Contemplative Living: November Prequel

An Interview with Great Love & the Witness

“If I told you the truth about God, you might think I was an idiot.” - Kabir

In an unexpectedly pleasant turn of happenstance, I had the opportunity to interview two rather extraordinary guests to discuss some questions we’ve been exploring around growing up and waking up.

My first guest goes by many names: God, Source, Ineffable, the Divine Ground of Being, the Beautiful One. For our conversation, I’ll simply call her Great Love. My second guest is equally difficult to pin down: Pure Awareness, the Seer, the Observer, the Watcher. We’ll simply call him the Witness. I posed the same questions to each and it’s my great pleasure to share their responses.

Me: Welcome and thanks for being here. Let’s start with the obvious. Who are you?

Witness: No problem. Always here for you. I’ll let Great Love kick it off.

Great Love: Super, I guess it’s just like me to get things started. Well, you’ve already given me quite a few names. God, Source, the Beautiful One, Mother, and Father... wow, that one sure has some staying power, doesn’t it? Some would say I’m unnamable, not this or that. I don’t mind. Call me whatever helps you find me. But if you really want to know, I’m the generosity of infinite Love giving itself away as you and everything else since… well, since before the beginning.

Me: Wonderful, thank you. And witness, how about you?

Witness: Well, I’m the one who noticed you asking the question.

Me: That’s it?

Witness: For now.

Me: Okay then, let’s turn this around. Who am I?

Great Love: Oh, that’s easy. You’re the one I’m smitten with.

Me: That’s very sweet, but I was hoping for something a little more specific.

Great Love: Okay… how about this. You are a capax Dei, a cup, a capacity, a channel in which the white hot flame of divine Love bursts forth as a spark residing deep within, and yet never separate, showing up as this little God-flavored expression of me poured into this one unrepeatable moment happening now called you.  In other words, you’re unfigure-outable.

Me: Wow. Okay… umm. Witness, how would you answer the question?

Witness: Who do you think you are?

Me: Um, I’m supposed to ask the questions.

Witness: Humor me.

Me: Okay. I’m Patrick. Husband. Father. Grandfather. Teacher. Writer...

Witness: Stop. That’s good enough. And you’re aware of all those things?

Me: Of course.

Witness: Then they can’t be the whole of who you are. You just observed them.

Me: So… who’s doing the observing?

Witness: Exactly.

Me: You’re being cagey. From your perspective, who am I?

Witness: You are the awareness in which Patrick appears. Patrick has a body, roles, fears, and so on, but you are not any one of them. These identities come and go but the awareness remains.

Me: So, you’re saying I’m not Patrick?

Witness: Patrick is real. He’s just not all that you are.

Me: Okay, my heads starting to hurt. Let’s move on. How do we know either of you is real?

Witness: Find out for yourself. Do the experiment.

Me: I’m not sure what you mean.

Witness: You’re asking for proof that I’m real, yes? I’m saying, do the research. Meditation is one of the oldest, most tested, and most reproduced experiments in human awareness. People have been performing essentially the same thing for centuries: sit down, become quiet, look within, and see what you find.

Me: And what will I find?

Witness: A sense of freedom, release, and spaciousness…

Great Love: Ah, yes! That’s where I come in… again.

Me: Great Love, you want to add something here about proof of being real?

Great Love: Yes, you already know me… beyond knowing. Close your eyes. Sense. We've already met. You just didn't know. Remember that night beneath the stars when you suddenly felt impossibly small and completely at home? Or the inexplicable tenderness that sometimes rises out of nowhere and breaks your heart open. My sweet, brown-eyed boy, don’t you know? I can't offer you anything less than everything I already am. But you... only you can awaken to this.

Me: But wait, aren’t those just chemical reactions in my brain?

Great Love: Of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?

Me: Well, doesn’t that explain them?

Great Love: It explains what’s happening in your brain. It doesn’t explain what’s happening to you. Music is vibrations in the air. A sunset is electromagnetic radiation. Love involves hormones and neurotransmitters. Knowing how something happens doesn’t tell you what it is.

Me: So, brain chemistry doesn’t prove you’re not real?

Great Love: No. It doesn’t prove anything when it comes to me, real or not. Brain chemistry is simply internal objective functioning combined with internal subjective experience. But truly, this just makes you more confused. You’re looking in the wrong place. I told you, you know me beyond knowing. I’m not something you prove. I’m something you encounter.

Me: Okay, so, if you’re both always here, why don’t we experience you all the time?

Witness: Because you suffer from a case of mistaken identity.

Me: Meaning?

Witness: You confuse all the little things you call “I” with the awareness that sees them. Your thoughts, your fears, your desires, your roles, your body, your story. You identify the Seer with the things being seen.

Great Love: Yes! Truth. You’re like an oyster in the ocean searching for water, reluctant to open, while inside you all along is the pearl of great price.

Me: Okay, so I’ve gotta be honest. This is pretty frustrating for those of us who really want to know you two. So, if we’re an oyster, how do we open up?

Witness: I already told you.

Me: Right. Meditation. Do the experiment.

Witness: You’re catching on.

Me: Great Love?

Great Love: Fall into me.

Me: How so?

Great Love: Remember teaching five-year-old Carlie to jump to you in the deep end of the pool? What did you do?

Me: Well, I swam to the deep end and waited for her to jump.

Great Love: And then you caught her.

Me: Yes, and then I caught her.

Great Love: Could you imagine a situation in which you would've missed?

Me: No, of course not.

