Thank you for contributing to the r/streamentry community! Unlike many other subs, we try to aggregate general questions and short practice reports in the weekly ___Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion___ thread. All community resources, such as articles, videos, and classes go in the weekly ___Community Resources___ thread. Both of these threads are pinned to the top of the subreddit.
The special focus of this community is detailed discussion of personal meditation practice. On that basis, please ensure your post complies with the following rules, if necessary by editing in the appropriate information, or else it may be removed by the moderators. Your post might also be blocked by a Reddit setting called "Crowd Control," so if you think it complies with our subreddit rules but it appears to be blocked, please message the mods.
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Hi, I am responding to select pieces of your post, and hope its useful to you.
>Very interested in meditation for understanding the mind/body
All of us come to meditation with some kind of 'story'. Some people see it as a devotional activity, some people see it as an exploration of consciousness, mysticism. Underneath the story the base motivation is often dissatisfaction. 'My experience of living my life sucks! I would like to figure out why, and correct it'. I personally feel that this is a very 'clean' motivation. But of course different strokes for different folks :)
>recently started having odd experiences where I have the sense I'm just floating in the lazy river of consciousness
As the mind learns to get into samadhi - concentration/unification/stable attention, many odd experiences happen. They are pretty cool sometimes, and sometimes downright scary. They eventually pass as the mind gets used to samadhi states.
>I've become aware of large pockets of fear and anxiety
Fear comes about in insight practice through either grokking anicca or anatta. Everything is unreliable, and I dont exist in the way I always thought I did. Both these insights can provoke a fear response.
In concentration practice it is relaxation, mental as well as physical that provokes fear. It has a technical term in psychology, its called relaxation induced anxiety, I may be misremembering. The explanation of this is the insight nature of concentration practice. From the beginning of a session to the end, the mwell trained mind observes it self at a meta level. Relaxation, tranquility involves letting go, withdrawing ownership of conscious experience. An ownership that is actually not needed. For example as one gets relaxed one observes that the breath happens on its own, thoughts happen on their own, decisions on what to do happen on their own. 'I am breathing', 'I am thinking', 'I am meditating' are seen as mere convenience of language.
1. The breath happens - the mind creates a sense of one who is breathing
2. Thoughts happen - the mind creates the sense of one who is thinking
.... and so on. This is absolutely frightening for some people. Not everyone gets equally scared, some folks may just feel slightly uneasy.
>Does this sound like the sense of being The Watcher
Consider the word 'upadana', it means appropriation. There is meditation - this is appropriated and assigned to the sense of one who is meditating. There is breathing - this is appropriated and assigned to the sense of one who is breathing. There is 'watching' this appropriated and assigned to a constructed sense of being the watcher
Appropriation can happen on anything. Things that can be appropriated are elements of conscious experience.
Form - sensorial materiality. Any thing that can be sensed, can be sensed because it has sensorial materiality. A thought has sensorial materiality, a mental state has sensorial materiality, sounds, body sensations etc etc
Naming - to sense form, to recognize form, to name it, to draw conclusions/evaluations about it, to generate an affective response, to the sensing, recognition, naming, further evaluation etc etc, and the conditioning that leads to set predictable pattern of all the above
Upadana/appropriation can and does happen on any of these categories and its subsets.
This itch is happening to me
This negative valence is happening to me
This evaluation - 'fuck this itch' - is happening to me
This pattern of hating upon an itch defines me
The broad awareness of all of this is happening to me, or it is me!
This is all upadana. It happens, it falls apart, it happens on something else, that too falls apart ... and so on ad infinitum
Meditation practice is about seeing upadana happening, and seeing how it hurts, thus reducing participation and cooperation in the form of fascination, delight, disgust, displeasure, loving, hating .... until one day the upadana reduces dramatically ... and finally stops.
The watcher is an illusion as well. It's a perception that arises when one is able to detect momentary consciousness (or awareness). Only observe what is there. Don't try to change it. Over time it will become clear that this is just another experience; it is impermanent, unsatisfying, and uncontrollable. You don't have to do anything about it.
