 I recently had a spiritual growth breakthrough of some kind, I think, and I'm making this video in part for my own kind of video journaling, and in case some of you might find it interesting or useful, maybe. I want to give thanks to the teachings of Michael Singer. He wrote The Untethered Soul, as well as The Surrender Experiment. Those are two of his books. They're well known. He went on Oprah at an interview there, but I recently stumbled upon some of his audios that were uploaded, someone uploaded it to YouTube, and I'll put a link to those audios in the notes of this video, and basically, he really reminded me, woke me up to the idea of witness consciousness again. I had encountered the idea decades ago, probably reading Krishnamurti back in college or whatever and various Zen or Buddhist writings, and I found it interesting, but I feel like I'm actually kind of getting it now, or at least I'm getting it to a new level that I didn't before, and the idea of witness consciousness is basically this. If you are able to observe that you have thoughts and that you have emotions and that you don't have to act on those thoughts and emotions, whether those thoughts are about somebody else, or about a situation in life, or about yourself, if you can step back so that the way I experience witness consciousness, which I believe all of us are capable of experiencing, I mean the fact that you are aware and alive, and well, even if you're not alive, I think witness consciousness is still there, but the fact that you're watching this video right now means you can access your witness consciousness, and the way I access it is I feel it somewhere like almost at the back of my head, and it's like I'm watching life happen, including, especially including my inner life, so a thought comes to me right now that, oh George, you're stumbling in this video, you're not as smooth as you usually are when you're talking about what you know, what you're talking about, like if you're talking about business or marketing, what you talk about all the time, but you're stumbling now, and then the next thought is I'm judging myself, and I'm blaming myself, and I'm wondering, they're self-doubt, oh should I stop this video, are people going to find me foolish, and I'm noticing these thoughts, and in the past, before I focused on witness consciousness, I used to, you know, of course, emotions come with these thoughts, and then I would get into the emotions and probably take action as a result of the thoughts and the emotions, right, so for example, if I'm blaming myself for stumbling right now and not being smooth, the emotion may come up as self-judgment of anger or of disappointment or whatever it is, and then the action might be to get nervous or maybe that's a reaction, get nervous, the action might just be to quickly stop the video as much as quick as I can, right, you know, or another example, I just got back from vacation, wife and I took a trip, and on when we're traveling, which we don't do very often, but when we travel once in a while, you know, the natural stresses of traveling can create arguments, right, can create disagreements, and in the past, for example, if I, let's say I perceive her as blaming me for a certain thing, I'm sure I blame her more than she blames me, but anyway, let's say I perceive her as blaming me for a certain thing, and then I get angry, the emotion naturally, I perceive the blame, I perceive it as blame, and then the emotion naturally arises as anger and defensiveness, and then that emotion leads to additional thoughts of, well, but what about you? You had a hand in this, you didn't do this and you didn't do that, right, let's say we're trying to catch a flight and we're late or whatever, you didn't do this, you didn't do that, and you know, you should be, you should, you're always like this, right, and so all these things happen almost simultaneously without choice, and that's the key is typically, the typical human, as I have been my whole life, lives without real, without that much choice, that much free will really, because we're just being swept up by thoughts coming in, we don't question the thoughts, we just allow the thoughts to create emotions, which then create reactions, which then create more actions and more thoughts, and the whole thing just happens, and we're prisoners to it, right, and witness consciousness has allowed me to observe those thoughts as thoughts and go, oh, there's a thought, I mean, and as I'm talking about this, a lot of you are like, George, that's like, you know, meditation, that's a mindfulness one-on-one, what are you talking about, I know, I know it is, I've heard of, you know, all my life, but I'm kind of seeing, I'm like radically experiencing it differently now, it's like I can actually see it, whereas before I knew it as a theory, and I kind of saw it once in a while, but now I'm actually like seeing it all the time, and especially my own self-judgment, I'm seeing it now, I'm like, oh, there's a self-judgment, and the key, the key I think, so kind of the steps I'm taking to, to experience this, step number one, like if I were to start my own, you know, witness consciousness school, like, like this would be step one, step one is just to practice noticing that you have thoughts, and again, none of this is original to me, people have been teaching this for thousands of years, and most recently I heard it from Michael Singer's audios on YouTube, which I'll link in the notes of this video, step one is to notice that I have thoughts, whether it's about, oh, there's a there's a painting