Twelve Positive Habits of Spiritually Centered People. Mark Thurston

discovers that he has trouble splitting his attention in the midst of living his life, and he struggles greatly with the new discipline. In all kinds of situations he attempts to be aware of his behavior routines and his automatic mind dialogues. But the attention of a “witnessing self” is constantly interrupted by other trains of thought.

      One afternoon, after weeks of struggling to “split” his attention by means of self-observation, he becomes angry with a gas attendant who will not allow credit card payment at the pump. A sign says it’s allowed, and the man doesn’t want the inconvenience of having to walk all the way over to the teller. They exchange harsh words across the station pavement, and the man leaves in a huff. Extremely mad and frustrated, the man is caught up in a flurry of angry dialogue in his head. As he drives away, he notices his gas cap bouncing down the road after him because he had removed it at the pump and absentmindedly put it on top of the car before the argument.

      But the silly sight in the rearview mirror of his gas cap getting hopelessly lost in the traffic behind him suddenly awakened something in him—that witnessing identity. The witnessing self separated with its attention, and it now started observing the mental dialogue. It could immediately see how the “angry customer” side of his personality had been dealing with the situation in an almost unconscious knee-jerk, reactive way. The man was able to hold the witnessing attention only for a minute, and then it vanished. But in that time, he stepped out of the situation and observed how he handled it. The witnessing self gave him the perspective to see that the situation didn’t necessarily demand rage.

      This kind of self-observation is a powerful, positive habit for spiritually centered people. Once there has been some initial success with this method, it can lead to more than just recognizing specific traits or aspects of the personality. Self-observation applied to our lives lets us recognize the patterns and themes that seemingly control us and keep us from fulfilling our potential.

      For example, a woman was in an unhappy relationship with her boyfriend. She was reluctant to end the relationship because she feared that he was the best she would find. But the problems were too great to ignore and she dumped him.

      Dating again, the woman saw that she had nothing to fear; there were plenty of nice men to choose from. After a short time she found herself involved with a wonderful man, and everything was going as well as it could. But soon she began to be disillusioned with him; the same issues arose with the new man as with the previous boyfriend. Convinced that all the men she meets are the same horrible package, she ended the second relationship.

      But the problem is not the boyfriends; the problem is the woman. The state of her inner being—her level of consciousness—is identical in dealing with both men. She is perpetuating the unproductive theme in which she finds herself. Nothing had changed from the first man to the second; it was a different boyfriend but she is in the same relationship.

      In a similar fashion, by practicing the positive habit of self-observation, you may find yourself recognizing recurrent themes. You may see a pattern in your past and present that keeps being relived. And when you identify such themes, you’ll likely find that the outcome of these repeated patterns doesn’t make you very happy.