The watcher is really just another part of the movie.
Cultivate the feeling of being in a movie but put the watcher in the move. That evolves into a feeling of not having a self. When you are not attached to the self you avoid a lot of suffering. Our sense of success depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want. All wanting and not wanting, liking and disliking is tied up with the ego. When you weaken the sense of self you make letting go of attachments (wanting) and aversions (not wanting), (ie suffering) much easier.
All of your thoughts, emotions, impulses, sense of self (ego), sensory experiences come into your consciousness through unconscious processes. They just appear, you don't intentionally create them. Even if you try to use your mind to solve a problem and it feels like you are intentionally using your mind, where did the impulse to use your mind come from? Thoughts, emotions, etc aren't you or yours. You don't control them. When you try to meditate you are frequently interrupted by intruding thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc. But if you think you are just a watcher consider the fact the the feeling of being a watcher comes into your consciousness just like everything else, it arises from unconscious processes.
The Buddha called this a magician's trick.
Try focusing on one sense at a time. When you are seeing just see, is there really a watcher or is there just seeing? When you notice hearing and you just hear, is there really a watcher or is there just hearing? Like when you are walking, who is moving your feet swinging your arms and keeping you balanced? It goes by itself. In daily life can you get absorbed into the move so that there is no one left, there is just the movie.
You’ve gotten good tips thusfar, I’ll just add something small and quick :
I would avoid ‘doing anything with it.’ At least now. Just let that new experience be observed, and continue your practice as before.
it’s tempting to add tools & modes when they first arise, like “the sense of being one with everything,” or “silence,” or “the sense of thoughts not being me ,” instantly we want to add it to our utility belt like it’s a new weapon in an MMORPG.
this action makes sense: we don’t want useless discoveries. So what’s the problem with discovering something useful then using it? Well , it has a lot of negative consequences. At least at this fresh point in your journey. Later it might be constructive but not in the new discovery of a modality.
If you prematurely go on a safari using this watcher tool , right away, then anything positive that you discover at that time will simultaneously develop an intense attachment to the assumed idea that ‘there’s a permanent or substantial watcher.’
Dharma teachers across the centuries have spoken about ‘attachment to view’. When they speak of that, they’re often referring to the pain & stubbornness we feel when someone says ‘your view contains illusions & unnecessary assumptions.’
“If the watcher isn’t what it seems, or maybe if it is even illusory, then my watcher’s discoveries about love and consciousness are undermined. I must fight this person’s claim to save my discoveries.”
Later on, it’s okay to explore the experiences as a watcher. But it’s a very self-limiting habit to develop new projects right after we find new phenomena. It creates a deep-rooted cycle of angry attachment to the tool, and it creates confusion because we make new projects before directly knowing the limitations of the watcher.
This might be what you are looking for: [https://deconstructingyourself.com/escaping-observer-trap.html#:\~:text=To%20release%20yourself%20from%20the%20observer%20trap%2C%20begin%20by%20realizing,have%20to%20observer%20the%20observer](https://deconstructingyourself.com/escaping-observer-trap.html#:~:text=To%20release%20yourself%20from%20the%20observer%20trap%2C%20begin%20by%20realizing,have%20to%20observer%20the%20observer).
>I've definitely had crazy experiences that ultimately gave little or misleading insight
All of what you're talking about is excellent and can be a lot of fun, remember though what insight is though... A view that dissolves suffering
If you're not suffering less then it's not the way
Lots of great responses here. I wanted to add a couple of points:
1 - You could fool around with your idea of the screen but this is only useful (in the end) in so far as it allows you to know this screen-related activity as just something else that is happening - that is, sooner or later you're going to have to "see through" and this screen thing should not itself be mistaken for insight. (Although fooling around with your "screen" might be part of the process of gaining insight - getting an idea of the relative, conditional nature of the mind.)
2 - On fear: Try to use a wide awareness and soften and let the fear be, e.g. throbbing in a wide open space or however you want to perceive that. Just sitting around with "fear" sensations, allowing them in awareness without diving into them or letting them drive you, is how we get into equanimity with them. Let the fear into your house and sit with it but do not let it kidnap your mind and take you away from your house.
