The context for these videos
Each post in this short series is from Alec’s weekly livestream to the Facebook group Finding the Balance with Anxiety Freedom Cards. Each week I focus upon one of our innate resources or needs as depicted in the Anxiety Freedom Cards. And the reason I’m doing this is to show you how you too can live a life free from anxiety and stress.
Please let me know what you think by scrolling to the bottom and commenting below!
Below is a direct transcript from the video shown above.
Well, good afternoon. Welcome back to Alec’s Tuesday Two o’clock Topic on this Tuesday, the 9th of March, 2021. How are you doing hope you’re well. The topic for today’s conversation is one of our key innate resources. It’s our observing self, and I’ll be talking about what this means. It’s not one of the most obvious of our resources. You know, like we talk about rational mind or imagination. It’s fairly easy to imagine what we’re going to be talking about, but observing self takes a little bit of exploration, a little bit explanation.
Good afternoon. I’ve got from CG. Good afternoon to you CG. Hope you’re well, hope you’re enjoying what we have down here is sunshine at the moment, which is always good. Might get out for a walk later on.
So observing self. Yes. What are we going to say about this? Well, first of all, let me suggest if you have any questions about it, please put a comment in, as CG has just done in the comments below this post, and I will do my best to ask, answer those as we go through today.
And I, yes, and if you’re watching it on replay, please post a comment as well. Please interact with me. Let me know what you think. I, I have my own views about these things, but I’m really interested to know what your views are.
So let’s start with, what is the observing self? Well, there’s this wonderful book by Arthur Deikman: The Observing Self – Mysticism and Psychotherapy. And this was on the reading list for when I trained to become a psychotherapist and I do recommend it to anyone who’s interested. And I’ll, I’ll put a link under this post when I’ve finished for you to be able to find that out. I’ll just show it again Arthur Deikman. And I did that too quick. Arthur J Deikman – The Observing Self. I hope that’s clear. And Arthur Deikman was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the university of California in San Francisco. He died in 2013, but the other relevant part of his contribution to the things that I’ve studied is that he was a member of the editorial board of what used to be called the human givens journal before it was just called human givens.
And that book has some real wisdom in it. And I think this concept of the observing self is a really important concept. And it’s, I really encourage you to reflect on it and find out what it means to you. I’m going to read first two paragraphs from the training the manual from when I did my diploma in human givens, just because I think it really sets the tone.
And this is from it’s an extract. It says this page is adapted from the book that I just showed you. And it says the following:
It says the observing self is the transparent center. That which is aware. It is the most personal self of all because it’s supersedes thought, feeling and action for it experiences these functions. No matter what takes place, no matter what we experience, nothing is as central as the self that observes. In the face of this phenomenon, Descartes’ starting point “I think therefore I am” must yield to the more basic position “I am aware, therefore I am”.
The most important fact about the observing self is that it is incapable of being objectified. When you try to locate it ,to establish its boundaries, the task is impossible. Whatever you can notice or conceptualise, is already an object of awareness, not awareness itself, which seems to jump back a step when we experience an object. Unlike every other aspect of experience, thoughts, emotions, desires, and functions, the observing self can be known, but not located, not seen.
It says the observing self is the transparent center. That which is aware. It is the most personal self of all because it’s supersedes thought, feeling and action for it experiences these functions. No matter what takes place, no matter what we experience, nothing is as central as the self that observes. In the face of this phenomenon, Descartes’ starting point “I think therefore I am” must yield to the more basic position “I am aware, therefore I am”.And it goes on and and all of it’s worth reading if you have the time and the interest. But I think that gives a flavor of, of the slightly mystical nature of the observing self. However, having said that, I think it’s a really pragmatic and practical idea. And it’s something that we ought to be bringing into our lives on a daily basis, because it is absolutely key to having good emotional and mental health.
