Manisha

Sākṣi (witness) is not a "state".
It is the experiential awareness that all states are just as much a part of the dream regardless of whatever purpose they may or may not serve in phenomenal reality.

When you're looking at something/someone, are you looking at what you're looking at?
When you're listening to something/someone, are you listening to what is being said?
Or you're looking at the lens in your eyes or listening to your own sound—all the things you've hoarded, your memory-experience, your conditioning so to speak?

We should be expected to be open in our hearts and to love fiercely and truly and not be carelessly hooked on exchanging empty half-hearted gestures or uttering word devoid of any meaning or seriousness.

Put your heart into everything and let it carry the fragrance of your presence.
We're expected from also means that we have something to give, and we can.

Be life abundantly, for you are.

Being okay with death (both egoic and physical, that is, if we must separate the two for granularity) is what it takes to be secure exactly where you are.
Physical death is feared because the extroverted mind sees and feels the persisting (sense of the) body, identifies with it, and takes it for "I". The illusion runs so deep and strong that you go around exploding angrily on anyone who asks you to shut the fuck up and meditate traditionally with discipline and see for yourself of course because somebody is challenging your current view which says and validates that you are very much the mind-body or more technically the thought-sensation all of which has been strengthened over time through deep emotional investment in the view.
This is the egoic death part and the ego/sense of "I" resists this because it means falling and standing on no ground (a.k.a. not fixating) which it doesn't trust itself with, but well that's where things get interesting.. when "you" take the perceived blow and assault and just stop and see what happens. Was there ever anyone born who could die? find out. It's the most adventurous thing you could do. Nothing compares. And I am still describing the pure bliss of Nothing part (or more accurately experience of Non-Experience) in a very understated way.
I don't trust or recommend any new-age practices, they only reinforce the illusion precisely because the premise is to suit one's egoic preferences/likes-dislikes. Anything that isn't leading towards shedding attachment to these and realising that they are quite not "you" is fake and a waste of time.
The criterion as always is to abandon views, ideas, fantasies of enlightenment and liberation, and become painfully truthful to yourself about yourself right where you are. End all reactivity (a.k.a. stop reacting to the reactivity that plays out as thoughts, views loaded with emotion-sensation. No it doesn't mean not feeling them, only not reacting to them).
Do not try to conclude or not conclude.
In other words, shut the fuck up (inwardly) and go all in.
Try it and see how hard it is for you (at least initially) and why you go from doubt to doubt endlessly.

Silly to confuse the egoic insecurities and fears and the resulting pursuit and chase of or from someone for "love". Sillier if you want to make someone you love go through this. Just another egoic affair. So far removed from love.It's not worth it.
Love is secure and therefore effortless even as it makes the effort, for it has no problem climbing and overcoming mountains of the ego (the false self) for the beloved. Radiant with Clarity. Truth. Integrity. Involvement. And all the efforts are in service of it, not a means to shy away from it.
I want to fall until only you remain.
I want to fall until not just me but everyone sees only you when they look at me.
In other words, I am here with you. Fully.
In other words, presence.

Not everything beautiful that has begun catalysing itself within us is outrightly visible. Some things stretch over a far wider timeline making themselves known only when life orchestrates a symphony where they may reveal themselves through our quiet internalized wisdom.

The sense of "me" falls away when one is truly happy/joyous as a result of total involvement/presence in the here now and one is out of the snare of the sense of (psychological) time so one might find it "trivial" or "fleeting" perception-wise (coz the person-perceiver-recorder of time itself was absent)..
as opposed to sadness or (rather when) suffering (the sadness) that adds to the heaviness of the (existing) center that is "me" (aka the conditioned self/memory) which creates a sense of time owing to the underlying resistance to the associated feeling. (naturally all suffering is a result of identification with something which essentially is mental in nature. technically it's resistance to the underlying feeling which when given complete space and attention would end the mental association with the image/thought and this process of emotional stuckness with psychological suffering will reduce and end).
Without awareness suffering/sadness might feel too "person-al" and therefore "deep" as one goes onto cling to it mentally because letting it be which means feeling it fully (no matter how many times you have to keep coming bcak to it since initially you will habitually keep resisting) for it to actually go/dissipate would also mean dropping the known/the sense of (false) self the "me" it creates/is associated with it and so one passionately resists. The very act of resisting is identification/the ego/the me/the known etc etc. It eventually falls away no matter the attempts at pushing it away just that you either do it happily or life does it for you.

In the moment something arises, it and you are not two.
example -
sadness arises, so now it's not "you" and "your" suffering, it's just suffering.
anger arises so now it's not "you" and "your" anger, it's just anger. etc etc
notice this and, by virtue, transcend duality-conflict.
Seeing this truly and all the way cannot not naturally change everything.
self/I/Mind = conflict
beauty-love-truth = absence of clinging to the sense of self/I/Mind (as or with whatever content or in whatever way it may be arising).

Awareness (cetanā) is ākāśa (space element) and the ākāśa is also bhāgya (fortune, possibilities, destiny and all the three meanings and more apply).
Awareness doesn't rise by stuffing one's brain with more data/information but it makes for the possibility for anything to be.
Ākāśa is what we realise more of when simply aware of all mental movements without being entangled with them.
To realise that space/spaciousness is one of the outcomes of any dedicated sādhanā/austerity which also goes on to reduce vṛṭṭi's (mental fluctuations).

Neti Neti — not this. not this.

Truth = End of Mind, which is to say end of perceiver-perceiving-perception. end of experiencer-experiencing-experience. end of thinker-thinking-thought.