The
technique of the witness is to merely sit with the fear and be aware of
it before it becomes so consuming that there’s no space left. The image
I usually use is that of a picture frame and a painting of a gray cloud
against a blue sky. But the picture frame is a little too small. So you
bend the canvas around to frame it. But in doing so you lost all the
blue sky. So you end up with just a framed gray cloud. It fills the
entire frame.
So when you say, 'I'm afraid' or, 'I'm depressed', if you enlarged the
frame so that just a little blue space shows, you would say ‘Ah, a
cloud.’ That is what the witness is. The witness is that tiny little
blue over in the corner that leads you to say, ‘Ah, fear.’
- Ram Dass -
