher instead. But who is this Watcher? Are you saying I need to develop a split personality? That is your mind trying to make logical sense of it. It's what our minds do. When awareness hit me, it was a strange sense of separation from the Egoic self I knew as me. A complete surrender to anxiety and fear made me awaken and become the Watcher. Eckhart Tolle once said,"If you're lucky enough to have that ONE big suffering in your life, it will help you to awaken". Lucky, heh...at the time it is happening to you, you don't feel lucky, it is no picnic. It was the worst, most powerful emotional state I had ever been in my life up until that point. The thoughts and emotions in my mind were so many and continuous, day and night, it was beyond overwhelming. I couldn't sleep, nothing I did could quiet my mind. I felt like I was going crazy. I found myself praying to God (I was raised Christian) to help me, squeezing my hands together and curled up in a little ball on my bed. It was after a couple months of this that one sleepless night I felt like I couldn't take it anymore and I just gave up. I completely surrendered to it. I literally felt like,"Well, I'm going to die now. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen". What happened next was surreal. All the thoughts in my mind stopped. It fell COMPLETELY silent, like I was out in deep space or something. I felt like I was outside of myself, kind of like watching someone else on TV. You're still there in the middle of it, but there is a separation. You are no longer feeling all the emotions anymore. You're somehow detached. This is what they call becoming the Watcher. The reason you strive for this state is to release yourself from your Egoic thoughts and emotions (TEs), which are the basis of self suffering. With practice you start to learn to control your TEs and life becomes much easier, with less drama and very peaceful. You no longer react emotionally to life's situations and what others are doing or saying. You start to take life as it is, without obsessing over the justice or fairness of it. When negative TEs arise you don't succumb to them like a victim and aren't drawn down a negative energetic path. Instead you learn to become the Watcher.

My two favorite ways to achieve this and circumvent TEs is to close my eyes and feel where my hands are in space. I focus on it intensely until I can feel a warm, buzzing sensation, then I hold onto that until I realize my thoughts have ceased. The second is to close my eyes and first focus on my breathing, then my Third Eye (look up slightly and focus on the space between your eyebrows), breathing in I say to myself, "I'm not my body", breathing out I say, "I'm not even my mind". The first is a technique by Eckhart Tolle, the second from Sadhguru. Both break the cycle of thinking. Gradually you will get better and better at catching your Mind before it takes you off into some story in your head, unconsciously. Before your emotions take over, you become the Watcher and control your mind.

Image: Pexels

Many times when people say things to me now, that come from Ego or are perpetrating some emotional drama, my first thought is to tell myself not to judge. If I do start to judge I merely watch my thoughts with a statement like, "Oh, you're judging again". Then watch myself as the judging subsides. Then I refocus my attention onto the person, look them in the eye and focus on them completely. Most times I find myself falling silent and smiling, instead of responding to their stories with any judgement or perpetuating their drama.

People around you will start to notice the calmness about you, as they can sense it within you. They are drawn to it subconsciously because that space within you, is part of them as well. It is what we are all striving for in our lives, to be free of our bodies and become one with Everything again (This is what I believe happens to us when we die). Our physical selves are trying to fill a void with things in the physical world, money, sex, etc. But what we are searching for is within us, not outside of us. Once you find it, the things in the physical world you used to desire don't mean as much to you anymore.

Image: Wallpapercave

Our whole lives have formed our identities of who we think we are. We are born with all of our physical senses and it is with them that we learn how to survive and exist in the world. Your mind says,"I'm the sum of all my past experiences. I have patterns of thoughts and reactions that I've had my whole life, it is what defines me". This is true for all of us, but there is a Physical you and a Spiritual you. The Physical you includes your Mind and all it's TEs. The Spiritual you is the Watcher, whom I also equate with the Creator, God and the Universe. When Jesus said, "God is within you" this is what I believe he meant. Once you stop being a slave to your TEs and instead meditate/pray to become one with that energy inside of you, you no longer create suffering for yourself or for others. When you're in touch with this inner energy you are calm and peaceful and there is no negativity surrounding you. You realize you are part of something much greater than the Physical you and are joined together with everyone and everything around you.