Developing the Witness Mind

Learn to develop a witness mind. By observing the chatter of the subconscious mind we can become more in tune with the nature or content of this chatter. The objective through witnessing is to understand and know that observation limits habitual recording of negative thoughts.

Transcript

Hello,

My name is Dr.

Brett Wade.

Welcome to my meditation called Developing the Witness Mind.

Before getting into this meditation,

I want to just discuss briefly the notion of the mind.

It is generally agreed that there are at least two separate minds,

The conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

Often the subconscious mind further divides into another part known as the autonomic or unconscious brain.

People may argue about labels and functions of the different parts,

But it is generally agreed that these different parts have different functions.

One can think of the structures of the brain as a top-down or hierarchical system.

The outer surface of the brain is thought to be roughly where the conscious mind exists.

This thin layer of gray matter contains billions of nerve cells known as neurons,

Each with specialized functions.

Some of these parts form our personality.

Some of these nerve cells work to give us conscious movement or speech.

When you have a conscious thought,

It will activate certain parts of your brain.

The subconscious mind resides roughly in the middle of your brain.

This includes emotions,

Emotional memory,

Emotional behavior,

Fight-or-flight,

Regulation of your body's muscle tone,

Processing of information before relaying up to the cerebral cortex,

And production of hormones.

When someone says something to you and you have an automatic or knee-jerk reaction,

This is probably coming from a part of your brain known as the limbic system.

It's where you store emotional memory and behaviors,

And this part of the brain in the subconscious mind is the part that's always talking to you when you're trying to meditate or be mindful.

The unconscious or autonomic brain,

Which is further down,

Primarily resides in the brain stem and outside of your spinal cord.

It does all of these amazing things without your knowledge.

It adjusts your heart rate,

It dilates or constricts your pupils,

It causes you to sweat or shiver,

It adjusts your blood flow towards or away from organs as needed.

We should be very thankful that we don't need to consciously think about these actions every day.

This part of our nervous system does it all for us automatically.

To go back and revisit the subconscious mind for a second,

It's important that we analyze this chattering that's going on all the time from the subconscious mind.

This is what developing the witness mind is all about.

When you can consciously see what kind of chatter is going on at this level,

You can learn a lot about your emotions,

Your memory,

Your habits,

Your behaviors.

The challenging part is to develop a gap between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

When there's space you can see that these are entirely different minds.

You can witness what's going on.

The best part is that when you witness the thoughts,

You shine a light on them and you begin to see what all this chatter is about.

You may notice that your chatter is in fact rehearsing future conversations or preparing yourself for future events or perhaps it's about regret from things in the past.

Maybe it contains harmful language telling you you can't do this or you can't do that.

Notice that almost all the thoughts at the subconscious level are either past events,

Future events,

Or quite often negative self-talk.

Let's begin the meditation by setting up to observe the thoughts,

Develop this witness mind.

For this meditation I recommend having a piece of paper and a pen nearby so that you can at the end of the meditation write down any observations you had from witnessing the subconscious mind.

If you're not already,

Begin by being seated in an upright position,

A dignified posture.

Close your eyes.

Have your spine aligned in its natural curves.

Make sure your head is balanced.

Your shoulders feel relaxed and feel as if your head is floating.

Begin to focus on your breath.

If it's available to you,

Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose.

Begin to count each breath,

An inhalation and an exhalation as one so it sounds like one and repeat this all the way to five.

Once you've reached five,

Just rest here in this space.

Allow any and all thoughts to begin to flow,

But try to witness what it is your subconscious is saying.

Take note of these thoughts.

Allow some time for these thoughts to come.

Imagine if your thoughts in fact are on a conveyor belt.

As a thought comes along,

Press pause and notice it.

Try to remember it and then let it go.

As the next thought comes along,

Do the same.

Do this now for two minutes and I will let you know when the two minutes are up.

Gently begin to bring some awareness back to your body.

Bring yourself back to this time and space.

Bringing some movement back into your body and when you're ready,

Just gently begin to open your eyes.

Finding that pen and paper,

Begin to jot some notes down about the nature of your thoughts.

Were they thoughts of the past?

Thoughts about the future,

Future conversations?

Was there negative self-talk?

Perhaps it was very abstract.

In many ways this is like trying to remember your dreams.

Don't worry about the thoughts or judge the thoughts.

By witnessing the thoughts,

You are changing the thoughts in fact.

Continue this process every day and with time you'll begin to notice that you are more and more becoming a conscious person,

Less dominated by your emotional subconscious self.

Continue to develop the witness.

Enjoy more of my meditations on YouTube.

Also see my meditations on the Insight Timer meditation app.

I hope you enjoyed this meditation and I look forward to visiting with you again soon.

Namaste,

Brett.

Reviews

Very informative

Very informative and interesting about the origin of negative thoughts from the subconscious mind

Thank you. I spprecoste your voice; it's very calm and soothing🌿

Talk + practice, its really helpfull! Thank you

This is indeed more of a talk, but it's very interesting and worth listening to for the insight into how and why thoughts form, and the suggestion to keep track of thoughts in a notepad seems like a worthwhile idea.

Like to use my wandering thoughts as tools for greater awareness

Grateful for this insight, be the judicial witness, observation of the thought, then think about its nature to label and understand
Simple but profound
Thanks for sharing
Godspeed

I enjoyed the description in the beginning...helps put a lot into perspective and provides a better understanding of conscious and subconscious mind and now I’m able to be more aware throughout my day! Definitely bookmarking this meditation for daily use!

Witnessing thought can be tricky. Liked how it was explained before the meditation began. Definitely worth practicing more.

Very helpful. Allowed me to see the negative thoughts that were making me unhappy. A real revelation. Thank you.

I'm very interested in how the brain works. I think this idea of witnessing thoughts is going to help. Namaste.

Fantastic introduction to the power of our thoughts and mind. Thank you!

Very useful.... Will be putting it into practice. With thanks

I have to try that again! Very interesting meditation. Thank you!

Enjoyed the concept of witnessing the thoughts...

Namaste 🕉 💜 💚 💙 💛

I connected to this

I loved the intro about the mind, as I find the mind to be amazing. During the pause he gave, all my thoughts were in the present/positive affirmations. Through almost a year of daily meditation my heart has taken over my mind. So blessed and grateful 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Yes..completely aware of how much I live in the past..very good explanation