The Healing Power of Witnessing – Detachment, Relinquishing Judgment, and Mirroring

Posted On August 17, 2017 / Written by Dr. Linda Gadbois

As a general rule, it’s very hard for us to ever really see anybody as they truly are, because just the act of perceiving another influences and distorts what’s being observed and interpreted as a means of creating an experience of it. All perception results from the relationship as an energetic interaction between the mind doing the observing and the object being observed. The mind of the individual exists as a vibratory structure of dynamically integrated patterns that forms a mental model (paradigm) that acts as the lens we look through to perceive everything else around us. As we observe something, we direct our attention onto and into it, and through a process of sympathetic resonance, influence it in terms of what’s stimulated and brought out in it in response to and relationship with us. As we conceive of something we act on it to alter how it appears to us, and by how we remake it by blending with it mentally and forming an interpretation of it that makes it out to be like us (of the same nature).

Our mind as a paradigm (dynamic model) is formed by the integration of all of our life experiences that together consistently produce a congruent reality that has a theme inherent in it as a type of story we’re always in the process of telling ourselves about everything as a way of understanding it, and through our understanding form our experience of it. While we can’t necessarily produce or outright change material reality in the objective and actual sense, we’re always changing how it appears to us as our experience of it. Our model produces a natural set of criteria for creating consistent experiences through our beliefs, values, memories, and what we accept as being right and true based on our conditioning and what dynamic we were raised playing a natural role in. This criterion becomes the filtering system we look through as a means of instantly interpreting things through generalizations that we apply across the board, robbing everyone and everything of their individuality and uniqueness, and reshaping them instead to fit into our judgments about them.

We form beliefs around our values that become preferences that act to distort and reshape everything we observe, perceive, and interact with to factually validate our judgments as being accurate and true. Because of our minds natural ability to transform reality through the simple act of perceiving it, we don’t realize that our most fundamental reality that we believe and imagine to be objective and fact based as neutral and a part from us, is actually a form of illusion as a distorted version of our own making. Anytime we interpret something to give it meaning, or tell a story about it that makes it mean something, we’re distorting facts and assigning the same qualities, characteristics and motives to others that we ourselves possess. The same criterion as a belief system formed out of values that we use to judge others, we’re simultaneously using to judge and shape ourselves in relation to our own projections and transpositions.

When we mentally and energetically merge into and blend with others, seeing them and their experiences through our own model and interpreting them accordingly, assessing them as being wrong, misled, or incorrect, and needing to somehow retell the story of their experience in terms of how we would have handled or went about the same thing, we never see others as they truly are, but rather as we are through them. We remake them in our image and with our likeness as a way of forming a relationship with unconscious aspects of ourselves in them. As we judge others through our values and beliefs about them, we simultaneously create an experience of ourselves in contrast to them, or as being just like them. What we find repulsive and antagonistic in others, that causes a distinct and pronounced reaction in us, is a quality or trait that we also possess that we’re not fully aware of and have denied having somehow, repressed and failed to acknowledge, of shaped ourselves through opposition to it. We naturally react to the opposite and complementary quality in others that we ourselves possess, which is why we’re reacting. It stimulates us, activating and bringing out in us the quality necessary to play out a joint dynamic as a co-creation. As a general rule, we typically create ourselves in two basic ways, by becoming just like someone else, or by contrasting and becoming the opposite. But either way, they’re both roles in the same dynamic, and we require that dynamic in order to know ourselves and actively continue to create ourselves through a role in that dynamic.

To detach from others, from our dependency on conditions, circumstances, and relationships as the means of knowing ourselves through others, and instead of projecting onto others by judging them then reacting to our own judgments, we self-reflect and become aware of the true nature of our judgments as something that’s alive and active within us, shaping who we are in a purely unconscious manner, we can begin gaining an awareness of aspects of ourselves that we’re normally not aware of. By withholding judgment and creating a sense of being separate and detached from others, while turning inward and observing the story playing out in our mind, we can begin realizing our own conditioning and the false illusions we’ve built around ideas that prevent us from seeing them in their origins as they truly are, without the need to transpose them onto others as a means of seeing what they are. We can know the hidden content of our own subconscious mind by realizing that it forms the basis of our perception of others and the world in general in terms of what we readily see, react to, and play an active role in mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally in co-creating.

