"Go to a coffee shop. Sit by the bar with the glass windows and look out. Look at all the people running to catch a train. All the girls with one too many shopping bags. All the couples too in love to care. Then you’ll see it - a bit of yourself in everyone. And somehow, sitting alone in a coffee shop had never felt so good."
Self Observation is the simple technique of observing one’s thoughts and how they interplay with emotion. This is important because most people go through life never truly understanding how thought affects emotion. They simply think and feel even with they do not want to think and feel about a particular subject. In fact, most people are unaware that we even have the capability to do this. When we learn to observe our thoughts we come to the realization that there is a distinction between “I” and the inner talking. One cannot observe one. It takes two, an observed and an observer.
Then an amazing thing happens. When we start to self observe we gain control. You will observe a strange phenomena. This ball of negative emotion does not want to be observed. Somehow it has an awareness that to be observed is to be controlled.The simple fact of observing a thought and the emotion which follows gives us this ability. It starts slowly at first but then the more we do it the better at it we become.
This is how we do it:
Step out of your mind as if you were a completely dispassionate and objective observer. Listen to the thoughts and watch how they change the feeling. Visualize the sadness as a pulsating ball of feeling located about four fingers above your navel. Focus on it. Feel it change.
Now for the final part. Breathing. A very special, ancient kind of breathing. Sitting, back straight breath deeply through your nose and visualize the breath as it encounters the ball of sadness. Hold the breath for a few seconds and while you pull your abdomen inward and upward then release the breath slowly. Without your doing anything at all you will feel a lessening of the sorrow. Stay focused on the ball and use the breathing to dissipate it.
Experiment with this. Learn to use this technique to focus on your body. Learn to observe your body carefully and, most of all, mindfully. Listen when it is hungry, observe how your body reacts to hunger. Listen when it is fatigued. Listen when it is aroused. Listen to the body when you are angry. Feel the heart rate jump. note the effect on breathing. Pay attention to all of the sensations it offers you. See how mood changes with these factors.
Self observation offers immediate results and control comes fairly effortlessly once the observation starts.
A massive years long storm moves across the northern hemisphere of Saturn. Photo taken by the Cassini orbiter, provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory-Caltech.
"I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark."