on the wall, the fact that I verbalized it in my head is a thought, or, oh, I'm judging myself, my voice is a little different today, you know, particularly self-judgements, and particularly judgments of other people, and particularly judgments of events, to practice noticing those things, not as the fact that this painting is bad, or that my voice is weird today, or I'm stumbling today, or she did something wrong, you know, particularly step one, practice noticing our judgments, not as the truth of reality, but as a thought that, and at one time I happened to stumble upon a book and I read it, and they called thoughts the secretions of the brain, that's interesting, think of it as little, your brain secretions, like secreting a little liquid, thought, oh, it's thought, it's electromagnetic thing, it's a secretion, it's not a reality, the fact that she did something as then that's bad, and that's bad for her, and that's bad for me, it's not reality, that's just my perception of something that happened, someone else, a third party could look at that situation as totally comical, for example, that they could be like laughing at this situation, or another person could be looking at this as an anthropologist, oh, isn't that interesting that his upbringing made him react habitually in this way, and that made her react, so it could, any situation could be interpreted a million different ways, depending on the person's, you know, perceptions, education, language, you know, the weather that day, whatever it is, step one, practice observing that there's a judgment happening, whether it's about her, him, them, life, the situation, this cat that's about to jump on my lap, you know, about myself, oh, I'm a little nervous right now, oh, maybe people don't like what I'm saying, people think I'm boring right now, and people think why my arms are like this, it's because my cat and have to justify myself, and I'm holding up my cat because I think it's going to be better for the video, and I'm judging that I'm trying to be popular, you know, all these are judgments, and I like, step one is just to notice that, like, I feel like, you know, and once you do that, you've won, you know, and again, I'm not saying this, one thing I don't want to say is that my spiritual path is for everybody, I'm just recording this for my future self, to look back and go, oh, it's not interesting, that was where I was back then, right, so step one, I feel like I've won, I feel like I've succeeded when I was able to observe, oh, there's a judgment there, oh, it's interesting, because the fact is, maybe the foundation of all this is everything passes, everything passes, including the judgment, right, notice, I mean, and I'm talking to myself again, any emotions I've had in the past about, oh, this is the worst day of my, the worst occurrence of my life, this is terrible, this is, I'll never get over this, I probably forgot about it, how many of those have I had in my life, probably dozens, if not hundreds of worst things that ever happened to me, I probably forgot about them, it passed, it really did, it really passed, so so will this judgment, so will this, this is bad situation, it's gonna pass, it's a judgment, it's a perception of what of a reality, objective reality is happening, and I'm putting a preference on it, a judgment to say, well, I think reality should be like this, when of course, reality has been evolving for 14 billion years, and it's just all the molecules and all the situations happen to create this arising of this objective situation, this physical reality, and I'm putting a judgment saying, I'm God, I think reality should form itself in this way, you see, so I'm playing God when I'm putting a judgment on top of it, and I'm just noticing the judgment, wow, wow, and so the practice of the witness consciousness for me is to be able to step back to the back of my head, and notice the judgment is like the front of the head, kind of happening there, oh judgment, wow, there's a judgment happening here, and so that's step one for me, and I feel like I've succeeded when I've done that, step two for me is to be able to be compassionate toward that judgment, and to produce hope, so this is how I do it. When I judge myself, oh, George, you should be a better speaker, oh, George, you should prepare for this kind of thing more, oh, George, you shouldn't try to hog the limelight on a Facebook live, oh, George, all these judgments, and when they come up, or another situation where if my wife does something that I perceive will be harmful for my health or her health or whatever, right, especially me, like I'm such a, sometimes I'm a health nut, and I think no, no, sweetie, you should take your vitamins, or you should do this, this is bad for you, it's bad for your health, don't you care about your health, right, that judgment happening, judgment, judgment preference, what I think reality should be, maybe she's meant to do certain things, I don't know, I mean, maybe that's better for her health, I don't know, maybe not taking her vitamins today is somehow going to be better for her health in the long term, I don't know, maybe, you know, sleeping late today was somehow better, so I'm playing God when I think, no, you should do this because science says this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, I'm meaning for her good, or she does something, you know, and it's bad for me because of certain consequences, judgment, right, judgment preference, playing God, right, noticing that, and then the second step, right, after practicing noticing that, the