Insight- Non-judging
by meditative - March 8th, 2010.Filed under: Insights For Mindfulness Training.
As an impartial witness, you will learn to see through your prejudices & fears…
In our meditation practice, impartial non-judging is a strong attitudinal foundation that supports and guides our moment to moment work. We’ve talked some about it already.As an impartial witness, you need to learn to step back from it.When we begin to connect to the activity of our own minds, it is common to discover and be surprised by the fact that we are constantly generating judgments about our experiences. Almost everything we see is labeled and categorized by the mind. We react to everything we experience in terms of what we think its value is to us.
Some things, people, and events are judged as good because they make us feel good for some reason. Others are equally and quickly condemned as bad because they make us feel bad. The rest are categorized as neutral because we don’t think it has much relevance one way or the other.
This habit of categorizing and judging our experience locks us into mechanical, and often automatic reactions that we are not even aware of, and that often have no objective basis at all. These judgments tend to dominate our minds making it difficult for us to find any peace within ourselves. If we are to find a more effective way of handling the stress in our lives, the first thing we will need to do is to be aware of these automatic judgments so that we can see through our own prejudices and fears- and liberate ourselves from their tyranny.
When you find the mind judging, you don’t have to stop it from doing that- all that is required is to be aware of it happening- no need to judge the judging.