One day I was chopping onions and potatoes in our little monk run cafe, meditating with the eyes open, like I'd done a million times before. All of a sudden, I had to stop, because I realized that I had been in Silence for who knows how long. This was not a shallow dip either, but an experience where it felt like a comfortable 100 feet between the bottom of this space and my head.
Sinking back again into that Silence, I found myself falling into an endless space "behind my body." Relaxing further, I found that I was everywhere. This space was simply there, comfortably present with all that was going on- providing the sense of sitting in Silence while thinking, talking, and chopping vegetables. This is commonly referred to as witnessing consciousness, or pragya (I need Sanskrit lettering and transliteration- suggestions are welcome!), often considered one of the major roadsigns of the developing first stage of enlightenment. Like so many other things with Ascension, one doesn't have to do anything fancy to make it happen. It’s a depth of experience that has been there the whole time. As with so many other things, when people start to consciously experience it, they describe it as both refreshingly new and as something they’ve known their whole life. It is both supremely magical and as mundane as dirt. If meditation practice is like diving into the depths of the Ocean, witnessing consciousness is the nervous system being loose enough to sit in the fathomless Silence while still being able to enjoy the multifaceted waves of the surface, and everything in between.
With a practice, it happens as a result of relaxing into Samadhi and the accompanying healing that loosens the knots of the nervous system (new wineskins for new wine). In my life, like in most cases, this did not stick around permanently with the first few conscious experiences, but went in and out for awhile, gradually staying around for longer periods. In fact, like every other rediscovered depth, it is developing- stretching, deepening, revealing. If you have a good practice- relax and savor the scenery along the way, you just might find yourself walking through some wondrous unexpected doorways.