Unexpected Freedom

Unexpected Freedomwith life, to perfect receptivity to the moment, can be of greatbenefit. Call it meditation, call it contemplation, call itwhatever you like! It is a way of putting some time aside tovalue this part of life, to keep this faculty alive. And I trustthat, as we emerge into the more mundane workaday activityof our lives, in which we engage with people in situations andmake decisions and so forth, we will find that we have afirmer foundation. The decisions we make will be informedby an underlying clear view.Opening to ParadoxAnd so, even though there can appear to be a paradox orconflict, somewhere within us we know that it’s an apparentparadox, and that with mindfulness and restraint we canallow it to be, without feeling driven into a reactive way oftrying to solve it. This is why it’s so important to purify ourawareness of compulsive judging tendencies. So long aswe’re still habitually judging everything that comes up intoour awareness, chronically judging, ‘I shouldn’t feel this way,I should feel that way,’ we are significantly obstructed in ourability to contemplate anything clearly. Even if our thoughtsgo in the opposite direction, if we’re having a goodexperience and the mind is rejoicing, ‘This is wonderful! Thisis how it should be. I’m doing great now,’ if we don’t see thisrunning commentary for what it is, then it’s only a matter oftime before we swing to thinking, ‘It shouldn’t be like this,’and become lost again.So long as we’re caught up in the compulsive judgingmind, our capacity for meeting the paradoxes of life withclarity is very limited. Paradoxes will inevitably arise in ourlives as human beings and if we haven’t discovered the heart’scapacity for judgement-free awareness then we are likely to96