In a conversation about meditation the other day a friend observed and mildly lamented the presence in his meditation of a portion of the self that is always there, off to one side so to speak, watching him meditate.  There is a part of himself, and as I understood at once I’ll continue only as regards myself, that is deep in the meditation experience, unaware—or rather deeply aware to the point of unawareness—and that part can experience emptiness, peace, the smile.  But there is for me most of the time the watching I, another part of the self, observing the meditation, considering its depth or effectiveness, spewing up language for what is happening, thinking of this entry in a journal.  The watching I might be called self-consciousness—not only a difficult-to-evade consciousness of the meditation process itself, its strangeness and estrangement, but also sheer consciousness of self, the very burden many of us, I imagine, are trying to lift in meditating at all.

In this morning’s meditation I kept my eyes open, as I have done a little more often lately.  It has helped me to understand a little better the way in which the emptiness of a deep meditation might also engage the fullness of the world more fully than one does in daily life.  Such phrases as “the present moment” from The Trust Technique or “living in the moment” seek to recapture an immediacy of experience so difficult to retain once early childhood has ended.  In today’s meditation, as the watching I formed and began its commentary, my conversation with my friend helped to disperse it.  There was such great pleasure in that sense that I was alone—that I was all one—with my meditation.  Whatever happened, whatever thoughts and words came and went, there was only that silent, unconscious self gazing, with eyes open, at that point on the carpet before me that absorbed now and then the whole of the world in the whole moment of my meditation.

For now I would say the watching I is also the verbal I—ready with words, concepts, and comments on experience.  It must be the watching I that stores up words for the later writing of a journal entry such as this.  If I can release him to do his business elsewhere in my life, then perhaps this journal will depart with him.  And perhaps my meditation will be closer to its deep purposes in that silence.  This remains to be determined.  Meanwhile, it is from this self-conscious I that I most hope to free myself by meditating.

21 September, 2024.