Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. So today we're going to talk about how we can see past our snap judgments. So if we pay attention, we'll pretty quickly notice how often our mind falls into judgments about others. You know, whether it's a waiter at a cafe, maybe someone who sits beside us on a park bench or a person we meet at a party, if we pay attention very quickly, actually, even usually subconsciously, the judging mind arises. So we kind of take note, a kind of snapshot of what that person looks like, how they hold themselves, how they speak, how they dress, and in a heartbeat, the mind comes to a conclusion about what kind of person they are.

Some of these snap judgments might lead us to like the person or think they're really great. Some of these judgments might be really critical and lead us to feel a kind of animosity towards them. But I think it's important to know and to remind ourselves that no matter what the snap judgments we make about people, that's really all they are. They're snap, judgments, not reality. And certainly not the whole truth.

They are tiny sliver of subconscious information that we kind of form into this mental story. And look, we all do this sometimes and we all share a common challenge. You see, we, human beings have been evolving over the last 200,000 years and most of that time humans lived as hunter-gatherers. Life was really difficult and dangerous for our ancestors. So the way that our minds have evolved means that, you know, we takein all this sensory data in any given moment, and then the mind is just making these extremely fast analysis of what's happening, these snap judgments.

And it's doing this so that it can know what's going on and know how we should react really quickly. You know, should I run? Should I flee? Should I hide? Am I safe? So the mind wants certainty. It wants to know how things are. So this tendency to make snap judgments, it's really just the minds conditioning that's trying to keep you safe. But the downside of this tendency is that our judgements tend to create a sense of separation, a sense of division, a sense of disconnection between ourselves and others.

It can also create unconscious biases that make us feel superior and right, and make others inferior and wrong. But here's the wonderful flip side of all of this. Our moments of judgment can also become a kind of mindfulness practice and an opportunity to feel deeper connection. How, how could that possibly be? Well, whenever we find ourselves judging another, we can take a pause to look at things a little more deeply, and we can see that actually we probably suffer from some of the same condition or flaw that we're judging. I mean after all, we all have faults and quirks, right? We all have our own stories, which probably include loss and heartbreak and mistakes.

And there are a surprising amount of people, traumas. We all have crappy days and we have good days and none of us wants to suffer. We all want to be happy and we all have this judging mind to contend with. So we're much more alike than, and similar than we are different, right? So in the days ahead, I invite you to just try and notice when the judging mind arises. And instead of being taken in by the judging mind, see if you can challenge those judgments, soften them and see through them so that you can deepen your connection to the beautiful, imperfect, and unique human being that's standing there right in front of your eyes.

So as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us and just inviting you now to settle in for today's meditation.