The Week My Observer Went Missing

Building a judgement-free observer mindset is not easy.

Last week, I felt like I was losing whatever 'observer' moments I usually have to my mind and body. Thoughts kept judging and interpreting incidents from my past and present life.

All ready to leave for office on Monday, as I picked up my helmet and bag, I had an urge to stop and leave for some isolated place. The thought stayed as I rode to office for the next 30 minutes. Work priorities took over, and the urge stayed, but somewhere in the subconscious. The entire day, whenever an unpleasant moment occurred, the urge came to the front. The thought was so strong that my breath went shallow, I was irritated, and I failed to focus. I tried to 'observe', but judgements kept coming. I was framing logical reasons on why it was important to act on the urge.

Over the week, I searched for content that explained my behaviour. Why was my awareness fading? Why was I failing to kill the urge?

I found George Ohsawa's seven levels of judgement, which Michio Kushi later taught widely. Ohsawa said we judge any situation from one of seven levels:

1. Mechanical. The body reacts on its own.
2. Sensory. Pleasant or unpleasant.
3. Emotional. Feelings decide.
4. Intellectual. Reasons and arguments.
5. Social. What's good for the people around me.
6. Ideological. What my beliefs say should happen.
7. Supreme. Seeing the whole thing, with nothing to win or defend.

I could place my Monday on this list. The shallow breath and the pull to escape were levels one and two. The irritation was level three. And the logical reasons I was framing were level four.

Level four hurt a little. I thought my reasoning was me stepping back. It wasn't. The emotion had already decided, and my mind was just building the case for it.

The list didn't fix anything. By Friday, I still had only a few moments of observing. Most of the time, I was inside the urge, not watching it.

What it gave me was an explanation, and some kindness towards myself. When the body is unsettled, we slide down these levels. They aren't a ranking of good and bad people. We all move between them, sometimes in the same hour.

So, last week I failed to observe. I judged, I argued, I got pulled. And that is human.

The observer mindset isn't something you build once and keep. You lose it, you notice you've lost it, and that noticing, even late, even on a Friday, is where it starts again.