second step is try to bring compassion and hope into the student and the way I do that is I, and this is a weird thing about witness consciousness, I've noticed, it's very quiet, it just, it's kind of like a, like a, like a blackness, like an emptiness, like a, well maybe that's what Buddhists mean by emptiness, right, but it's kind of like this, I don't know if it's white or black, I don't know, but it's, it's, there's nothing there, it's really just quiet, it's almost like there's somebody in the room with me kind of watching the whole thing without emotion, I, and with, and able, able to handle everything, like this, this witness consciousness is back there and it's watching all of life, it's very quiet, it doesn't say anything, and it's able to handle everything, no matter what happens, and it's like real freedom when I'm able to actually tap into that witness consciousness in the back of my head, but again, I don't know where it's located, I just perceive it as like being behind here, so my cat is right now biting my cord, it's very quiet, it's very, it's unlimited vastness there, and it's not judging anything, it's just watching it, and I also perceive it, maybe I put on, I put on a layer on top of that witness consciousness that it's infinitely compassionate, because I'm imagining that's somehow God consciousness or something like that, but so this is the second step, bringing compassion and hope, how do I do that? I remind myself, I guess my ego, my, my human brain, maybe the witness consciousness is reminding me of this or whatever, that all is well, that all is well, she didn't take her vitamins today, it's fine, oh no, she's gonna die sooner, oh no, you know, oh she, she, she was making this dish, she'd create a lot of smoke, you know, she, the heat was too high, there was a lot of smoke, smoke point was reached in the oils, and it's bad for me, because I'm breathing it in, and it's, how could she do this to me, and I told her before, you know, all this judgment and all this playing God, and it's bad for me that she's doing this, oh no, my health is being impacted, I might die sooner, whatever, I might get cancer, all this, all these judgments that witness consciousness goes, oh no, all is well, and this is helpful if, you know, that's, I'm grateful, grateful I've read hundreds of near-death experiences, and you know, what I, again, this, this comes down to belief and faith now, right, this, I may be placing something on the witness consciousness, I believe that all is well, that's my personal belief, meaning literally, however everything happens, if my health is impacted, if, you know, my finances are impacted, if my career is impacted, if my relationship is impacted, it doesn't matter, someone did something that was bad for me, or someone's doing something that I, someone I love's doing something that's bad for her or for him, all is well, in some way that I don't understand things are happening as it's meant to happen, all is well, oh my dog, you know, is, is doing something that's bad for his health, doesn't matter, all is well, and all is happening as it's meant to happen, and we will all be taken care of at, at, in some brilliant and amazing, profoundly beautiful way that we can't even imagine right now, that it's all gonna turn out well, I should say, and in some big picture, all is well right now, that we, we have no idea why, or how, how can this be happening in the world, and all as well, I don't, how can racism, how can sexism, how can all this be happening, and, and people are dying in, in wars of not of their own making, and people are dying of diseases that we can cure, but billionaires aren't holding on to their money, the selfishness, the greed, all is some weird way well, I don't understand it, that's just what I've read, and I believe in it, I have faith in it, and I faith that all will turn out well, we'll look back, you know, after this life, or whatever, and go oh my god that was beautiful, that was enormously beautiful, and that was another thing that I learned from Michael Singer, is part of the witness consciousness, you could just go the drama of life is gorgeous, it's beautiful, oh my god, someone I loved has died, and I feel these emotions of grief, and loss, and sadness that I didn't get to say this, I didn't get to do that with that person, or for that person, oh isn't, and instead of like getting depressed and killing myself, to have the witness consciousness means to watch all those emotions, and the, and the thoughts go by, and to have, and to observe it as beautiful, it's like we're watching a movie, it's not we're just, we're not just watching a movie, and some people believe that this whole thing, this whole universe is a virtual simulation, right, it's a computer game, this whole universe is somehow digital, it's a virtual simulation, like you are a character, you are an avatar, just like that movie avatar, you are an avatar in this virtual simulation right now, you're playing a game that is so real, you can't tell the difference between reality and the dream, it's so, such a realistic game, and you know, even Elon Musk, right, he says that there's a, there's only, there's only one in a billion chance that this is base reality, that this is actual, chances are that we're living in a simulation, right, so literally our computer games are already quite realistic right now, and they're gonna get so realistic one day that we can't tell that we're in a computer game right now, like this is so real, like we've stepped into the avatar and we're just playing the game, and then