Hi All:
Obviously, there are many ways to look at "the witness." As many ways as there are means to cultivate it and people to experience it. It is at one time an occasional revelation, another time an ongoing separation (that untouched feeling), then a permanent state from which both structured and unstructured practice can be conducted, and, finally, a joining back into all of our activity as "stillness in action," that endless outpouring of divine love -- a paradox to end all our paradoxes. Indeed, the universe is that from the beginning, yes? An outpouring from stillness. Who says something can't be made out of nothing?
I don't see the witness itself as "a skill," though I understand how it could be seen that way. It is "a priori" -- self-evident, uncreated and unmoving, even as it moves outward through us. It is arrived at as a natural state of being through skill (yoga) applied beforehand and ongoing. Once it emerges as what we are, the witness is cognized as our state of being -- the effortless foundation of our 24 hour existence. From there, that state of being can be used for further development, but that is not the witness as skill. It is using our state of being as witness to move forward with increasing clarity of empathy and discrimination. In that way, inner silence moves steadily outward into our environment of thoughts, feelings, body and physical surroundings. We could say it is the witness using the witness to achieve the fullness of self-awareness. The witness doesn't move, but it does everything.
And then we know: "I am That, you are That, and all this is That."
It is Love, omnipresent and everlasting in this grand illusion we call time and space...
Well, these are just words. Much better to come to know the real thing via practices, and describe it accordingly, which everyone is doing beautifully here. It can be explained in many ways. It is wonderful to have the thing happening to explain. Of course, like everything else, all skill emanates naturally from the witness. That is why we say, cultivate inner silence in deep meditation and the rest will happen. Bravo for that!
The guru is in you.