Witness/Observer/Senses Exercise Seeing Exercise – Part I
The usual belief that ‘I am this body’ is usually tied in with the belief that the body as a separate item is responsible or ‘DOING’ the senses – ‘I see’, ‘I hear’, ‘I feel’ etc
We will begin with ‘seeing’ – Just that one sense on its own.
Close your eyes.
With eyes closed, you will now experience ‘blackness’. There may be other things you can find going on, sure. If you are looking at a bright light, there may be a red glow. There may be sparkly bits or cloudy flecks appearing and disappearing – It really doesn’t matter about the specifics.
Just to make things simple, whatever you can see with eyes closed, I’m going to refer to it as ‘black’ or ‘blackness’ just for simplicity.
1) With eyes closed, can you confirm that what is experienced is ‘blackness’ as I mentioned?
2) Is there anything else in ‘seeing’ other than ‘blackness’?
3) Can what is witnessing the blackness be found?
4) Can a pair of eyes, an ‘I’ / ‘me’, a person be found that is witnessing the blackness? Or is there just ‘blackness’ to be found?
What do you find?
Can an INHERENT SEE-ER be found? Would anything that is suggested as the see-er, be anything other than a concept/idea/thought?
Seeing Exercise – Part II
Let’s move on to opening the eyes now.
Again, address this very simply – The ‘seeing’ sense only for the moment.
With eyes open, a world of objects appears . . . a room . . . a computer screen etc
What you can specifically see isn’t of interest here, and whatever it is, I am simply going to refer to it as ‘what can be seen’.
This might be a little more tricky, but give it some consideration.
1) With eyes open, can you confirm that what is experienced is ‘what can be seen’ as I mentioned?
2) Is there anything else in ‘seeing’ other than ‘what can be seen’?
3) Can what is witnessing ‘what can be seen’ be found?
4) Can a pair of eyes, an ‘I’ / ‘me’, be found that is witnessing ‘what can be seen’? Or is there just simply ‘what can be seen’ to be found?
What do you find?
Can an INHERENT SEE-ER be found? Would anything that is suggested as the see-er, be anything other than a concept/idea/thought?
Next Label-Reality Correlation
There is a belief that labels have a one-to-one correspondence with something called “reality.”
But there isn’t.
Just like it is a generally accepted belief that labels like “good” and “bad” are inherent characteristics of “things.”
But actually, they are not.
When you look at the word label ‘BLACK’, what is the actual experience?
Is the blue color “experienced” or is color black “experienced” as the label suggests?
Do the labels have a one-to-one correspondence with “reality?”
Or do the labels suggest something else other than what is here now (blue color)?
Is black-ness an inherent attribute of the “experience” of the blue color; or is black just a word label on the experience of the blue color?
If the label ‘BLACK’ is replaced with the label ‘GOOD’ or ‘BAD’, is the redness affected in any way as the labels suggests?
“Does blackness become “good” or “bad,” or do the labels have no effect whatsoever on reality?
