Witnessing the World through the Diamond Lens
We live in an age of spectacle, where the world’s pain arrives on our screens faster than our hearts can keep up. War, cruelty, corruption—they flash across our awareness like endless breaking news. And in the face of so much discord, what are we to do? Tune out? Collapse in grief? Lash out in reactive righteousness?
Or… is there another way to be with the world?
The Diamond Approach® offers a precise and liberating distinction between observation and witnessing.
The witness is not outside of experience, nor is it entangled in it. It is the space where experience unfolds. – A.H. Almaas
Observation is a function of the mind. It separates. It analyzes. It measures. Even when it’s accurate, it’s removed. We observe suffering “over there,” as if we were not participants in the same field. We become heads without hearts, eyes without entrails. Detached. Distant. Disembodied.
But the witness is a deeper faculty—an essential presence that includes both the outer and inner in one seamless awareness. It is not a function. It is a state of being.
A.H. Almaas describes the witness as an expression of the Essential Identity (or Essential Self)—a pure, conscious presence that can perceive without distortion, defense, or agenda. The witness sees not from ego but from essence. It perceives directly, not through preference, reaction, or avoidance filters. It sees from within Being itself.
To the witness, there is no separation between what is seen and the one seeing.
When I witness war on the news and feel a knot of grief in my chest, both are held in the same space. The images of violence and my heartbreak are the same-same. The witness does not privilege the outer or the inner. It embraces them as one co-arising field. This makes it radically different from the observing mind, which splits and categorizes experience into subject and object, into “that out there” and “this in here.”
Witnessing is not passive. It is deeply intimate.
To witness is to let the world move through you without becoming it. It is to let horror break your heart without letting it harden you. It is to feel the ache, the outrage, the impotence—and to stay.
The witness is not a position you take—it is what you are before you take any position. – Adyashanti
This staying is not stagnation. It is presence. It is the quiet stamina of essence, holding space for what is unbearable without collapsing or controlling.
And yet, many of us have lost access to this quality. Why?
In early development, the experience of being seen and mirrored by attuned caregivers is essential for the formation of witnessing consciousness. When that mirroring is inconsistent, rejecting, or invasive, the child learns to retreat into observation or reactivity. The pure witness becomes veiled by false identity, defense, and ego structure layers. The inner capacity to stay with experience without rejecting or fusing with it is lost.
The Diamond Approach teaches that the witness can be recovered through inquiry—not mental analysis but a presence-based exploration of what is arising. As we investigate our experience with curiosity and love, the deeper ground of the witness begins to return. We find that we are not just the one having experience—we are also the field in which experience arises.
In time, the witnessing presence becomes more stable and effortless. We discover that we are the awareness that holds our sadness, anger, and helplessness. Because the witness is not reactive, it becomes the doorway to real action—rooted in truth, not trauma.
Witnessing becomes a way of being with the world rather than doing to the world.
It invites a radical intimacy with reality—not just the beautiful parts—all of it. The children in rubble, the ache in your stomach, the weeping of the earth, the fluttering of your soul—all known and unknown- is allowed.
To stand as the witness is not to transcend the world. It is to be fully in it—undivided, undefended, unflinching.
The Self is the witness, beyond all thought, the one who sees but cannot be seen. – The Upanishads
It is to become the eye of Being, open to all that is.
The Witness in Action
Action from the witness does not arise from reactivity, urgency, or identity. It is not about fixing to escape discomfort or helping to secure a self-image. It is response without resistance, movement without motive.
In the Diamond Approach, action from the witness arises when the witnessing presence—stable, open, undistorted—becomes infused with essential qualities. These may include strength, clarity, compassion, will, or peace. The action becomes a natural expression of Being, not an ego strategy.
You do not choose it.
It chooses through you.
The false dichotomy between action and stillness dissolves when the witness is present. You do not need to ask, “Should I act or should I just witness?” because witnessing is a kind of action—a radical act of presence. And when movement arises from that stillness, it is precise, appropriate, and free of personal grasping.
Think of the difference:
- The ego acts to resolve what it cannot tolerate.
- The witness acts because Being moves.
Action from the witness does not look heroic. Sometimes it’s silence. Sometimes it’s leaving a situation. Sometimes it’s speaking truth without flinching. Sometimes it’s simply not tightening around the moment.
It’s not what you do—it’s where it comes from.
And when it comes from the witness, it doesn’t leave a residue.
There is no pride, guilt, or justification—only a quiet sense of alignment.
The hand moves.
The word is spoken.
The step is taken.
And you are not the doer.
You can act from the witness. But it is not you who acts. It is the mystery moving as you.
This raises the deeper question:
Can there ever be action outside the witness? Or are all other actions motions inside the dream?