Great Love: (pause) …I’m waiting in the deep end.

Me: Well, um, how do I know I’m doing it right and not just telling myself what I want to hear?

Great Love: Look at your attitudes and behaviors. Are you becoming more loving? I don’t mean “acting” more loving. I mean, authentically finding yourself to be more compassionate? More humble? Less certain everything is about you? More patient with the people who drive you crazy? Is your circle of care getting wider?

Witness: And are you becoming freer? Less likely to believe every thought that wanders through your head, defend every opinion, or become every emotion that arises? Can you notice what’s happening inside you without immediately becoming it? Oh, here’s a good one. Can you laugh at yourself and your mistakes?

Me: Okay, so love, freedom, self-deprecation. Sounds like the 60s. I can work with that. But then I have to ask. Great Love, if you’re really giving yourself away in every moment, why is there so much suffering?

Great Love: Yes, well, sadly that is a tough one. Maybe even the most difficult.

Me: But there is an answer?

Great Love: Yes, and it starts with creation. You see, it’s real, but not like most people think. It isn’t a puppet show with me pulling the strings. For 13.8 billion years it’s been colliding, unfolding, giving birth, and dying.

Me: So, it’s evolution?

Great Love: Well, yes and no. Let’s save the details for another book. For now, let’s agree that creation is the advance into creative novelty.

Me: Okay, my simple ears hear this as evolution. Anyway, what’s this got to do with suffering?

Great Love: Well, you’re not going to like this, but that freedom to become something new comes with consequences. Stars explode. Bodies break. And human beings are free to love one another or hurt one another terribly. I give myself completely to this unfolding, but I don’t control every moment of it.

Me: You don’t cause suffering?

Great Love: No. Absolutely not. Suffering is part of an unfinished, progressing creation. And let me be clear, I do not need your suffering. I do not send it to teach you something.

Me: Then where are you when we suffer?

Great Love: Where else could I be? In it. With you. As close as your next breath. I cannot promise that nothing will break your heart. It will. But when it does, Love can hold you when you can no longer hold yourself.

Me: Okay, this might take me a bit to digest. Witness, how about you? Why is there suffering?

Witness: Because you resist what is.

Me: That sounds a little harsh. What about someone who has cancer?

Witness: You misunderstand. Pain and suffering are not the same thing. Pain is real. Cancer hurts. Loss hurts. Grief hurts. I’m not asking you to pretend otherwise.

Me: So, what are you saying?

Witness: I’m saying pain can become suffering when you become identified with it. You become the pain. It becomes mixed in with who you are. Separate the pain from the suffering and let the suffering go.

Me: Sorry, I still don’t get it.

Witness: Okay. Imagine you wake up tomorrow and your doctor tells you that you have cancer. That diagnosis is real. The fear is real. The treatments may hurt. Your body may hurt. That’s pain.

Me: And the suffering?

Witness: “Why me? This isn’t fair. What if I die? What will happen to my family? I should have taken better care of myself. My life is ruined.” Notice what just happened. The cancer is here, now. But your mind has traveled into the past, projected itself into the future, and created a hundred additional moments of pain that haven’t happened.

Me: So, I’m supposed to just accept that I have cancer?

Witness: Accept that this moment is already this moment. Then you’re free to decide what to do with it. Let the rest go.

Me: That sounds like denial or repression.

Witness: Oh, no, quite the opposite. Denial says, “This isn’t happening.” Repression says, “I’m not feeling this.” Acceptance says, “This is happening and I am feeling all of it.” Acceptance doesn’t ask you to feel less. It asks you to stop arguing with what’s already true.

Me: So, I can be terrified or angry, hurt or confused?

Witness: Yes, of course. All of those.

Me: And still accept what is?

Witness: Yes, that’s it.

Me: But it still hurts.

Witness: Of course it does, but you’re no longer adding to the suffering that’s already there.

Me: Okay, I see and that is helpful. So, we need to start bringing this interview to a close. As I’ve been listening to you, I’m wondering if you two are talking about the same thing?

Witness: Not quite. It’s an easy confusion to make, but no. I’m what you might call localized awareness, the space in which everything you experience appears.

Great Love: And I’m not simply what’s looking. I’m what’s giving itself away as the looker, the looking, and everything being looked at.

Witness: And if you think that’s confusing, wait until you discover One Taste, haha!

Me: Alrighty, you two are making my brain scrunch up. One last question. What do I do tomorrow morning when the coffee isn’t kicking in, the dog is sick, and I’m running late to a meeting?

Witness: Breathe. Be in your body. Taste the quality of the moment in your heartspace and allow the mind to open. Feel the freedom and spaciousness, and then…

Great Love: Fall into me. In that moment of letting go, of emptying, I will fill you and you will know how to move forward in love.

Me: Beautiful. Thanks to our two special guests, Witness and Great Love, for joining us as we continue to explore the simple complexities of living a contemplative life in today’s world.

Peace out,

Author’s Note: Great Love and the Witness are imaginary guests (really?!), but the ideas shared here certainly aren’t mine alone. Their voices are loosely inspired by the work of contemplatives and thinkers who have shaped my own understanding, particularly James Finley, Richard Rohr, Ken Wilber, Evelyn Underhill, Tara Brach, Russ Hudson, Cynthia Bourgeault, Alfred North Whitehead, and Sri Ramana Maharshi, along with the wisdom of the Christian and Buddhist contemplative traditions. Their ideas have been freely adapted, combined, and occasionally played with throughout this imagined conversation.