The contemplative has helped me with my thoughts and feelings

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So the contemplative builds
our capacity to be self aware

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and develops what we call
and what Buddhism calls

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the inner witness.

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So when we're sitting in silence

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and we're watching our
thoughts and our feelings go by

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we develop this sense that
we're actually not our thoughts

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and our feelings which is very
counter to what we're taught.

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Even our very language says
I am happy.

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I am sad right.

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So we so closely identify with
our thoughts and our feelings

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that we think we are our
thoughts and our feelings.

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But when we're sitting in silence
and we're watching

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this kind of feelings, sensations,
thoughts coming and going,

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kind of like clouds in the sky

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we've become start to become
aware of the thing that is watching

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right.

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What is the inner witness?

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And my teacher Richard Rohr
would say the inner witness

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is in fact our true
self who we really are.

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And so what's so lovely about
engaging our inner witness

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and having an inner witness
involved in our activism is that

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we can begin to see
our motivations for things.

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And so often we're so
unaware of our motivations

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that we're just kind
of on automatic pilot

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and we're just
reacting and behaving

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just based on our you know
our training or acculturation,

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our neural pathways.

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And what the inner witness does
is kind of gives us this choice

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of whether or not we want
to react

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and live our lives from
this automatic place

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or if we want to be more
conscious and choose another way.

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So in activism so often we are
facing very difficult conditions,

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front line situations,
pain, a great deal of pain

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and not just personal pain
but collective pain

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you know which is oppression.

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And it's really important in those circumstances

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to be able to interrupt our
automatic responses to things

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and be able to really gauge and really discern

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what's the most strategic thing.

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What's the most strategic
response that I can have

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in this situation.

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And without that inner witness
we don't have the choice.

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We're just kind of enslaved
to our automatic behavior.

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And so our inner witness is
very key to having more freedom

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and actually having the choice
to be more strategic

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and to show up in different
ways, more positive ways

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and to be more self aware of you
know what our motivations are.