Pat Williams, another human givens practitioner. She created a CD called “Which you are you?”, and it was using some ideas from Robert Ornstein, his book Multimind. And in her metaphor of the opera stage, if you like, each person has many characters. So if I was talking about myself, I would have multiple characters. There’s the researcher Alec, there’s the therapist Alec, there’s the grandfather Alec, there’s the father Alec, there’s the musician Alec, there’s the skateboarder. These are all different facets of my personality. And they all have a role to play in, the husband Alec, I shouldn’t leave that out. They all have a role to play in my daily life, but the reality is the only one of those characters can be on stage at any time. The others, all the others that I mentioned who are not on stage at the moment are in the dressing rooms behind stage.
And it’s the director of the opera or the performance or the play or whatever my life is, is bringing into, who decides which character to bring on stage. So if I have an angry character say angry Alec, who tends to hog the stage and come out when he’s not really needed. And he says the same lines because he blows his top and he gets angry and the audience start to get a bit bored. Maybe not so much an angry character. Let’s, let’s use a depressed character because I was depressed once 20 years ago. If depressed Alec comes on stage and he looks at the floor and he’s a bit subdued, and he’s a bit boring because he says the same lines over and over again, like, Oh, why is this happened to me? And why can’t I think. And why can’t I work? And it’s all very depressing. The director of my play is my observing self. It’s, the, the director is the one who sees all the characters, who sees the context, who sees my whole life unfold from when I was a baby to the age I am now.
And it’s the director’s task to observe what’s going on and who’s on stage and call the next character on. And he may have to actually say actually, depressed Alec, would you kindly leave the stage? You know, we’ve heard your lines over and over again. We’re done with that. We want to bring on action Alec now to get busy and doing something that will raise his energy, raise his vibe and maybe help him slip out of that trance of depression. Now I’m not suggesting it’s as easy as that to overcome depression, but I think it’s an interesting concept that the director of the play is the observer is the observing self.
How do we access our observing self? Well, I’d love to know how do you access your observing self? How do you know when you’re accessing it? I’m going to talk a little bit around that idea. And I think a key part of being able to access your observing self is to be calm. You can’t really access this particular part of your personality, your pure awareness, when you’re highly emotional. When you’re involved in the narrow focus of attention, the ups and downs, the trials and tribulations of the roller coaster of life. You have to be able to calm yourself and stand back a little bit in order to even know your observing self. And if you’re the kind of person who is always busy, who always needs to be active, who always needs to be taking action, planning ahead, getting things done, then it’s possible that you are not familiar, particularly familiar with your observing self.
And so I’m interested to know what activities encourage this, almost it’s an antidote to being emotional because the emotions lock us into a trance state and narrow the focus of our attention. They get us to focus on the thing that’s bothering us, or that’s exciting us, or that’s puzzling us or scaring us or whatever the emotion is.
Emotions always lock our attention more narrowly. And I’ve said this before, in schools we’re taught focus our attention narrowly and we’re rewarded for being able to do that. Especially for long periods. I happened to be very good at that when I was a child. I was a good boy. I did what I was told and I wasn’t very rebellious, but I think it’s equally important that we learn to detach from the task in hand, when it’s done. To step back to see the bigger picture and to ask: “What else?” and we don’t seem to reward or teach people how to do that. And the key to be able to do it is to be able to access your observing self.
And somebody commented that they think, Oh, someone said, good afternoon, good afternoon to you too. And that’s not, there’s CG and somebody else. And someone said: “This is really interesting”. Thank you. I’m glad I’ve got your attention. Do, if you have any questions, please let me know.
And someone said, “I think you find it when you’re fully present.” Now that’s a nice way of putting it. I hadn’t thought about it in that way to be fully present. Yes, that’s true. Isn’t it? When you’re fully present, you are aware. You’re not distracted. You’re not on autopilot. You are dealing with reality.
And the observing self always is awareness. It’s always dealing with what’s actually going on. And so when it comes to the question of how do we access it, please drop any suggestions that you have in the comments. I’ve got some here, some obvious ones.
I lived for many years on a narrow boat on the river. And I find that sitting on a riverbank, watching the water pass by is a brilliant way to get calm and to stop being busy and to reflect. And I think this is maybe why so many people like fishing because it actually has that element within it. I’ve never been a fisherman, but obvious ways of accessing our observing self include things like mindfulness.
