Thursday, February 3, 2011

Observing the World Around You

Shift your self-perception and cultivate a higher aspect of yourself known as the compassionate witness. Rather than think of yourself as a human being who has thoughts, feelings and behaviors, begin practicing stepping outside of yourself.

I am showing you the way to a new kind of freedom where you witness your life and no longer are a dancer choreographed and directed by others. You have the choice to take on the witness posture in terms of how you view everything going on around you. This includes events in your neighborhood as well as globally significant events. As the witness, you are refusing to identify with what you see taking place.

You are instead being a detached, passive but noticing observer. You are not the event, you are that which is noticing it. When you become the witness to events in the world around you, you remove your self-importance from what you are observing. You do not see it in terms of how it affects you. You simply notice. You are not attached to the rightness or wrongness of it. You have an inner knowing that, in some mysterious way, it is all in order. You are not questioning God in any of it. You simply notice.

Learning to observe the world from the perspective of the detached witness does not, however, mean being emotionless. It simply means being free of immobilizing emotions. Abraham Maslow described the highest functioning human beings in his studies as “self-actualized,” stating that the highest quality they possessed was that they were “independent of the good opinion of others.”

When you no longer need to view the events of your life from your self-centered perspective, or from the point of view of how you should react based on how you will look to others, then you have achieved a measure of freedom. You can extend this witness position toward all of the things that you find so upsetting in the world. The wars will go on and on, independent of your inner turmoil. Being the global witness might actually help to create a collective energy of peace. Certainly your anger isn’t going to eradicate wars.

~Written by Dr. Wayne Dyer

The Law of Detachment

By Deepak Chopra



Why Attachment Hurts



  • I consciously commit to flexibility and detachment.
  • I live my life in a state of engaged detachment.
  • I release the need to judge or criticize.
  • I express myself honestly while releasing any need to impose my beliefs on other people.


  • Today I will commit myself to detachment. 
  • I will allow myself and those around me the freedom to be as they are. 
  • I will not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be. 
  • I will not force solutions on problems, thereby creating new problems. 
  • I will participate in everything with detached involvement.
  • Today I will factor in uncertainty as an essential ingredient of my experience. 
  • Through the wisdom of uncertainty, I will find my security.
Image: The Golden Path-II by H. Koppdelaney at
The Fictitious Self

The mind, working consciously and unconsciously, is the cause of my problems. Problems cease only when the self is forgotten, when the “me” is non-existent. The thinker is a fictitious entity, an illusion of the mind. The thinker ceases only when there is an understanding of the whole process. The non-action is to see it in its entirety and therefore have an insight into it. When you once see something as false you can never again go back to it.

~Written by Jiddu Krishnamurti