the question is, what's the, how do you win points in this game, what's the purpose of the game, and that's the question is the purpose of life, right, some people are thinking they're winning points by earning money, getting more money, accumulating more pleasures and expacations and pleasurable experiences and controlling life the way that they, their pleasures want to control them, but then some people also think that the winning of the game of life, the points is actually winning in virtues, this avatar growing in experience points, growing in, oh this avatar just grew in love, this avatar just grew in wisdom, this avatar is called George Cowell, that the witness consciousness is able to control, has just grown in wisdom and grown in love, grown in patience and grown in freedom, no matter the situation, right, maybe that's the winning the game of life, it's, you know, so, so step two, right, is this reminder to myself of what is truth and what is the purpose of this game, it is virtual simulation we're living in called life, and therefore I can bring compassion to the emotions that are rising, and the way I think about it is it's almost like these emotions that are rising, the judgments are like a kid, a kid that I love, a child within me, and some people actually literally call this like an entity within you, right, like a negative entity that's rising, it's attached to you, but instead of fearing the negative entity and hating it and wanting to detach from the negative entity, I feel compassion for it, a hungry ghost, right, instead of like fearing it, oh my god, this negative entity is possessing me, right, it's attached to me all my life, I bring compassion, it's like a kid that is part of me, part of this avatar anyway, and I feel compassion, oh yes, I know you, I recognize you, and I feel for you, and I don't have to do what you tell me, as a kid who is having a tantrum, you don't have to do what they say, you love the kid, then you pour compassion on the kid, but you don't have to do what they say, you can control the kid, right, you can say, no, no, we're not gonna have all the candy that you want, no, I'm not gonna go along with your tantrum, I love you, and I feel compassion for you, I know it's hard right now, I know it's hard, you know, you didn't get your candy, you didn't get the thing that you wanted, the toy that was promised to you, you didn't get that, right, oh, some kid bullied you, I'm so compassionate towards you, but we don't have to live in this tantrum, right, I feel compassion, and I watch that emotion arise, that of self-judgment and then throwing a tantrum, I feel compassion, I go, I love you, and it's okay, it's all gonna be okay, and I bring the reminder of the purpose of life and the truth of the whole big picture, that's step two, bringing that big picture and having, maybe step three then, is having compassion on the kid of these emotions that are arising from these judgments of myself or of somebody else or of the situation, I guess, okay, so step one, practice of witness consciousness, noticing the judgments, noticing the emotions that are rising as a result of the judgments, right, from the front of the head, you know, from the back of the head, noticing the front of the head is having those emotions and the heart having those judgments, right, or the emotions, step two is to remind myself from about the bigger purpose of life, and I'm judging myself for going way too long now, sorry about that, and then step three is to have compassion, based on that bigger understanding of life, to have compassion for that, these negative emotions or the negative entities or whatever it is, and to not have to go along with it, right, so step four is once I am allowing the emotions to arise and then pass, allowing the judgments to just kind of pass and letting the emotions of judgments or anger or sadness or depression or disappointment or fear kind of letting it pass, watching it and having compassion on it, letting it pass, letting it dissipate, then step four is I have a choice now, I can do something differently in this situation, and that the choice for me is what would be more loving and wise as an action in the situation, what would bring more love into the world, what would bring more wisdom to the situation, what is the action that would increase love in the world, what action would demonstrate wisdom in the world, right, and the situation towards this person, towards myself, and that's the four steps, you know, anyway, I'm just beginning, I feel like I'm a beginner in spiritual growth right now, I'm really like, oh my god, like people have been teaching this for thousands of years, I've heard it all my life, how come at, you know, at this age I'm just starting to understand it at this level, and I'm sure if I've watched this video in a year or five or ten or 20 years from now, I'm like, George, you were like, you were right in the beginning there, right, but anyway, I'm documenting this for my future self, thank you for watching this of you who are joining me on this journey and this sort of documentary, self-documentary, thanks Cat and Sharon, Damian, Rebecca, Heather, Bryce, Alex for joining me, those are the folks I can see right now in the comments area anyway, so anyway, I hope this is interesting in some way, and I wish you witness consciousness today, and I wish you lots and lots of compassion for yourself, particularly for your own judgments about yourself, and I wish you wisdom, that can come into the situations that you're in today, so blessings to you, and thanks for joining me.