Death Makes Life Possible: Revolutionary Insights on Living, Dying, and the Continuation of Consciousness by Marilyn Schlitz.

Note Redhouse’s statement that “In our mind, there’s some type of judgment because we have not met certain criteria. We’re comparing our self with some ideal.” In my metaphor it’s the Watchbird’s judgment and his/her ideal (that we’ve internalized.)

How to get to Redhouse’s unconditional love-of-self state (without the 48 weeks of medical treatment) is the topic of so many self-help and spiritual books that I think it’s the real deal.

Witness view – from Joan Jacobs (via Googling on DuckDuckGo – link my emphasis – just using Jacobs to get a definition.):

The mind is the inner judge. Basically all the mind does is to constantly categorize, evaluate and comment on everything we say or do. Becoming aware of the commentator creates distance between you and the commentary.

When you’re able to watch the commentary objectively you are far less involved. Instead of "This is bad" you may say "Aha, there is that crazy little commentator again... that's quite amusing!" Now that’s a totally different experience.

Drawing from Buddhism, we must embrace the stand point of the witness. Witnessing is the ability to observe what’s going on in your life as if from the side, as a witness, without involvement or a specific agenda.

The witness perspective is very similar to the perspective of a scientists or researcher, who collect data and observe it without a pre-conceived idea of what the outcome should be.

Inner Peace is experienced when we step out of our minds for a moment and objectively watch what’s going on in the mind from a distance.

My black box – my life (your life) as seen in response to the inner Watchbird – that long sequence of stuff we do that gets the thumbs down from the inner judge and keeps on building what I think of as this long, twisting sort of black box it’s so very hard to get out of for very long or very often. This is the real box you’d like to be able to think outside of, and sometimes can, but often feel trapped in. It doesn’t matter if you have someone to blame for all this; it’s still the box. Most worrying about the future also takes place in this never-ending box.

Constructing another ego – I think of this as coming slowly from the practice of taking the witness stance on the black box. That’s the hope, at least.

Loving heart, open mind, pure intention – I came across this on the internet someplace as a goal to set for oneself in life. It defines the new ego I personally strive for. I think of my intention as not being pure when it is striving to satisfy or appease the Watchbird. That’s because that’s not the real me doing that striving to please and placate. The real me is or was there at birth and for some time before this please-the-inner-judge thing got going, and it shows up now from time to time, too, – as when in practice I find the witness vantage point for a while.

Narcissus – walking one day out of the fear and loneliness of his early childhood, this mythical fellow came across his reflection in a pond and fell in love with it. What a strange myth. Why does this happen to us?

Some variation on the theme of unloved, unwanted, and abandoned played in his life and mine. He fell in love with that fine face in the pond because, if he could only keep on believing he was so handsome, he felt he could please the Watchbird. That was what that old bird wanted, for him to be smart, good-looking and successful in ways that would please the bird. And Narcissus spent the rest of his life intent on maintaining his worth to all the world and secretly anguishing over all his failures, that loss of face. This was a false life of impure intention, not only because it was always an act, but also because the show was to please and placate the Watchbird. What about the real Narcissus? The one before the pond came along, that foolish dream, and the one even now still only needing to give and receive love while exploring the world around him for what he finds attractive and challenging.

These metaphors tell the same story as Stanley R. Block’s vision of an identity system, an idea I explore at some length on the next page back in my Fifth Remembrance series.

What follows here is a bit of a mess, but it covers important ground to me. First I’ve dropped in one of my Evernotes on a book I’ve been reading – Death Makes Life Possible, by Marilyn Schlitz. The title (Getting a handle on chagrin – it’s the love, isn’t it?) shows the relevance to the discussion back on The Fifth Remembrance 3. The Schlitz passage is about Tony Redhouse and includes some yellow highlighting done in my Kindle version. LOP in my comment on the Redhouse refers to Loving heart, Open mind and Pure intentions, explained farther below, as are Black Box and some other terms of my own.