Unexpected Freedom

The Power of Paradoxtaking sides for and against ourselves – and it is terrible, ittears us apart.The good news is that taking sides is not an obligation –we don’t have to do it. We don’t have to follow thesecompulsions. With simple, careful, kind, patient attentionwe can recognise them as a tendency of mind. They are notthe mind itself! They are not who and what we are. Andhaving seen them, little by little, we are less caught up inthem. As long as we don’t start playing their game byjudging the judging mind, saying, ‘I shouldn’t be judging,’ wetake away the counter-force which gives these tendenciestheir vitality. We come to know the judging mind as it is.The judging mind is just so. There is nothing inherentlywrong with the judging mind. Its ability to evaluate anddiscriminate is an important part of the intelligence that weas human beings use for our safety and survival. Theproblem is that its influence has become disproportionatelylarge in our day-to-day living, and it never wants to be quiet!Through careful feeling-investigation we can come to seethis hyperactivity for what it is and allow the discriminativefunction to resume its proper place. We experience whateveris happening with our full attention but with calmness andsome degree of equanimity. In each moment that we see thejudging mind objectively – just as it is – we purify theunderlying view that we have of life.In the deeper dimensions of our being there’s this kind ofwork to do. I would suggest that if we have the agility tomove in and out of these various dimensions we will becomeadept at addressing very complex issues. In our daily life wecan usefully set time aside, perhaps thirty minutes each day,to sit in formal meditation, and this agility will grow. Eventen minutes of well-spent sitting, being still and going backto the basic feeling of a total non-judgemental relationship95