Of course, there were still the issues and problems that beset any human resources manager of a company in transition. If anything, the difficulties and challenges actually got a little worse soon after he started the positive habit of mini-meditations. The dramatic change for him personally was the ability to stay calm and clearheaded in the midst of it all. Something about those short, meditative moments would reconnect him with the best within himself.
When an employee came into his office with angry, demanding words, Ron found it considerably easier to be tolerant and patient. When his boss required yet another reworking of the budget, Ron felt himself a little more quickly able to accept the task graciously. Of course, there were instances when the stresses got to him, and he became frustrated or discouraged. The three-minute meditations didn’t make him a saint. But something was now different, and that “something” was clearly the result of this new positive habit.
APPLYING THIS POSITIVE HABIT TO YOUR LIFE
If you don’t already have a regular meditation discipline, this is the chance to get a positive habit started with short periods each day. If, on the other hand, you already have a steady pattern of regular meditation sessions, then keep that in place while you add three-minute meditations daily as a supplement.
Try different times of day and different situations to experiment with these mini-meditations. Perhaps early in the morning, if you are somewhat rushed to get out of the house, you could still find time to devote three minutes to this activity. Or, maybe midmorning at work when everyone else is taking a coffee break. Perhaps you’ll get good results by having a short meditation in the very late afternoon before starting to get ready for the evening meal and the remainder of the day. Just play with various possibilities and see what works best for you.
As you practice three-minute meditation sessions, keep in mind that what really counts isn’t quantity but quality. Those few moments, sincerely and enthusiastically approached, can be just as powerful as any more lengthy devotional time. Let yourself experience how, in the timelessness of your soul life, spiritual centering can take place whenever you have a mind and a will for it.
Positive Habit #3
The Inner Witness: Practicing Self-Observation
The person who is living a spiritually centered life has the sense of two sides of the self and has found a creative way to coordinate them. These two aspects can be called the personality and the individuality, and the positive habit of loving, objective self-observation is the key to how they best relate to each other.
The purpose of self-observation is to remember our best selves, our true selves. In the effort to put our best selves at the forefront, we must filter through the debris of our automatic, unconscious habits, the traits that keep us stuck in life. Through the self-observation process we step back and see the personality, with all its positive and negative facets, and ultimately come to the core of our being—our individuality. The individuality is one’s ideal personified.
Let’s consider more carefully these two sides to everyone’s being, a topic introduced in the first chapter. Personality is the outside shell, that which we show to most of the world, not because it is the best indication of who we are, but simply by routine. In fact, mechanical routines of attitude, emotion, and action are what make up our personality, the patterns we have gathered from infancy from whoever and whatever have been influencing factors in our lives. The compilation of gathered characteristics resembles a tree in form. Like large branches that sprout off to small branches that, in turn, sprout off leaves, each trait builds and depends on another. And so, we may often find in the process of self-observation that we start seeing the connections between our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—especially those that operate by strong negative patterns and make life unproductive.
When we operate solely from the direction of our personalities, without understanding of our individualities, trouble lies ahead. When personality rules, we are captured by automatic patterns and are unable to break free of negative or less desirable traits. Even though letting the personality govern our actions might feel familiar or comfortable, we are blocking ourselves from what our deepest and best self has the potential to achieve.
Individuality, though usually less familiar to us, is the more genuine form of ourselves, and it is not a product of outside influences. It is the identity of our spirit, and a healthy spiritual life requires guidance from that individuality.
All of this is not so say, however, that the personality is always “bad” and the individuality is the only source of “good.” Rather, the individuality is a more authentic expression of who we really are ourselves, as opposed to worn-out or diminished expressions of what others expect us to value, believe in, or do.
THE WITNESSING SELF
Observation is one of the most simple, automatic activities of our daily lives. We are observing all the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes without realizing it. It is easy to observe situations that involve other people, but how easy is it to observe ourselves?
Self-observation is fairly easily done on a superficial level. We can stand in front of the mirror and decide if our shoes really complement our blouse; we can listen to a tape recording of our public presentation and decide if the closing statement really drove home the point. But this kind of self-observation is tainted with biases and judgments from which we have difficulty letting go. They easily cloud the self-observation process.
To be an objective observer of self is challenging. After all, to be “objective” usually means not to be “involved” in the situation, and who is more involved in our lives than we ourselves? But objective self-observation is far from impossible; it just takes close attention and steady practice.
It is a technique that was described by Cayce with the recommendation to “stand aside and watch self go by.” Other philosophers and psychologists have referred to the identical process, but with different labels. The technique sounds a little tricky, though. We may wonder, “How can I watch myself? I am myself.”
The key to understanding the workings of this technique is to see the many roles we play in our personality, the different “selves” that we have. In our daily lives most of us portray dozens of sides of our personality: the parent, the friend, the boss, the colleague, or the customer. Each role we play is ruled by the habits formed in our personality. “Standing aside and watching yourself go by” involves the observation of these “selves” we play each day.
Self-observation involves the development of an extra focus of attention, a new kind of consciousness. With one part of our attention we continue to be consumed by our personality and its reactions to the events and situations in which we are involved. But then we split our attention and let the second half become “the witnessing self.” It is as if a part of us steps out of our life and simply watches. This witnessing self is acutely conscious of the feelings, thoughts, and actions of daily life. We stand apart from ourselves and look back at our personality.
It is important to remember that the witnessing self is part of the personality and not the individuality. We are not standing back and letting one part of ourselves be critiqued by the higher self. Instead, the witnessing self is simply another “self” played by the personality, no more special or significant than another. So it must refrain from the temptation to judge.
Consider the following example of self-observation. For several years a man kept the positive habit of reviewing just before falling asleep his activities from the day now ending. Then he learns about the technique of standing aside and watching self go by. Already familiar with his nightly after-the-fact self-observations, he assumes this method will