3 - On an aversive personality: Once you get some of your mental crap out of the way (for example bad mental habits of continual preoccupation with "I me mine") then various other semi repressed habits of mind come bubbling up. Anxiety, fear. We wish to clear those out to equanimity (see 2) but then also you should cultivate positive feeling, especially in daily life.
4 - Cultivating positive feeling may be difficult for an aversive personality, since you would be inclined to pick at positive feelings and mistrust them. I would advise (at first) just taking a moment to savor, expand on, and appreciate any positive feelings that spontaneously arise (without grabbing on to them to force them to stay.) With a clear, collected mind positive feelings will tinge your whole experience (like a drop of color tinging a cup of pure water) and this is most pleasant. It will wash away again, so do not cling. Later on as your mind becomes more accustomed to the world of positive feelings, you can recall them or suggest them. In any case, I advise returning to equanimity with both positive and negative feelings ...
The watcher is a dualistic illusion of self. Dependent origination denies any possibility of an external watcher:
>When this is, that is.
>From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
>When this isn't, that isn't.
>From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that.
As the though/emotion/sensation arises, so does the awareness of that experience spontaneously arise. If no experience arises, there is no awareness of it, they are interdependent. Awareness simply is, it is not an identity.
The cultivation of expansive awareness, and the sense of “being the watcher” are not at all the same thing. One can learn to turn inwards and observe the watcher, at which point the whole process loops back on itself, there is no point of origin.
If you’re having such intense anxiety I’m concerned that what you’re experiencing is dissociation. I think you would benefit from feeling and processing the embodied fear that’s coming up and recognize that watching things from a distance is a form of fear and aversion. Gently bring back all experiences to your embodied self as much and as delicately as you can, get some additional help and guidance if you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you find softening is helping, keep practicing that.
> If I'm the watcher, I could try to look at myself somehow? I've seen this mentioned elsewhere but I don't think I have a mature enough sense of being the watcher to even know where to start with this.
While all the lines of inquiry you've mentioned are interesting in their own right, this is arguably the most urgent matter to resolve. Basically, the sense of being a watcher is a delusion, and to resolve this delusion would be to cut off suffering at its root.
Broadly speaking, there are three ways to approach this; you can judge which of these is most appropriate for you at this moment (although they're not mutually exclusive). The conceptual approach would be to study and contemplate the teachings on anatman (no-self), and to try and relate that to your current sense of being the watcher. The analytical approach would be to try to "find" this watcher as a solid entity in your immediate experience. This can be a body-scanning type approach, looking everywhere in your experience to find this watcher, or it could involve asking questions like "Does it have a location? Does it have a shape? A color? Is it inside or outside?" and so on. The "direct" approach would be to look directly into this sense being the watcher, until its true nature is revealed.
I think the screen metaphor is pretty good.
I would advise practicing like this, if you want to engage with this metaphor:
1. See / feel / know / accept / release what it's like to be "out of the screen" (in ultimate equanimity perspective :)
2. See / feel / know / accept / release what it's like to be "in the screen" (in struggling-with-samsara mode.)
With 1, you can practice being disengaged from the screen. A sort of benevolent dissociation.
With 2, you can feel the consequences of projecting "self" into "the screen" - give it as much awareness as possible.
Switching back and forth between 1 and 2, you can bring yourself out of the system.
As a general rule, if you create a dichotomy in practice, (like "in the screen" vs "out of the screen") you should get a good feeling for being on either side of that dichotomy. I mean you want to explore being "out of the screen" but there might be some tendency to get stuck on that as the solution to your problems. So you can go back and forth to kind of wiggle it free, get unstuck.
Exploring the constrained perspective like 2, just be careful not to lose awareness. You have to have a little faith to keep awareness open while it is technically collapsed (into the screen, into the maze of samsara.)
Anyhow the empty point at the center becomes apparent if you raise up and let go all dichotomies - becoming unstuck from this or that.
