Welcome to our weekly meditation.
Let's start as we always start with three deep breaths.
Breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth.
Let's begin today with a quick inquiry about judgment.
I want you to just bring into your heart and your mind space an experience in the last week where you have judged someone or something.
Perhaps it's in a relationship where you've judged the actions or the speech of a friend or a relative.
Perhaps it's something you've seen on TV or heard in the news an action of a country or a politician.
It doesn't have to be anything large.
This is not a meditation on saying we shouldn't judge.
I just want to do a little inquiry around the judgment.
See if in that judgment if there's some kind of measuring stick that would elevate you and lower the other person or the situation.
Often when we're judging someone we're also elevating ourselves as better than.
Notice if there's an element of that in there.
Again,
There's no judgment of you or I judging.
It's not what this is about.
We're just inquiring a little bit trying to get to the root understanding of why those feelings of judging emerged.
Sometimes it's a sense of elevation of ourselves.
Perhaps there's even a desire to be more like this person.
There could be a judgment of someone because you deeply desire their freedom,
Their creativity,
Their ability to be the way they are.
Maybe you have a strong pushing away aversion to this person or to this situation.
Whatever it is just look at it.
Feel into those feelings of judgment.
This person doing something they always do.
They're not doing something that they never do.
Just see if you can identify your shadow,
Your ego.
How is your shadow finding its way into this judgment?
Just note that.
Just bring that gentle awareness of yourself into the relationship or the situation or the circumstance.
Again,
We're not judging ourselves for having judged.
We're just widening the awareness so it's not laser focused on the other person,
What they've done.
But you're widening your lens to see how your perception is coloring the situation.
One of my Buddhist teachers likes to tell me that the only difference between a weed and a flower is judgment.
What we deem beautiful,
We deem beautiful.
What we deem a weed,
We deem a weed.
It's all in our perception,
Our judgment,
Our labeling.
There's nothing inherently different between a weed and a flower.
I just invite you to do a quick survey of the things happening in your week,
In your life this week.
What do you deem beautiful flowers and what have you disregarded or shunned or tried to push away as weeds?
Equanimity is the quality of being stable,
Content,
Satisfied with things as they are.
No need to control or manipulate or make things move more quickly or change more slowly.
Equanimity is realizing that each and every one of us is responsible for our own karma,
And we cannot change or control the karma of others.
Therefore I invite you to look at the weeds and the flowers in your life with a new perspective,
A nonjudgmental,
A tender,
Gentle awareness and allowing a trusting of life to unfold.
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be happy.
May you be filled with loving kindness.
May you be free.
May you be peaceful and at ease.
May you be happy.
May all be filled with loving kindness.
May all be free.
May all be peaceful and at ease.
May all be happy.
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be free.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
May I be happy.
May I be free.
