The observer must also remain unpictured

When you begin recognizing thoughts, you may discover that experience does not require complete identification with every event inside it. Anger can be present without becoming the whole of you. A thought can arise without becoming a command.

This capacity for awareness is precious. Yet the mind soon tries to draw it.

It imagines an eye behind the eyes, a higher person seated above the head, a luminous witness watching the ordinary self. Then the practitioner begins concentrating on that image and calling it awareness.

The Godward Way treats such pictures as further experiences. They can also be caught and offered.

The Big Eye is a useful expression only while it points toward the capacity to recognize experience. It need not become an invisible anatomical structure, a separate character inside the mind, or a throne for a superior self.

There is no need to find the observer’s appearance. If an appearance is found, it is something appearing.

This discernment should remain light. A person can become trapped in checking whether they have accidentally imagined the observer, then checking the checking, then doubting the whole exercise. That spiral makes subtlety into an ordeal.

Offer the checking too. Return to a simple addressed intention. You do not have to solve the philosophy of consciousness before you can pray.

Nor does awareness become God because it recognizes experience. The Godward movement retains the difference between the one offering and the One addressed. The recognition of an inner event does not erase creaturely dependence.

The practice is therefore free of a demand to dissolve every distinction. Relationship can deepen without requiring us to declare that the creature and Creator are the same being.

Practice: when you notice yourself picturing a witness inside you, recognize the picture without attacking it. Offer it while remaining Godward. Then attend to the ordinary situation before you. Awareness need not be visually represented to remain available.