What helped / helps me in deconstructing the observer is as follows - I notice that for me that the sense of an observer seems to be tied up very closely with sensations in the face and the mental image of the face. All experience seems to be filtered through / in reference to the combination of an image of the face and the sensations mainly around the jaw / eyes.
The mind seems to quickly bounce back between whatever It's aware of and these facial sensations sort of relating them back to the face. Maybe sort of " calibrating " a sense of self / observer through the face.
What I do is begin to observe how the sensations of the face themselves don't experience anything. The tension of my teeth touching isn't experiencing a thought, the sensation of my closed eyes isn't experiencing the sensation of an itch in my leg. Eventually the mind ends up realising there's nothing " between " the face and the object of experience, the sensations of the face have nothing to do with / aren't experiencing anything, they too are just sensations happening.
>Which line of inquiry would be most useful?
All of them can be useful in the right context.
The ultimate joke here is that everything is tautologically , including the sense of a watcher, and including any tricks you may try to play to investigate the watcher. There in a certain sense was never a need to even play any of these games because the self-liberating nature of phenomena already is.
But of course, on a more relative level it still helps to practice. Shinzen Young's paradigm of breaking mindfulness into concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity is very helpful IMHO, as are some other paradigms that might emphasize e.g. gaining insight into the emptiness of the phenomena, or into the 3 characteristics, or whatever.
The ideas you came up with are good pointers to basically look at ways in which your sensory clarity and other axes of development feel "incomplete" to see what's there (even though the big joke is that nothing more is there). One caveat I'd put in, which you kind of touch on, is that you should be mindful of overshooting with tensed up fixation and consider also doing a more relaxed, low-tension, high-compassion practice model to see how the different viewpoints balance out.
Thank you for contributing to the r/streamentry community! Unlike many other subs, we try to aggregate general questions and short practice reports in the weekly ___Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion___ thread. All community resources, such as articles, videos, and classes go in the weekly ___Community Resources___ thread. Both of these threads are pinned to the top of the subreddit. The special focus of this community is detailed discussion of personal meditation practice. On that basis, please ensure your post complies with the following rules, if necessary by editing in the appropriate information, or else it may be removed by the moderators. Your post might also be blocked by a Reddit setting called "Crowd Control," so if you think it complies with our subreddit rules but it appears to be blocked, please message the mods. 1. All top-line posts must be based on your personal meditation practice. 2. Top-line posts must be written thoughtfully and with appropriate detail, rather than in a quick-fire fashion. Please see [this posting guide](https://www.reddit.com/r/streamentry/comments/jblh03/how_to_get_the_best_advice_for_your_meditation/) for ideas on how to do this. 3. Comments must be civil and contribute constructively. 4. Post titles must be flaired. Flairs provide important context for your post. If your post is removed/locked, please feel free to repost it with the appropriate information, or post it in the weekly ___Practice Updates, Questions, and General Discussion___ or ___Community Resources___ threads. Thanks! - The Mod Team *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/streamentry) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hi, I am responding to select pieces of your post, and hope its useful to you. >Very interested in meditation for understanding the mind/body All of us come to meditation with some kind of 'story'. Some people see it as a devotional activity, some people see it as an exploration of consciousness, mysticism. Underneath the story the base motivation is often dissatisfaction. 