Watch Without Becoming
I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions, and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler.
Wilber wrote this passage as part of a guided witnessing exercise in No Boundary, published in 1979 when he was still in his twenties and working as a dishwasher in Lincoln, Nebraska while synthesizing decades of Eastern and Western contemplative teaching. The exercise walks the reader through body, emotions, and thoughts, each time separating the passing experience from the awareness that notices it. He drew on traditions from Vedanta to Buddhism, all of which point to a stable center of awareness untouched by the rise and fall of feeling. It speaks to equanimity today because it offers a way to feel something fully, anger, sadness, excitement, without being taken over by it.
Reflection
Wilber's witnessing meditation separates the feeler from the feeling itself. What am I feeling right now that I don't need to become?