Pema Chodron (an American-born superior in a Canadian Buddhist monastery:
The basic creative energy of life bubbles up and courses through all of existence. It can be experienced as open, free, unburdened, full of possibility, energizing. Or this very same energy can be experienced as petty, narrow, stuck, caught. Even though there are so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mindthoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call "me" or "I."
Excerpted from: Awakening Loving-Kindness
by Pema Chödrön,
page 40
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Who is the "Witness"? By Jay Michaelson (Meditation Weekly #76)
From 10% Happier https://www.10percenthappier.com/
You may have noticed that experienced meditators sometimes speak in code. For example, "I'm sitting with a lot of anger right now" is meditation-ese for "I am extremely pissed off at you." Or, "It's interesting to watch all of these thoughts come and go" is meditator code for "I can't freaking sit still for five seconds right now!"
One term meditation nerds often use is the word "Witness." Usually as a noun, though sometimes as a verb. "Rest in the witness," many meditation teachers say. What does that mean?
What the word means, in practice, is that there's a faculty of the mind – a capacity, if you like – to notice whatever is happening, and not be affected by it in the way we ordinarily are. To take a trivial, but common, example, suppose you're driving in your car, doing errands, and someone cuts you off. Reactions may vary, but if you're like me, you might get instantly swept up in anger, resentment, frustration – or, perhaps, fear, surprise, or anxiety.
As you practice mindfulness, though, you'll gradually begin to see that these reactions don't always have to happen, and you can instead "witness" what's happening without necessarily reacting the way you ordinarily might. You can, as the nerds say, "rest in the witness."
