Nothing Survives Witnessing
Nothing survives witnessing.
This is a way to understand the ever-unfolding, ever-evolving emergence of self, other, and the world.
When an anthropologist regards a new culture, the anthropologist is changed. When the anthropologist interacts with the culture, they immediately alter the culture forever, by their very arrival and presence.
When those who are wise to their inner landscape regard it, they regard it as this everevolving witness and recognize that their recognition of a pattern expires that pattern immediately and begins a new, infinitesimally different pattern.
The first time I recognize that I am not offering myself enough sleep, for example, I go from someone who is unconsciously not offering themselves enough sleep to someone who is conscious of unconsciously not offering themselves enough sleep.
I am different, and I can never thereafter unconsciously offer myself not enough sleep again. A new pattern starts, where I consciously offer myself the amount of sleep I offer myself. Even if it keeps being not-enough-sleep, by my evaluation, the holistic pattern is slightly different each time.
Like the anthropologist, the explorer of the inner landscape deprives themselves of crucial information each time they witness through their own unwitnessed lenses. Assumptions about the world and the self, decisions and finite judgments, moralizations, value systems--all of these shape and influence our ability to experience something new and evolving even as it evolves before our very eyes.
For now, if you want this, you may start here: knowing nothing survives witnessing. There is not one true thing you can definitively say about who you are, because as soon as you say it, you're someone new. There is not one true thing you can say about another, because as soon as you observe them, they're someone new.
Let your self analysis be present-progressive rather than definitive. Not "I am [adjective]," but "I am [verbing]." Let your other-analysis be overwhelmed by curiosity and unknowing.