Jordan Self - awareness , meta - awareness and the witness self

The dimension of self-awareness focuses on the development of awareness of what is going on in one's own interior. A highly developed self-awareness can lead to the emergence and consolidation of a witnessing self that is not entangled in the contents of awareness. Meta-awareness is a concept that points to the possibility of taking awareness itself as an object of attention. Robert Kegan (1982, 1994) uses the formulation that what has been subject in one stage of development becomes object of consciousness in the next stage. This means that at a particular stage certain types of ego processes are in the driving seat of the person's consciousness without that person being aware of the nature of these processes. He or she is therefore not in a position to review, reevaluate and change the very logic which is running the whole psyche. By becoming conscious of certain aspects of what is going on inside – taking them as objects – these processes become available for reflection and a conscious relationship. Self-awareness here means awareness of the behavioural habits, emotions, desires, thoughts and images that tumble through our being. Instead of being had by one’s habitual behavioural patterns, emotions, desires and thoughts, a sophisticated level of self-awareness means that there is a locus of witnessing in consciousness that can make the behaviours, emotions, desires and thoughts into objects of attention. Before the emergence of a meta-aware position, the attention is fully absorbed by the continuous stream of the contents of consciousness. The five senses, the body and the mind produces percepts, emotions and thoughts. These evoke swift processes of evaluation by the feeling function and the mind, which in turn elicit judgments, feelings, desires, and action impulses. The attention is so bound up with these processes that all that is perceived is the result of the processes. There is no free attention available for reflecting on the processes themselves, and therefore no possibility to actively relate to what is happening. The self is lost in the ego processes, and cannot take a perspective on them. It may be helpful to think of this predicament as a situation where one is simply so occupied with experiencing that one doesn’t get the idea to ask such questions as: Why