I have been quieting myself down throughout the day to pay attention to what's happening inside - what's going through my mind, my feelings, and ... strangely enough, what I might call my inner family, those different sub-personalities that talk, criticise, praise, judge, reassure, question, sometimes disagree and argue. I cannot name them, these little personalities for they are ephemeral, undefined, constantly shifting like clouds (cloud people, I call them) in the sky, real but never the same.
And more and more, as I pay attention, I am aware of an Inner Observer, some aspect of Self that is always there, usually unnoticed. I have always sensed Its presence, strongly in my childhood when it felt to me like a great omnipresent, omniscient God. I think that most people sense It in some way or other.
But now that I am paying closer attention, observing the Observer, one could say, I realise that It is always there, a consciousness that is me yet far more than the small me held within this body. Not something outside or separate, but a primary aspect of Being, of my Being. So I have decided that I can trust it completely.
Rupert Sheldrake did some research into the sense of being watched by someone else. But there is also a very real sense of being watched by an Inner Observer that never changes and is always present. I used to think as a child that it meant that I was somehow special - not good, but different - which I found strangely comforting in a difficult and very lonely childhood. Then I discovered at about age 12 that a great many people sensed the Watcher as well, and I understood that it was not something outside of me but within.
It was different from Socrates' daimon that used to warn him off wrong choices, or my own inner daimon that I arrogantly named Socrates. That entity, which would appear over my left shoulder, never told me what to do, but always indicated when I should not do something, warning me away. Unlike the Inner Observer, Socrates only appeared when I was making a decision to do or not to do, and he looked sad or scowled when I chose to do the wrong thing despite him, as I often did.
The Inner Observer is a higher or larger aspect of Self than that. I think that it keeps watch over the spiritual aspect of my being - its growth or sliding backwards in accordance with the motivations and beliefs of the small self at that time. It is part of the primary reality that underlies the camouflage reality that we experience every day.
Seth (the entity who spoke through Jane Roberts) spoke of primary and secondary realities. "If ever in a dream experience you defy gravity then gravity is not a primary reality, but only a manifestation within your own physical system. If clock time is escaped within the dream state, then clock time is not a primary.
"What you cannot escape within any range of consciousness can be called a Primary Condition."
"Those realities however which appear only in certain stages of consciousness are secondaries."
(Jane Roberts, Seth, dreams and projections of consciousness).
Inner Observer is a primary element of being (really real) because no matter what, it is always there - in my waking, dreaming, daydreaming, imagining, or when my attention and actions are turned fully to the outside. I have only to turn my attention inward to sense it. It is often in my dreams, personified. Unlike my inner Socrates, the Inner Observer offers no guidance, no approval or disapproval. It just is, a still, gentle, totally loving presence.
And because it is part of primary reality, the Inner Observer is always present, always available to us. Always. We might escape secondary reality in our daydreams or sleep, but we are never ever out of the primary reality, never apart from it. It is always engaging us, holding us in its embrace, so to speak.
Why do we not accept this? It's a matter of trust, I think, of learning to trust the validity of our own inner experience. Most do not. We might think we do, but we don't because we don't recognise the tight, hard barriers to knowing or trust that we have allowed to build around our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes. We don't recognise and are afraid to recognise what we have allowed to ourselves to push away, to shut out, what we have lost and must now choose to allow back in.
Yet we can know. It is not beyond us. And the Inner Observer shows us how.
- By letting ourselves to simply be, to allow life to be what it is no matter how it might hurt, to observe what our bodies are telling us
- By trusting in the validity and value of our experience, no matter how difficult or ugly it might seem
- By patiently allowing life to unfold
- When considering which way to go, whether to do or not, to ask, Does this feel right to me? Is it helpful, useful, kind?
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