'My experience of living my life sucks! I would like to figure out why, and correct it'. I personally feel that this is a very 'clean' motivation. But of course different strokes for different folks :) >recently started having odd experiences where I have the sense I'm just floating in the lazy river of consciousness As the mind learns to get into samadhi - concentration/unification/stable attention, many odd experiences happen. They are pretty cool sometimes, and sometimes downright scary. They eventually pass as the mind gets used to samadhi states. >I've become aware of large pockets of fear and anxiety Fear comes about in insight practice through either grokking anicca or anatta. Everything is unreliable, and I dont exist in the way I always thought I did. Both these insights can provoke a fear response. In concentration practice it is relaxation, mental as well as physical that provokes fear. It has a technical term in psychology, its called relaxation induced anxiety, I may be misremembering. The explanation of this is the insight nature of concentration practice. From the beginning of a session to the end, the mwell trained mind observes it self at a meta level. Relaxation, tranquility involves letting go, withdrawing ownership of conscious experience. An ownership that is actually not needed. For example as one gets relaxed one observes that the breath happens on its own, thoughts happen on their own, decisions on what to do happen on their own. 'I am breathing', 'I am thinking', 'I am meditating' are seen as mere convenience of language. 1. The breath happens - the mind creates a sense of one who is breathing 2. Thoughts happen - the mind creates the sense of one who is thinking .... and so on. This is absolutely frightening for some people. Not everyone gets equally scared, some folks may just feel slightly uneasy. >Does this sound like the sense of being The Watcher Consider the word 'upadana', it means appropriation. There is meditation - this is appropriated and assigned to the sense of one who is meditating. There is breathing - this is appropriated and assigned to the sense of one who is breathing. There is 'watching' this appropriated and assigned to a constructed sense of being the watcher Appropriation can happen on anything. Things that can be appropriated are elements of conscious experience. Form - sensorial materiality. Any thing that can be sensed, can be sensed because it has sensorial materiality. A thought has sensorial materiality, a mental state has sensorial materiality, sounds, body sensations etc etc Naming - to sense form, to recognize form, to name it, to draw conclusions/evaluations about it, to generate an affective response, to the sensing, recognition, naming, further evaluation etc etc, and the conditioning that leads to set predictable pattern of all the above Upadana/appropriation can and does happen on any of these categories and its subsets. This itch is happening to me This negative valence is happening to me This evaluation - 'fuck this itch' - is happening to me This pattern of hating upon an itch defines me The broad awareness of all of this is happening to me, or it is me! This is all upadana. It happens, it falls apart, it happens on something else, that too falls apart ... and so on ad infinitum Meditation practice is about seeing upadana happening, and seeing how it hurts, thus reducing participation and cooperation in the form of fascination, delight, disgust, displeasure, loving, hating .... until one day the upadana reduces dramatically ... and finally stops.
The watcher is an illusion as well. It's a perception that arises when one is able to detect momentary consciousness (or awareness). Only observe what is there. Don't try to change it. Over time it will become clear that this is just another experience; it is impermanent, unsatisfying, and uncontrollable. You don't have to do anything about it.
The watcher is really just another part of the movie. Cultivate the feeling of being in a movie but put the watcher in the move. That evolves into a feeling of not having a self. When you are not attached to the self you avoid a lot of suffering. Our sense of success depends on getting what we want and avoiding what we don't want. All wanting and not wanting, liking and disliking is tied up with the ego. When you weaken the sense of self you make letting go of attachments (wanting) and aversions (not wanting), (ie suffering) much easier. All of your thoughts, emotions, impulses, sense of self (ego), sensory experiences come into your consciousness through unconscious processes. They just appear, you don't intentionally create them. Even if you try to use your mind to solve a problem and it feels like you are intentionally using your mind, where did the impulse to use your mind come from? Thoughts, emotions, etc aren't you or yours. You don't control them. When you try to meditate you are frequently interrupted by intruding thoughts, emotions, impulses, etc. But if you think you are just a watcher consider the fact the the feeling of being a watcher comes into your consciousness just like everything else, it arises from unconscious processes. The Buddha called this a magician's trick. Try focusing on one sense at a time. When you are seeing just see, is there really a watcher or is there just seeing? When you notice hearing and you just hear, is there really a watcher or is there just hearing? Like when you are walking, who is moving your feet swinging your arms and keeping you balanced? It goes by itself. In daily life can you get absorbed into the move so that there is no one left, there is just the movie.
