Non-Judgmental Awareness

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I want to offer you a different perspective on non-judgmental awareness. I've talked about in the past how I don't love the use of non-judgment in the definition of mindfulness. There are a lot of different definitions of mindfulness, but almost all of them tend to include some version of cultivating non-judgmental awareness. And I understand what it's pointing to, but I think what it sets up for us is this idea that we're not supposed to have judgments, that judgements are bad.

And if we do notice judgements in our meditation practice, it's something that we have to try to clear away because then it means we're not being mindful. But practicing non-judgmental awareness is not about eliminating our judgments. It's about embodying the part of us that is spacious enough to observe all aspects of our experience, including our judgments and to not be defined by them. It's more about identification with awareness itself, which is inherently non-judgmental. Awareness is not the thoughts moving through your mind.

Those thoughts might include, I hate this meditation. I don't want to be here. This is frustrating. I don't know if I like this person. That's the activity of the mind.

It's going to arise, whether you want it to or not, and you can meet it and redirect it. And it's not like you have to follow those threads and marshal all of this evidence about why you don't like yourself and go into this rabbit hole of judgment. Like we can notice those thoughts and go, actually, I'm going to think about something else. But the moment of them arising is very much outside of our control. So that's not what we're talking about with non-judgment.

What we're talking about is that part of you that's able to observe all of it and not be identified with those judgments, not make our identity the contents of the experience moving through our awareness, but rather our awareness of the experience itself. So in conclusion, I'll just say one more time, practicing non-judgmental awareness is not about eliminating our judgments. It's about embodying the part of us that is spacious enough to observe all aspects of our experience, including judgments, and not be defined by them. See if you can take that into your meditation practice as a way to deepen your identification with awareness, rather than thoughts. Thank you for your practice.

Let's settle in for today's meditation.