It all begins with you realizing: "Hey, the mind is over there while I am here observing it!" When you get more used to this form of witnessing the mind, you will not even have that thought-form, that interpretation, anymore.

You will just be aware, present, conscious; either witnessing the mind without labelling what you observe or withdrawing awareness and residing in your own stillness. This is the essence of Vipassana Meditation and it will make you eventually transcend the mind.

When Vipassana Meditation (also known in a similar form as Mindfulness) becomes a part of your daily routine and activity, or rather; a habit to step out of your conditioned system and observe your daily activity, you will raise your level of consciousness and every area of your life will benefit from this.

The higher your level of consciousness, the more bliss you will see and experience in every moment, in every experience and in every thing. The greatest quality of Vipassana is that it remains essentially the same exercise throughout the entire process of beginner to spiritually enlightened one. The technique remains the same, but the quality of consciousness will grow.

Once you become more advanced in spiritual development you will lose interest in many of the beginning exercises, but witnessing the mind, Vipassana Meditation, remains most essential and will eventually become a way of life.

Depending on your level of understanding, I would advice beginners to start witnessing the mind when taking a time-out to meditate. It can make things easier. At first meditation is something you do from a few minutes to an hour, only to return to everyday life after the meditation is finished.

After some practice you will come to understand how meditation is actually something that you can and will do at any time in life; it is a way of living, a state of being. Meditation will blend in with everything you do, emerging into every moment.

At that point the practice becomes a way of life and you will not be observing the mind its activity that much anymore, because all mental changes/activities will cease in your immediate presence; in your instant conscious beingness. The experience will only deepen in the sense of consciousness becoming more aware of itself, rather than of the mind.

This meditation, called Vipassana Meditation, is basically all you need to become spiritually enlightened. It is my opinion that all the rest of the exercises are merely designed for complementary purposes.

The Practice:

Vipassana Meditation, or: Witnessing the mind, is a simple yet challenging exercise. Especially in the beginning phases of the learning curve, Vipassana can be quite a challenge. While the principle is not difficult to understand or to apply, the challenge lies in maintaining the state of awareness and alertness as opposed to slipping back in identifying with the arising thought-forms.

So when practicing Vipassana, you either choose to take the time to meditate with all the rituals that you may be used to that make you feel like you are going to meditate, or you will apply this practice of witnessing at any time, which is the purpose, eventually:

1: Firstly, you will try to hear your thoughts: Hear the words that are formed in your mind continuously. Become aware of the continuous repetition, or stream of thoughts. Can you hear the words forming in your mind? If so, you were just a witness to the most noticeable and gross expressions of the mind.

2: Secondly, you try to become a witness to all the images and visualizations that occupy your mind field. Do not let these thought-forms drag you down into being unconscious of them; do not get involved in their contents; do not dwell on them as in day-dreaming; just remain the witness: unattached; non-judgemental; purely observing.

3: Thirdly, you become aware of any emotional thought-forms that arises in the body as a result of your ordinary thought-forms, if there are any. In daily life, as soon as an emotion arises, you should try to distance yourself from the emotion and observe it. Don't let the emotion live you, only witness it without judgement.

At first this will be the greatest challenge because many thought-forms will arise in the mind and you will get lost in their contents. Remaining in this unattached state of awareness, of Vipassana meditation, is the trickiest part.

You should only be a witness, not a judge of what comes to mind:
As soon as you judge what you witness, a thought-form is dragging you down. Only look at the thought-forms as if they are individual clouds passing by. Just look at them as they pass. This is what Witnessing the Mind and Vipassana meditation is all about.

Practice witnessing the mind its process on a daily basis; not only in meditation but in active life as well. Let this practice become a dynamic process. Be aware of what goes on in the mind when you are doing your daily things: when you are talking to people; when you are worrying about some future-event or regretting some past-event, etc.

That way, your regular meditation will become Mindfulness Meditation; Vipassana Meditation. You will become more conscious of what goes on in your mind whenever you choose to listen and be conscious.

When you are getting the hang of this, try to realize the fundamental difference between you, the observer and the things that are observed by you. Become not only aware of the mental activity, but also of the one that is witnessing the mind's activities. Let consciousness become conscious of itself more and more.

What happens then is that the mind will quiet down as you reside purely in your True Self:
Once you are capable of getting some tastes of this mindless state of consciousness, you can drop all meditation techniques and dedicate yourself to the No-Mind Meditation.

All meditation techniques are meant to bring you to this point of experiencing Consciousness itself until you realize that that is all there is.

When you dedicate yourself to this practice intensely and with an honest willingness to observe, you will see tremendous transformation on many levels of your being.

In my experience, Vipassana Meditation and eventually the No-Mind Meditation, are the most important and dynamically-applicable exercises out there. It includes in itself all other exercises. It is our one-way-ticket to enlightenment.