And the reason I say that is because when you’re mindful, if you’re practicing mindfulness, you’re, you might be observing your thoughts. And you’re very aware that your thoughts are not you, that they are like clouds that float past in the sky. You see them, you notice, Oh, I had a thought. And then you let it go. You don’t jump on it and explore it in detail. If you’re, if you’re doing mindfulness, you observe the thought and note it and let it go. So it’s not about stopping your thoughts because that’s virtually impossible. It’s about acknowledging that you are not the same as your thoughts, but you can observe them and you can, you can notice them as they come up out of seemingly nowhere and then pass on.
So anything that’s like mindfulness or meditating has the ability to tap into our observing self. I find that walking is a very good way for me to, to see the bigger picture, to, to stop being busy and to reflect on what’s really going on in my life. What are my priorities? That’s a little bit like planning and then, and visualising, but there is also an element of simply stopping and simply being aware that is very important to me. My daughter, who illustrated the cards. She doesn’t use this language necessarily, but she accesses her observing self when she’s running. And she goes for quite long runs on a regular basis.
But anything that involves that sort of being fully present as someone suggested, things like yoga, Tai Chi, Chi gung, activities that help you be present are going to help you access your observing self. If you’ve got a young child and you want to get them into their observing self, you call their name. Hey, David and David, whatever he’s doing thinks, “Oh, there’s an adult watching. What am I doing?” Stand back, see the bigger picture. And so there’s many ways that we can tap into this, but I think it’s really important to be aware of when we are able to access it. And when we’re not able to access it.
Why do we want to use it? Well, let’s start off in the therapy room.
If you are working with somebody and they’re emotionally upset, you need a certain level of rapport. You need to connect with them, but you also need a certain level of distancing of boundaried behavior, where you can observe what’s happening for someone without getting dragged into the drama of what’s happening for them. I think it’s quite interesting to look at this in response to the therapy room situation.
And there was a question on a Facebook group this week that said, how, “What are other ways of asking “How do you feel about that?” And it made me aware that I don’t often use that question because there is within the world of psychotherapy, a kind of an assumption that how we feel about things is the most important thing. Now, obviously it is important, but it’s only one of our resources.
You know, our emotions, how we feel about stuff are important. There’s a card for them, but they’re only one we might equally ask: “What are you aware of when you, when you experienced that?” Or you could say, “What do you think about it?” Or you might ask, “What do you imagine might happen?” Or you might ask:,”Does that trigger any memories for you?” Or you might ask: “What’s that like?” I’m just picking these resources almost, I’m going through them in order, but the idea is that asking how you feel about something – Yeah, there’s value in that. That’s great, but feeling is an emotion and it’s only one of many, and sometimes it’s better to use our rapport skill and connect with somebody or to use our observing self and stand back and look at the bigger picture.
We’ve got all of these resources. We should be using them in balance. To only get stuck on how we feel about something is I think a little bit limited.
So there’s a comment here that I’m just going to read. So this is interesting. I hope, I hope you don’t mind me sharing this it’s anonymous, so I’m not sure you won’t mind, but I’ll just put it up.
“I might ask a client to give a number out of 10 for their feeling. And I suspect when I ask a client what they would say suggest to a friend, family member in the situation, which is upsetting them, it allows them to be less emotionally aroused aware…”
Yes. I agree with that. Being able to ask them a question, whether it’s feeling or thinking or anything about it, actually presupposes that they can stand back and observe it. So that’s a really good way of getting people into their observing self rather than simply emoting, which sometimes is necessary. But it’s, I, it worries me sometimes that it’s seems to be the only tool in the toolbox for,sometimes.
So I’ve talked about if you watch, if you got a chance to watch the video in the, if you’re a member of the in8 membership, you’ll see in that video, I talk about the power tool of the mind and how it’s our mind is so powerful. You know, our ability to create, to, to envisage a different future, to be creative, to draw on resources, to make things happen in the world. And we are so capable and our mind is such an amazing thing. It’s like a power tool, it’s like a huge, great power tool that can capable of, you know, knocking down brick walls, or something. It’s like a big hammer drill, 5,000 watt hammer drill or something. And it’s important that we know where the off switch is, because if we put the power tool down without switching it off, it’s going to do damage.
