Witness

Published: March 17, 2021, 10:10 p.m.

Our negative pasts can sometimes weigh heavy on our hearts, but also can have a massive
impact on how we live our lives in the now. Because we all have past experiences, we have a
part of our inner mind that we call our inner ‘Observing Self’ or the ‘inner witness’ and this
part of you is always doing just that. It observes and records what you think, feel, say and do
moment to moment. It doesn’t decide if what you are doing is right or wrong, it just
observes and records. It is a bit like our own internal videoing system whereby we can go
back and walk through the experiences that we have had in our lives. We can pause and
take a look in more detail about what happened, how we felt and how we reacted and also
follow through the experience from A to B. Let’s use having relationship issues as an
example, let’s imagine that you had a hard relationship in the past that negatively affected
you on many levels. You have left that partner now but can still feel it negatively impacting
you in your daily life. Your new partner says, “Come on, we are going to be late”, and
suddenly you find yourself enraged and screaming at them or you find you're feeling
anxious and tearful. So, what happened there? You’re not in that old toxic relationship. You
love your new partner so why are you responding in these ways? It can’t be the now so it
has to be the past impacting the now and this is where you can use your inner witness to
help you uncover what happened and get to the bottom of this.