1/30/2016 (Day 30) Practicing the Practice of Non-Judgment

Having lived here my whole life, I have come to realize that New Englanders tend toward being rather opinionated, often judgmental folk who seem to try and show affection by ridiculing and/or insulting one another. We have a sort of stoic, Puritanical way of looking at the world that came over on the Mayflower and has remained ingrained in the very fabric of this region ever since. It underlies our beliefs and shapes our social structures. This belief system tends to dictate for us to be ever vigilant in judging thoughts, feelings and impulses of, not only ourselves, but also anyone else who is a part of our experience, as well. It tells us that we must categorize our thoughts and feelings according to whatever belief system we subscribe to and reward or chastise ourselves accordingly. 

In my own family of origin, we were, if not always blatantly, then certainly subtly, encouraged to be judgmental of both self and others. There was no shortage of finger pointing, blaming and shaming in our home. Every time anything happened, there almost always seemed to be the need to deny blame of self and/or cast blame on someone else. There was much scapegoating and evasion of responsibility. These things weren't necessarily done intentionally or with ill will, it was just the ''normal'' behavior that had been established in our family based on years of unconscious patterns of communication and interaction. And, as we continued interacting from this place of unconscious patterning, we moved further away from any form of authentic communication and more toward one where we were no longer interacting with one another, but rather re-acting to one another. 

Through the many psych classes I took in college, I had come to recognize lots of ''dysfunctional'' family patterns over the course of my 4 years of school, but there was this, sort of, underlying ''friendly mean-spirited-ness'' inherent in our familial communication patterns that I was not fully aware of until, at 30, after graduating from UMass, I packed up, took my 5 year old daughter and moved to a place called Earthlands to take part in a 4 month residential program called "The Ecological Living Project." There we lived, off the grid, in a room in the lodge/program center with a bunch of strangers who were dedicated to living gently upon the land and with one another. I hadn't realized the impact that living with these folks, who had a whole different way of interacting than those my daughter and I were used to spending our day to day lives with, would have on me. I have a strong recollection of being incredibly uncomfortable the first couple of weeks because there was none of the bantering and subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) "cutting down" or teasing of one another that I was used to in my interactions with those I'd lived with before. No shaming or shifting of blame. Everyone was dedicated to clear and effective communication...not that it was always achieved, but there was an admirable striving for it which felt foreign to me and made me feel as though there was something ''wrong'' with me. This lead to a great deal of internal conflict, and lots of self (and other) judgment of every thought, feeling and action. So, while this was in incredible time for me in many ways...there was awakening and shifting on on many levels, there was still a great deal of psychological pain and suffering, and I was still not aware of how my own internal dialogue was causing this pain and suffering, because I had not yet come to begin practicing mindfulness and non-judgment of thought...it would be another decade, and a journey into the dark night of my soul, before I would begin practicing mindfulness and using it as a tool to quiet my mind, sooth my soul and better understand my ego.

In 2005 when I was a very, very long way from all of my hopes and dreams and in the most pain (physical, emotional and mental) I had ever been in, I was desperate to find a way to feel better...any way at all, really. I'd tried some less than productive ways that hand't worked out very well and was in the process of putting the pieces back together with a great therapist. We'd done a lot of work, but there I was still suffering a great deal and I was willing to do just about anything to feel better. So, at her suggestion, we begin a therapeutic practice known as DBT, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy which used mindfulness as one of it's core principles. When first presented with the idea of non-judgement of thought, my initial reaction was, ''you're kidding, right?" I thought, no way would I be able to do that. My brain was so full of chatter that I could scarcely imagine a quiet and peaceful mind ever being something I could achieve. Suspending my internal judge and shutting off the ''shoulds, woulds and coulds" seemed like it would be incredibly difficult, but there was something about this mindfulness stuff that spoke to some far wiser part of myself than the ego place I had been operating from, and that part of me was ready to step forth and give the ego a little more help running the show. 

What I have discovered in the 11 years since; is that mindfulness is one of the greatest tools available to us with which we are able to gain mastery over thoughts, feelings and reactions to both ourselves and others in any situation we might encounter. When mindfulness becomes a regular practice we begin to know peace within, the more skillful we become, the more at peace we feel and it is through this deep peace within that we are able to become instruments of peace in the greater world. Since this is one of the goals of a Lightworker, I spend a lot of time practicing my mindfulness in everyday life.

One important aspect of mindfulness is that of non-judgment of thought. In order to practice non-judgment of thought, we must switch our thinking from that of active participant in our thoughts to that of observer of our thoughts. When we take action to step outside of our thinking, we are able to see our thoughts more objectively. We learn to allow our thoughts to simply be without judging them, trying to change them, or act on them...simply observing them from a place of non-judgment. As a result, we are no longer a slave to our thinking because rather than seeing our thoughts as facts, we begin to realize that they are simply nothing more than mere noise in our heads and that we have the power to decide how and if to react to them. We have the power to free ourselves of the painful thoughts we have been enslaved to our entire lives, if we have the courage to be mindful. It is a lifelong practice, but once you've embarked on the road, it's not really one you can turn back on, so you're kind of stuck with it anyhow...lol. There may be times when you're inclined to be less mindful than others, but pretty much you can't really put the cat back in the bag once it's out...but, I'm not really sure why anyone would want to anyhow when the peace that comes with practice it so vast. 

If you have questions or comments or would like to know more about mindfulness, I'd love to hear from you. Sorry about not getting this out last night, it was half done and I was falling asleep, and then, this morning while I was working on it, my landlord showed up with a chainsaw to attack the shrubbery...and we know how that has the possibility of ending up....lol...so I decided to wait till tonight to finish it. The challenges of a daily blog, or as my friend Joel would say, ''first world problem." Goodnight, my friends. Thank you for reading <3