And so I like this metaphor of saying that our observing self is our ability to find the off switch, because if we can’t stop thinking, when we go to sleep, when we go to bed and we can’t stop the mind racing with all of the things we’re thinking about or planning or prioritising, and we’ve got a problem, we know we need to know where the off switch is.
And the observing self is one way of talking about accessing that stillness, that bigger picture, that, that calmer appreciation of all that is going on. So I’ve talked, last time I was talking with, in the topic of movement last week and the week before I was talking about flow, and I’ve been thinking a lot about flow recently.
And in fact, I’m going to be doing some, some new videos on the subject of flow shortly, which I’ll let you know about when they’re, when they’re ready, but in a way the observing self is the antidote to flow. We have to, if you’re when we’re in flow, everything’s great. I mean, it’s a lovely place to be, but, but life doesn’t get any easier if we spend all of our time in flow. You know, there are things that need doing like clothes that need washing and food that needs preparing and you know, the normal tasks of everyday life. So it’s very difficult to be in flow all the time. And it’s not very healthy, really. Observing self is the thing that takes us back into seeing the bigger picture, but we need to use both. We need to be able to move fluidly in and out of these various states.
So what was I going to share next? I think, let me just check the time. It’s 20 past two. Any questions? Let me just check the comments in the Facebook group. Please bear with me while I just refresh the page, Seeing what’s been going on. I can’t find it. Happens to me so often this, there we go. That’s not right. So we have a comment here that I haven’t seen before. Oh no, it’s the wrong post. I do beg your pardon. I can’t seem to find what I wanted to find right now.
So is it time for a story? Is there anything else to say about our observing self? Let, next week I will be going through the worksheet so we can explore any further thoughts on this topic. If you have any questions before next week. Cause we do two weeks on each card. So this is the first week where I introduced the general idea. Next week, we’ll work through the, the worksheet and make it maybe a little bit more practical. So please let me know what your thoughts are, what your questions are regarding the observing self.
But now I think it’s time that I told you a story. And the story I’m going to tell is from a lovely little book called Hamun and Giben. Just go back to, this is the book by Alan Wakeman. And it’s, it’s a collection of quite short stories, which are quite, quite, they make you think, they make you stop and think. And this one’s particularly appropriate for the topic of the observing self. And in this book, Hamun is the human. And Giben is, is the being, human being. And I like it, cause it sounds like human givens as well. But, and so they have this interaction and it’s always, each story is, has a point really? So this is how it goes.
Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.
Hamun long was walking in the forest one day when he came across Giben sitting on the ground, meditating.
“What are you doing, Giben?” he asked,
Giben didn’t reply.
“Why are you sitting in that ridiculous position?” Hamun persisted.
Giben said nothing.
“Answer me!” said Hamun. “Why do you hope to, what do you hope to accomplish with this stupid behavior?”
Giben said nothing.
“Don’t pretend that you can’t hear me!” said Hamun, now thoroughly annoyed. “I know you can!” “Why are you wasting your time in this way when there’s so much to be done?”
Giben said nothing.
Hamun snorted and looked around the clearing in his irritation. He saw a bird on a branch and a sly smile passed across his face. “Listen Giben” he said, “Can you hear that bird singing? It’s sitting on that tree over there. It’s very pretty. Open your eyes and see for yourself.”
Giben said nothing. And he didn’t open his eyes.
Hamun rattled the bag he was carrying. “Aren’t you hungry, Giben?” he asked. “I’ve got some fruit in my bag. Would you like a piece?”
Giben said nothing.
At last Hamun sighed and fell silent, and sat down on the ground next to Giben. Together, they listened to the sounds of the forest.
“Hello Hamun!” said Giben.
That’s today’s story. And I hope you liked it. “I like the power tool image”, said somebody on Facebook. I wish I knew who it was. Thank you for commenting. I appreciate it. Yes, that’s all I have to say today. I hope you’re doing well.
As I said, many times, please post any questions or any observations or any suggestions in the comments below whether you’re watching live or on replay and I’ll continue this discussion next Tuesday at two o’clock for the second installment on the observing self. In the meantime, whatever you’re doing, don’t forget to keep breathing.
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Thanks, Alec
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