The Four Levels of Witnessing: Pt.1 - Self-Witnessing

Deep natural companion relationships are based on the reciprocity of witnessing each other. Our base level of witnessing is our consciousness witnessing our mind and body’s experience, understanding what we process and see as and after events occur. The second level of witnessing is our significant others, our chosen partnered souls as well as our caretakers, guardians or parents and close siblings. The third level of witnessing is our peers, extended family, and our friends; how they witness us and see us go through life. The fourth level is subject to our interpretation; our perceived understanding of how strangers appear to receive and respond to us from what we can objectively observe and identify, without our mind and fears running away with it as that would bring us back to the first level. 

Self-Witnessing

We play an active role in our relationship with self. We have a knowledge of ourselves that is undoubtedly deeper and more intimate than anyone else can have with us. This is another of our great strengths and weaknesses as no one can lie to us quite as effectively as we can lie to ourselves. No matter how much of every detail of your thoughts, history, dreams, and goals you share with another, there is always more to us as we are infinite beings.

Self-witnessing differs from self-reflecting on the basis that self-reflecting involves connotations of history, decisions, and is within our perspective which typically includes the dichotomy of what's right or wrong, whereas self-witnessing is an impartial, active role of the observation of self in the now. Between stages of self-witnessing and self-reflecting there is the necessity of an active belief system. If there is none, the connection will be direct, solely reliant on intuition based on underlying inherited beliefs. Without a firm, self-actualized belief system the self is relatively feral in regard to internal and external influences in which the illusive perspective of the absence of Love is prone to taking over the narrative.

The relationship with self is the most important as it is the base link in the social chain. If Love is not constantly flowing in the relationship with self, Love given down to the other links is limited and conditional. We cannot give infinite amounts of Love when our first link of Love is broken. We may still be able to give Love, but it cannot come back, cannot be accepted back if we have closed off our link from cycling our Love back into our self. We will desperately try to seek out validation, attention, and Love from others in efforts to fill the void that is ultimately not giving and receiving Love to and from ourselves.

Excerpt from, “Love Over Fear: A Foundation for Autonomy”