Making comparisons and determining which is the better choice is just a part of life. It is something we do every day, all day long as we make our way in the world. We get into trouble, however, when our minds become seduced by our successes at making good judgments in our personal lives, and that becomes translated into thinking we can make judgments about everything we see.
One problem with that is there is just so much we don’t know about just what factors brought a situation to its present state, what motivates other people, what other people’s life experiences are, and on and on. For example, I might think certain politicians are positively craven, but I can’t really prove that is a fact. There is just too much I don’t know about what they really think, what they believe deeply, what brought them to this place in their lives, what their fears are, and much more. If I am being honest with myself, there really is much more that I don’t know than I do know.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 10:00 PM EST. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
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Physical reality, I think, is a lot like an iceberg, about 30 percent is visible above the surface and the rest lies unseen below the surface of the water in the case of an iceberg, or beyond the surface of what is seen and known in the case of physical reality.
We are each experiencing a narrow slice of reality, through what we assume are the same five senses. But in each of us there are subtle differences in our nervous systems that can make for wildly different experiences of the same event. It is why some people look at the color teal and call it blue and others call it green. It is why some people like spicy foods and others are unable to tolerate them. These differences are how two people can grow up in the same family, see and experience the same behavior and one person says it was abuse and the other says it wasn’t.
None of us are omniscient, we do not have perfect knowledge, and in truth all of these unknown factors render our judgments essentially meaningless. The real problem with our "judginess" though, is it just plain makes us unhappy.
If we can just sit with ourselves and watch our minds when we get in one of those places where nothing is right, if we can just watch our minds go on and on with its litany of complaints, if we can pay attention to the way that makes us feel, it becomes wildly apparent that it just makes us unhappy. We become angry and the more things the mind finds to complain about, the angrier and more frustrated we become. If we can sit with that we begin to see that thought train does nothing in the moment to change reality. The only thing it accomplishes is it makes us unhappy. Then suddenly all the air is deflated from the proverbial balloon, and maybe we might even be able to laugh at it. Then it becomes quite simple; why would we want to continue doing something which has no effect other than making us unhappy?
It doesn’t mean we will never get seduced down into that "judgy"mindstream again, but once we’ve recognized the futility of that thought pattern, it becomes easier to recognize it sooner when it appears, and easier to let it all go.