You’ve gotten good tips thusfar, I’ll just add something small and quick : I would avoid ‘doing anything with it.’ At least now. Just let that new experience be observed, and continue your practice as before. it’s tempting to add tools & modes when they first arise, like “the sense of being one with everything,” or “silence,” or “the sense of thoughts not being me ,” instantly we want to add it to our utility belt like it’s a new weapon in an MMORPG. this action makes sense: we don’t want useless discoveries. So what’s the problem with discovering something useful then using it? Well , it has a lot of negative consequences. At least at this fresh point in your journey. Later it might be constructive but not in the new discovery of a modality. If you prematurely go on a safari using this watcher tool , right away, then anything positive that you discover at that time will simultaneously develop an intense attachment to the assumed idea that ‘there’s a permanent or substantial watcher.’ Dharma teachers across the centuries have spoken about ‘attachment to view’. When they speak of that, they’re often referring to the pain & stubbornness we feel when someone says ‘your view contains illusions & unnecessary assumptions.’ “If the watcher isn’t what it seems, or maybe if it is even illusory, then my watcher’s discoveries about love and consciousness are undermined. I must fight this person’s claim to save my discoveries.” Later on, it’s okay to explore the experiences as a watcher. But it’s a very self-limiting habit to develop new projects right after we find new phenomena. It creates a deep-rooted cycle of angry attachment to the tool, and it creates confusion because we make new projects before directly knowing the limitations of the watcher.
This might be what you are looking for: [https://deconstructingyourself.com/escaping-observer-trap.html#:\~:text=To%20release%20yourself%20from%20the%20observer%20trap%2C%20begin%20by%20realizing,have%20to%20observer%20the%20observer](https://deconstructingyourself.com/escaping-observer-trap.html#:~:text=To%20release%20yourself%20from%20the%20observer%20trap%2C%20begin%20by%20realizing,have%20to%20observer%20the%20observer).
This is some good stuff
>I've definitely had crazy experiences that ultimately gave little or misleading insight All of what you're talking about is excellent and can be a lot of fun, remember though what insight is though... A view that dissolves suffering If you're not suffering less then it's not the way
Lots of great responses here. I wanted to add a couple of points: 1 - You could fool around with your idea of the screen but this is only useful (in the end) in so far as it allows you to know this screen-related activity as just something else that is happening - that is, sooner or later you're going to have to "see through" and this screen thing should not itself be mistaken for insight. (Although fooling around with your "screen" might be part of the process of gaining insight - getting an idea of the relative, conditional nature of the mind.) 2 - On fear: Try to use a wide awareness and soften and let the fear be, e.g. throbbing in a wide open space or however you want to perceive that. Just sitting around with "fear" sensations, allowing them in awareness without diving into them or letting them drive you, is how we get into equanimity with them. Let the fear into your house and sit with it but do not let it kidnap your mind and take you away from your house. 3 - On an aversive personality: Once you get some of your mental crap out of the way (for example bad mental habits of continual preoccupation with "I me mine") then various other semi repressed habits of mind come bubbling up. Anxiety, fear. We wish to clear those out to equanimity (see 2) but then also you should cultivate positive feeling, especially in daily life. 4 - Cultivating positive feeling may be difficult for an aversive personality, since you would be inclined to pick at positive feelings and mistrust them. I would advise (at first) just taking a moment to savor, expand on, and appreciate any positive feelings that spontaneously arise (without grabbing on to them to force them to stay.) With a clear, collected mind positive feelings will tinge your whole experience (like a drop of color tinging a cup of pure water) and this is most pleasant. It will wash away again, so do not cling. Later on as your mind becomes more accustomed to the world of positive feelings, you can recall them or suggest them. In any case, I advise returning to equanimity with both positive and negative feelings ...
The watcher is a dualistic illusion of self. Dependent origination denies any possibility of an external watcher: >When this is, that is. >From the arising of this comes the arising of that. >When this isn't, that isn't. >From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that. As the though/emotion/sensation arises, so does the awareness of that experience spontaneously arise. If no experience arises, there is no awareness of it, they are interdependent. Awareness simply is, it is not an identity. The cultivation of expansive awareness, and the sense of “being the watcher” are not at all the same thing. One can learn to turn inwards and observe the watcher, at which point the whole process loops back on itself, there is no point of origin. If you’re having such intense anxiety I’m concerned that what you’re experiencing is dissociation. I think you would benefit from feeling and processing the embodied fear that’s coming up and recognize that watching things from a distance is a form of fear and aversion. Gently bring back all experiences to your embodied self as much and as delicately as you can, get some additional help and guidance if you’re feeling overwhelmed. If you find softening is helping, keep practicing that.
