5. Consciousness Experienced and Witnessed

TLDR: In this article, the authors highlight that inner awareness is its own unique form of awareness, not properly assimilated to any form of representation or monitoring of an experience sited in some distinct area of the mind.

Abstract: This chapter highlights that inner awareness is its own unique form of awareness, not properly assimilated to any form of representation or monitoring of an experience sited in some distinct area of the mind. Through empathic reconstruction of the structure of the author's otherwise-lived experience, he develops an analysis of the phenomenological structure of that type of experience, an analysis other phenomenologists can then work with. His base experience is one act of consciousness, and his reflection on that experience is another act of consciousness. In this chapter the author emphasizes that mindful witnessing of experience amplifies the "phenomena" opening to phenomenological reflection and analysis. He concludes that one need not develop an explicit syntax of inner awareness in order to experience. Rather, it is only in reflection that we come to distinguish such characters of consciousness as phenomenality and reflexivity in inner awareness. Keywords:consciousness; inner awareness; mindful witnessing; phenomenologists; reflexivity