The entire outer world in terms of our perception of it and what we naturally see (without conscious intervention), is created by the subconscious mind, whose content is predominately unknown to us, and only comes into our awareness as feelings, emotions, or impulses towards or away from things. It comes into our awareness through the memories that are referenced and drawn up in association to outer emotional stimulus of some sort. Through the memory the outer stimulus acts to naturally invoke, we can see how it was instilled in us and continues to live within us in an attempt to be resolved through our ability to witness it as it plays out in a variety of ways, both internally through our imagination (where memories play out), and externally through our perception (looking through the lens of the memory) and natural participation in the dynamic it implies, while remaining detached from it. All that’s really required to heal a dynamic as a tendency that’s of an emotional origin (which all are), is the ability to view and observe it as it plays out in you from a detached, dissociated, and third person perspective. Where you don’t need to explain or justify it as a means of defending it. The awareness alone brings self-realization as becoming aware of what was previously acting out without your direct awareness, and it loses its grip on you and resolves the unconscious tendency. Once we become aware of something that we were doing in an automatic fashion, we catch ourselves as we begin doing it, and no longer feel compelled to engage.

The conscious mind, which is the self-aware aspect of the mind that’s outwardly focused, has the ability to witness in a detached and objective manner, the mental impressions being reflected in the imagination, and the material manifestation of those memories being played out as unconscious motives in a variety of ways through our everyday life. By developing the aspect of ourselves that’s a part from the body and it’s emotional states, and isn’t dependent on the body for its identity, we can clearly see the illusions of the body as conditioned emotional states that keep us faithfully acting out formative conditioning in an unconscious and automatic manner as the very foundation of our experiences wrought through our perspective and perceptions of the outer world. Through the outward perception of our inward self, we form our sense of self within our own self-created experiences as a conscious relationship with unconscious aspects that together form our identity.

Once we learn how to detach from the judgments and perceptions of our conditioning, and no longer merge and blend into the perceptions of others, remaking them to be like us as a result, we can act as a witness for other people as well. By relinquishing and stepping outside of all judgments (good and bad) and conditioned beliefs as a way of experiencing them, we can see them as they actually are. We can listen to their story about their experiences without needing to change it in any way or form an opinion based on it, and in doing so act as a mirror to reflect back to them the reality of their own making that’s a projection of their subconscious mind, showing them in very direct terms what’s active and playing out in them as subliminal motivations that they’re primarily unaware of. By acting as a mirror and sounding board, where they can hear their own story, often for the first time with full awareness and no distorting influence, they too can become aware of unconscious aspects, and through the realization of what previously deluded them, a natural healing takes place as an alignment between both aspects of the mind.

The witnessing faculty of the mind is the aspect of ourselves that exists outside the consciousness of the body, both the subconscious and self-conscious, that’s not directly identified with the body and dependent on the body to know itself, and therefore can see it (the activity of the material mind) in a clear and objective manner. It watches the dynamic as a tendency played out in the imagination like a memory (movie), and how it manifests in a corresponding manner as external experiences. It’s the part of us that’s divine in nature and has its existence in the eternal realm outside of time and space, and acts to aid, guide, and comfort the lower self, confined within the body and determined by its unconscious conditioning as a form of bondage. This higher aspect of the mind provides us with the true means of healing when we employ it in an intentional manner.

By relinquishing the tendency as a perceptual filter for judging others as a means of creating our experiences of ourselves through them, and remaining separate and detached, no longer needing to change how they appear to us, we can see others as they actually are, and through this same awareness, see ourselves as we actually are a part from them. Through the higher faculties of the mind to witness the unconscious creations of the lower mind, healing spontaneously occurs for both people through the same act of awareness. The true key to all healing of the soul, mind, and body, is self-awareness and the realization it brings in terms of what’s really going on in every moment as a creation of the material mind. By using our higher mind to witness our lower mind, we act on ourselves to heal ourselves. The way to overcome the laws governing the lower planes, is to rise above it and work by way of the laws governing the higher plane, which serves to orchestrate and organize the activity of the lower planes.

By using this same faculty to witness the creation of other peoples minds, the realization it brings allows them to heal themselves, and heals those same aspects in us, because at the level of the higher mind, not located within a body, the soul exists in a unified state of shared memory as a part of the collective unconscious or mass consciousness based on archetypes that form the basis for all of our personal creations out of thematic ideas. Just through our ability to truly see an aspect in another from a detached and objective state, allows us to see that same aspect in ourselves, and again, through our ability to see it without the veil of an illusion, dissolves and resolves it in us. It only remains intact because we’re unaware of the fact that it’s a self-created illusion of our own making. The beauty of true healing, and how you know if it’s actually healing, is that it heals both people simultaneously through the same realization born out of a common ground.

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher