We must stop assuming that what we hear in conditioned mind is thought or said by me. I am walking down the street. I see a very overweight person and “I think": “How could someone let themselves get so fat?” The next thing that appears is, “You are so judgmental.”
What I am meant to assume is that I had that judgmental thought, authored it, created it. Because that’s the case, I am then willing to feel bad for having been judgmental. HOWEVER, when we pay attention, we realize that the first observation just appeared. If we are present, we can watch it come into being, and what we’ll realize is that first observation was not of my doing. With that realization comes the certainty that feeling bad or guilty about that process is not only unnecessary, it’s silly.
So, when we become aware of an observation, judgment, or assessment inside our head, it’s imperative that we not own it. Even if we can see that statement represents a programmed opinion, we must still realize that we’re not generating it. When in a meeting, I hear, “This is so boring. I have to get out of here,” if I find that as interesting and impersonal as if the person sitting next to me said it, I have found a new, important, powerful dis-identification from egocentric karmic conditioning/self-hate.
We must start approaching the inside of our own head as if it’s something that is under the command of a foreign agent because that is much closer to the truth than that what we encounter there is “this authentic human being.”
In gassho
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