I belong to a women’s group that meets very infrequently (although we all love it when we do meet) This page was inspired by a meeting we had a couple of weeks ago when we were talking about Eckhart Tolle and trying just to allow ourselves to witness our thoughts and not get attached to them. Not as easy as it sounds! One of our members lovely 25 year old daughter died one year ago in a fire in Paris. We all so admire how she has dealt with this unimaginable tragedy, and one of the main things she does to survive is not attach to her thoughts but just keep returning to the present moment. Listening to her speak makes me resolve to do this more also, after all, my thoughts must be very petty compared to hers. I used the image of the thoughts drifting into my mind through a window, and I just watch them as they pass through and allow them to float out the door.

To create this page, I took a photo of my own eyes. First I tried fading it out to black (on photoshop) but it looked like I was wearing a burka, so then I faded it out to skin colour. Then I cut it out and blended it into the page more with acrylic paint. The window had a light brown surrounding, and the door a dark brown, so I tried to match this with paint to blend them into the page and then blended both browns into the skin colour above. This was quite difficult, I have trouble with acrylic paint it seems to dry so fast, before you have a chance to blend it! Then I wrote some examples of the kinds of thoughts I might be likely to have. I must say, I am pleased with this page, I like the way my funny little eyes are floating up there, I love the window and door and I love that this page is really meaningful to me as a reminder to summon up my witness more often!

To finish this post I will leave you with a quote from Eckhart Tolle (who I consider one of the great teacher/philosophers of our time)

“Be present as the watcher of your mind — of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations.  Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react.  Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future.  Don’t judge or analyze what you observe.  Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction.  Don’t make a personal problem out of them.  You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.”

Eckhart Tolle