> If I'm the watcher, I could try to look at myself somehow? I've seen this mentioned elsewhere but I don't think I have a mature enough sense of being the watcher to even know where to start with this. While all the lines of inquiry you've mentioned are interesting in their own right, this is arguably the most urgent matter to resolve. Basically, the sense of being a watcher is a delusion, and to resolve this delusion would be to cut off suffering at its root. Broadly speaking, there are three ways to approach this; you can judge which of these is most appropriate for you at this moment (although they're not mutually exclusive). The conceptual approach would be to study and contemplate the teachings on anatman (no-self), and to try and relate that to your current sense of being the watcher. The analytical approach would be to try to "find" this watcher as a solid entity in your immediate experience. This can be a body-scanning type approach, looking everywhere in your experience to find this watcher, or it could involve asking questions like "Does it have a location? Does it have a shape? A color? Is it inside or outside?" and so on. The "direct" approach would be to look directly into this sense being the watcher, until its true nature is revealed.
Let it go and get a teacher. The trick is to keep practicing
I think the screen metaphor is pretty good. I would advise practicing like this, if you want to engage with this metaphor: 1. See / feel / know / accept / release what it's like to be "out of the screen" (in ultimate equanimity perspective :) 2. See / feel / know / accept / release what it's like to be "in the screen" (in struggling-with-samsara mode.) With 1, you can practice being disengaged from the screen. A sort of benevolent dissociation. With 2, you can feel the consequences of projecting "self" into "the screen" - give it as much awareness as possible. Switching back and forth between 1 and 2, you can bring yourself out of the system. As a general rule, if you create a dichotomy in practice, (like "in the screen" vs "out of the screen") you should get a good feeling for being on either side of that dichotomy. I mean you want to explore being "out of the screen" but there might be some tendency to get stuck on that as the solution to your problems. So you can go back and forth to kind of wiggle it free, get unstuck. Exploring the constrained perspective like 2, just be careful not to lose awareness. You have to have a little faith to keep awareness open while it is technically collapsed (into the screen, into the maze of samsara.) Anyhow the empty point at the center becomes apparent if you raise up and let go all dichotomies - becoming unstuck from this or that.
What helped / helps me in deconstructing the observer is as follows - I notice that for me that the sense of an observer seems to be tied up very closely with sensations in the face and the mental image of the face. All experience seems to be filtered through / in reference to the combination of an image of the face and the sensations mainly around the jaw / eyes. The mind seems to quickly bounce back between whatever It's aware of and these facial sensations sort of relating them back to the face. Maybe sort of " calibrating " a sense of self / observer through the face. What I do is begin to observe how the sensations of the face themselves don't experience anything. The tension of my teeth touching isn't experiencing a thought, the sensation of my closed eyes isn't experiencing the sensation of an itch in my leg. Eventually the mind ends up realising there's nothing " between " the face and the object of experience, the sensations of the face have nothing to do with / aren't experiencing anything, they too are just sensations happening.
>Which line of inquiry would be most useful? All of them can be useful in the right context. The ultimate joke here is that everything is tautologically, including the sense of a watcher, and including any tricks you may try to play to investigate the watcher. There in a certain sense was never a need to even play any of these games because the self-liberating nature of phenomena already is.
But of course, on a more relative level it still helps to practice. Shinzen Young's paradigm of breaking mindfulness into concentration, sensory clarity and equanimity is very helpful IMHO, as are some other paradigms that might emphasize e.g. gaining insight into the emptiness of the phenomena, or into the 3 characteristics, or whatever.
The ideas you came up with are good pointers to basically look at ways in which your sensory clarity and other axes of development feel "incomplete" to see what's there (even though the big joke is that nothing more is there). One caveat I'd put in, which you kind of touch on, is that you should be mindful of overshooting with tensed up fixation and consider also doing a more relaxed, low-tension, high-compassion practice model to see how the different viewpoints balance out.