your responsibility as the witness (article)

article below, cal. 580

I think of responsibility in a three-fold way: 

1. God (the Infinite field of Consciousness). Responsible for Creation, local conditions, outcomes.
2. You as the witness (awareness, intention, reality-testing capability). Responsible for individual karma and managing / transcending the ego.
3. The ego (a pet, an energy experiencer). Responsible for survival and success yet subject to false programming.

As the witness, it is our responsibility to make decisions of the will that declare and stand for integrity and truth within ourselves that moderate, tame, and ultimately transcend the ego with appropriate contexts and boundaries. But it is also our responsibility to care for and have compassion on the ego, understanding its presumptive role with love rather than harshness. 

Those who approach spiritual progress by attempting to "kill the ego" effectively negate love and end up in brutal places. There is nothing more savage than the spiritualized ego – a corruption of the witness – crushing the ego experiencer by heaping upon it guilt, shame, death, and doom. For this reason, as Doc suggested, it is best to think of the ego as a pet to be transformed by love rather than forced, abused or killed. Be good to "yourself", even though the ego isn't the real you.

Under-200, one is primarily identified with the ego energy experiencer rather than the witness. Operationally, then, the adult is not "in the room" while the ego pet shreds the furniture. Alternatively, the ego pet may have been so tormented and abused that it wallows in depression or misery, feeling cut off, alone or hopeless. The ego pet may long for a true adult to come to the room, or, it may be terrified and paralyzed contemplating the "adult" returning as a savage, spiritualized ego witness-judge-jury-executioner who inflicts pain and suffering.

In the latter case, we see the issue to be corrected lies not exclusively with the ego pet but with a corruption of the witness responsibility within us that torments the ego pet experiencer. Profoundly, this includes negative awareness, negative intention, and false reality-testing, which has EC (extra consciousness) written all over it. To overcome a situation like this, you as the witness must step forward and stand firmly in courage, determination and true authority to address, stand down, and oust the false, punishing EC witness from the psyche. 

Simply, you as the witness must take your true place as the adult in the room (the psyche) so that it can be serene, peaceful, still, silent and holy. There can still be an ego pet in there, but it is relaxed and content rather than anxious or vigilant: it feels protected and safe in your alignment with unwavering, benevolent authority.

Part 2

The real you can be seen as an intermediary between God and the ego. Your responsibility for transcending the ego means petitioning God to bless the ego and heal it. See suffering as belonging to the ego, with you as the designated, intercessory agent. 

Interestingly, God doesn't see the ego as real, and the ego doesn't see God as real. You're in the space in between, seeing each as real. So you're in the position of a "negotiator" who sees both "sides." 

You are to console, comfort and educate the ego, and at the same time to call upon God to radiate His power and blessing upon the ego, both for yourself individually and collectively for mankind. The ego can be healed, but that requires your compassionate intervention to supplicate God's help.

Atheists argue that if God was truly real and benevolent, there would be no human suffering or tragedy. However, this fails to recognize that God doesn't acknowledge the ego as real. The ego is the experiencer of suffering and tragedy, yet to God it is an illusion, unreal, and inconsequential. 

Seen from that point of observation, we can't logically expect God's peremptory, unsolicited intervention to establish personal, interpersonal, or world peace. That would be the equivalent of rewriting fiction. Instead, the human realm seems to be set up such that we must ask God for help with ego proclivities and the ensuing snags and suffering, wherein lies the opportunity for spiritual progress in our role as the intercessory witness.

In Reality, consequence is in not in the ego but in your decisions of the Will, your posture as the witness, and how you handle the ego. The ego has no power to make decisions of the Will.

The real you (as the witness) is innocent, unprogrammable "hardware," while the ego is ignorant and programmed. The ego needs your help and oversight to be disabused of its false programming, particularly its belief in the victim-perpetrator paradigm. The ego has the posture that it must control or be controlled. Without your help as the witness, it sees no other options. 

In a victim posture, the ego feels controlled and holds on to resentments as "evidence" which is then used to "justify" aggression and retaliation, whereby it becomes a perpetrator. Where is God in all this? Well, God is ever present, but none of this consequential to Him. 

The more revealing question is "Where are *you* in all this?" Why aren't you educating the ego out of its ignorance? Why aren't you consoling the ego in the hurt it feels? Why aren't you asking for God's blessing and healing to be upon the ego?

One reason may be that you've temporarily abdicated your responsibility as the true and faithful witness and stepped into the background. In that vacancy, an EC (extra consciousness) may deviously assume your witness responsibility. Now, this is a horrifying scenario for the ego pet, because negative ECs are ruthless and abusive to the ego pet, entailing the potential for grave, experiential suffering as self-blame and self-attack. No mercy for the small self calibrates at 30 ADAP.

Alternatively, instead of teaching the ego it is worthless, the EC may teach the ego it is a "white knight" servant of God, with the EC playing God and speaking to "righteous" vengeance against "enemies" of virtue and truth, or justifying "righting" wrongs by coercive force, such as by shaming or shunning those who aren't in compliance with the EC. In this case, the ego is amped up with the juice of false and unearned self-esteem that is unwittingly experienced as "empowerment," even as it is spreading the influence of EC deception and the EC itself.

In this way, the spiritualized ego is a radicalization of the ego pet by the programming of a potential EC false-witness that presents itself as God, pushing the real you out of the authoritative witness responsibility. So the EC usurps your true function and corrupt the ego pet.

The solution to ECs is to return to foundational, spiritual principles, such as unwavering kindness to yourself and others, to stand firmly in that truth and not subscribe to the false reality the EC is imposing on the psyche. Recognize the false recontextualizations (lies) the EC brings to your awareness and refuse them. See them as absurd, laughable. So that you don't go down a rabbit hole, recognize the cause of suffering is not what the EC says it is but the EC itself. 

With these recognitions, ask for God to process out the negativity of the EC, as by conduiting. (This is way more comfortable than "experiencing out"). In this way, you reassert yourself as the responsible witness and protector of the ego pet. This approach heals the ego's suffering, puts you back in a place of positive, spiritual consequence, and nudges out the EC by your "no matter what" stance and supplication of divine help.

Author: Brian Gibbs

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