The Watcher

I remember the old odd days when I would sit in the woods on a tree trunk, or on a bench by a meadow, and watch nature playing its part in front of me. I would just watch, thinking very little. I’d leave my life aside, with all its worries and miserable sides. It was not worth looking at, not now, not at this point. For now I’d be a watcher. I knew there might have been a secret here, in this watching, in this looking at anything, at shadowing trees, flowers dancing in the breeze, stack of woods, clouds drifting in the sky. I intuited that it was all there, contained in the watching, enveloped within my experience. In this gaze was the answer. In this questioning was life throwing its identity at me, revealing its essence at last. At least I believed so. But it had to be a skilled watching. It had to have no intention intertwined with intention. It had to stand on this fine line. There was a strange alchemy taking place here, somewhere between the seer and the seen. A sacred, secret brew where reality could be unveiled, if only I could watch with the right, finely tuned focus.

After all, what other reality do we have than this one simple reality of ourself? What other than this presence? Just this presence, this watching, this being, this feeling. Just this. After all, this is all there is. I may look as much as I might, I won’t find anything outside of it. It is all there. I am stuck with it. So I might as well be there, stay there, dissect it, pull it apart. I might learn something of myself, of this looking at something, at anything. As if right there was concealed a hint never caught before, never encompassed, something which could resolve a miserable life. I was quite certain that if I looked hard enough, not at what I was seeing, not at anything out there, but at what this watching is made of, what it consists of, then I might free fall a long way within myself, to land in a new place, a new way of being, a freshness. So I stayed silent, enclosing myself with myself, and watched. Some may call it meditation. But I didn’t know that.

Well, my intuition was right. There is right here, a secret to be felt, guarded behind the limitations of my mind. A hint that my thoughts had concealed, along with my feelings, my identifications, memories, perceptions, sufferings — all that endless, formidable toil. And just there, right in the middle of it, something awakens, slowly pervades it all, and shows me what I am. Ah! If only we could clothe all that we are doing with this quality of watching. And all that we are watching with this quality of being. When all that you are looking at is looking at you. When all that is seemingly other is discovered to be yourself. When you can live and breathe at last, and feel who you are truly. And stay there, in the woods, in the sunlight, amongst shadows, but above all in your newly discovered self. There only exists the song of a bird, the river rushing by, and the silence breathing into it all, the fantasia of my life suddenly melted within one single being. This is where duality is stripped of its reality. Where the One has it all. And where the thousand things — including my old self — are clothed and replaced by their essence.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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