Practice 2 – Witness over Will

All the world’s a stage; And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts …Shakespeare’s As You Like It

Summary: We are the chief actor in our life play. At some point we find that we can be the director of the play too. And we can keep going: we can more knowingly become the playwright as we mature, self-authoring and writing the script. And one more step. Through all this, as life and work chapters come and go, we can also be the audience. We can watch and listen to each word of dialogue and all the action as it comes: we can observe the comedy and tragedy of the whole drama. Practice 2, witness over will, gets us to the place of being the audience. All the roles—actor, director, playwright—are good ones, and observing the play is the start of wisdom. And it eventually guides and enlivens the other roles.          

A quick lesson from my life (I will share only a few of these):

I got very far from having any peace of mind at a few points in my adult life. I was under very sizeable stress. (Versions of this story has happened to many others and this is a brief version of mine). There was little I could control in the situations I faced.  My emotional and mental processes were not mine. I had no equanimity, let alone the possibility of sensing the deeper realms of awareness that are the states we can find with practice. The last time this high stress happened, when in my mid 60’s, the only thing I could do to handle my own nerves, stress, and repetitive thoughts were breathing, meditation, prayer and mindful observation. It was humbling to know how badly, in my seventh decade, I needed to start at the basics with mental calm and quiet. I needed to find a strength beyond what I had been able to tap to that point in my life. I was in a search for a strength that felt not entirely my own.

I started doing some kind of mini mindfulness move or prayer (a prayer is a mysterious thing, not to be defined here or explained either. I like Annie LaMott’s distinction of the three types of prayer –help me, help me, help me; thank you, thank you, thank you; wow, wow, wow) even for very short periods, as short as five seconds, many, many times a day. The days I needed it most were when I had more time to myself. When I was busy teaching or coaching, or with friends, my internal landscape was occupied. When those activities stopped, I would rapidly jump back on the worry hamster wheel, going round and round. 

The period of super strain ended after some months and I found my equilibrium again. But what I had learned to do during that time became valuable–to dis-identify from my anxiety, to not get as caught in my thoughts and to observe them instead. I stayed off automatic thoughts and unconscious willing. I found and cultivated higher-level willing and became the audience, the observer, and stopped being the actor, director and even the playwright. I watched the show, the one in which I found myself, and had scripted, even if only in part.

This habit has continued, many times a day, all day. I halt my thought stream by observing it. As soon as I do this, I sense that I have arrived in a more fundamental part of me.  I do this in quiet moments of course, but also while I am doing something else if I can: writing, coaching, teaching even, talking to my friends or wife, taking a walk. I step outside my usually rapid thought flow for short periods, or longer ones when I can. I stay there for those short, medium and long periods, and then choose as best as I can to go back into the normal thought space when I choose to. (Many times a day I also slip back into normal thinking without a choice. I “fall back in” the thought content stream with a little push from some habit somewhere.)

Willing ourselves to witness

This is the essence of the witness over will practice. We still use and access our normal everyday will to very good end. We have been developing and using this will for decades. We strengthen it so we can do more. “I think I can, I think I can” we learned as little ones reading about The Little Engine That Could pull a big load up a hill. Our just do it/go for it capacity served us well and will continue to do so. Paradoxically, witnessing, which is checking out what is versus making something happen, is dependent on the will and the choice to observe. For a moment we step back from normal willing and will ourselves consciously and regularly into an observation posture versus the task completion posture.

Witness is what we want to practice here, until it too, like every-day willing, becomes a strong habit—the habit of zooming out and observing. It is the complimentary stance to task willing. There are various names for this: getting on the balcony (from Ron Heifetz, at least that is from whom I first heard the phrase) in leadership theory; self-observation, from mindfulness and yoga world; and many more.  

The witness move, when we succeed even for 5 seconds (and we want to learn ways to go for much longer periods) re-contextualizes our experience of life and its processes, and our experience of ourselves and what we pay attention to. It takes us into more intuitive space versus linear processing and the lower order thoughts of repetitive loops and distraction/entertainment. It helps us see what is important and essential and to ease away from the do-and-perform stance by adopting the stance of emerging and unfolding. From the observation deck of our will-engendered witnessing, we can ask and important question— “is this thought stream I am in the one I want?”

Witnessing keeps us in the moment with the fresh energies of now. It provides a set of insights not available in the normal thought streams. With practice we can get to these energies more and more often, for longer periods of time.  As Carl Jung put it, we can engage in the process of allowing, of “happening to ourselves”.  

Here are some simple steps, picked up from multiple sources, modified by myself, and you can modify as you see fit, to help you witness, balancing out your skills at willing.

Practice for Witness over Will

–Remember practice 1, mindful mind has us replace the energy of thinking mind

—Breathe again: let us look at practice 1 and repeat what the deep, relaxing, from-the-diaphragm, breath is and feels like. With the breath, notice. Breath-induced witnessing helps us be the audience, not the actor, and we can become larger, more integrated, and more real.

—Remind ourselves in the midst of any activity, to step back (more of this in practice 10), to go to a softer focus, to add another lens to the usual close up focus we maintain to accomplish a specific thing. We can and will always be about accomplishing the specifics. Here with witnessing we both accomplish and we stay aware by simple observing.   

—Employ a mantra or a phrase to help you be the audience observing your life story, things like: I observe now, or the balcony of witnessing happens now, or this precious instant I step back.

—Ask yourself a question: what am I up to right now?  Where are my thoughts going? What am I feeling? How about if I stop a minute and see how things are within and around me? Make up your own questions.

None of this is rocket science for those working on awareness and emotional intelligence. If you already do some or even a lot of this, do it some more. Yes, we need “ordinary” willing and doing to get our tasks done and our goals achieved–a strong will is an essential asset for life–but we can always add witness-based willing at intervals to bolster the practice of getting to mindful mind over thinking mind. We can witness ourselves many, many times a day, even in our busyness, and become our own audience, while still getting lots of stuff done –from studying to carpentry to watching a video—all day long.   

Two practices down. We have a good start.

And here is the introduction to the 10 Practices if you missed it earlier.  http://www.evocateurblog.com/2023/09/14/ten-practices-helpful-habits-of-mind-and-heart/

Poetically speaking, absorb this poem about witnessing by Artie Isaac