Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about the judgmental mind. A lot of times within the mindfulness and meditation spaces, we, well, we could give the judgmental mind a bit of a bad reputation. You hear in a lot of different definitions of mindfulness that it's paying attention in the present moment, non-judgmentally. And this can make us think that having judgments is a bad thing, or if we are being judgmental, it must mean that we're not being mindful, but that's not necessarily the case.

Having a judgmental mind is not bad. It's actually essential. And mindfulness is not about eliminating judgment. It's about becoming more aware of your judgments and understanding how they might be subconsciously coloring your perception of things, people and events. With this awareness and this understanding, you can now choose to accept your judgements, challenge them or let go of them entirely.

And this is essentially what it means to work skillfully with your thoughts, which aren't going away. As long as you're going to be human, in this body, with this brain, you're going to have thoughts. And with that comes discernment, judgments, critical thinking. So we're not trying to get rid of it. We need to be making decisions in each moment and the capacity to make decisions rests on our capacity to have some sort of discernment and judgment.

So we're not trying to eliminate it, but rather become more aware of those judgements so that we don't have to be subconsciously tossed around by them. That is the practice of mindfulness. So when you're engaging in your meditation practice, notice your relationship to the judgmental mind. And instead of beating yourself up when you do notice judgments arise, see if you can smile for a moment and go, Oh yeah, there's the judgmental mind. Thank you mind.

Thanks for trying to assess. Is this situation good? Is it bad? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it wrong? And if the judgment is not necessary in that moment, maybe just allow yourself to let it go. Just watch it, like again, a cloud passing through the sky and see if you could drop into this moment exactly as it is. But if the judgment is important, such as like, Ooh, I actually shouldn't be here. I need to make a call right now.

Well, that might be important and something that you need to respond to. So we meet the judgment in the moment with mindful awareness, with curiosity, assess its merit, and then choose how we want to relate to it from there. You could do that in your meditation practice and do that in your life. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.