Beginner's Mind

With this weekend retreat that I just completed, the concept of Beginner's Mind was very key. Our presenter wove this concept into just about everything we were doing without outright saying it. The retreat was about meditation mainly. I have to admit, I was a little surprise when we didn't actually meditate together. He taught us some hints and tips about how to sit and how to prepare to meditate. We had lots of candid conversations of our issues with meditation. Here are my issues:

1. I can never keep my mind quiet, I am always wondering and wandering
2. I have ringing in my ears and it seems louder when I try to meditate - makes it annoying so I stop
3. I kinda, sort of don't really believe that meditation does much, at least for me. I never feel like there is an enlightenment of any kind or a spiritual connection
4. I drink far too much caffeine and eat to much sugar to stay still

For all the reasons I mentioned above, I need to meditate. When people in the group were throwing out similar complaints and reasons, he just told us to keep an open mind. Really, we have nothing to lose by trying, right? I am not scared of meditation per se, but there is something that keeps me from it, like maybe it would help more than I expect it would. He mentioned to me that if I make that judgement call and close my mind to the idea, I am more likely to go out of my way to make it not work for me so that I am right. This statement sort of blew my mind. It really didn't have much to do about meditation at that point, it had something to do with how I run my life. 

I know, for a fact, I am 100% judgmental. In fact, when I was in DBT, we talked about judgmental thinking. It closes our minds to the possibilities. I was supposed to track my judgments for a week and report the following week what happened. One of my classmates went out and bought a clicker so she could count her judgments. She came back the following week and told the class that "this stupid ticker only went up to 999, I hit that in two days." I am so glad she was so honest. I'm sure I was right up there with her. This judgmental stance is a habit along with a defense mechanism. I use it to keep a distance between myself and others. I don't trust people right away and if they rub me the wrong way, I will make a judgment AND try everything in my power to justify that judgment. I am going out of my way to prove that I am right.

I am almost lost out on some really great friendships because of my judgments. I am grateful to those who broke this down and proved I was totally wrong. That is when my ego gets in the way or I put myself in a place of denial that I ever felt that way about the person. As far as the habit part of this goes, I am in a nasty, ugly habit of judging almost everything I see. Examples: I see an email from someone that I did something wrong at work - I assume they are a total idiot and I didn't do anything wrong. I sat in our group at the retreat and saw a younger person there, I assumed that she must be there because she was forced to go - this is for more mature people, not young adults. A person that I had relatively little contact with for several years came back into my life - a much happier/stable individual. I had assumed with instability as a personal disorder and her subsequent happiness to be BiPolar. Why do I never think "judge not lest ye be judged"?!?!

The concept of Beginner's Mind is to always remain in the non-expert mode of life. Never believe you know everything about anything because you close your mind to new possibilities. Judgments are such a huge way to close the mind to the world at large. I have now made my judgement of you, I have the final say, done! I am slowing realizing that I need some more work in this area. The habit is still a piece of it but I would have to say it is more to do with defenses. I am not always the most willing and open-minded person in areas of my life. Because I have opened my mind to recovery, I believe I am getting better there. Other places, not so much. I had a field day of judgments when I sat down in classes last semester. In my mind, I was picking out which people I might like, which people wouldn't make it and who I thought was too young to be there or not knowledgeable to be there. Holy cow, when did I become the admissions coordinator to the grad school?! Again, I nearly closed myself off from friends and study buddies because of this. I still find myself quite distant from my cohort. I don't like group projects and I don't like studying in groups. I get annoyed with easily and filled with judgments. 

I think I need to go back and do some more soul searching about judgments. I feel like I was more open and willing a year ago than I am today. My eyes were opened at this retreat. As I am moving forward in my career, I need to be able to bypass some of these judgments. I need to hold close to my heart that everyone is fighting a battle. Each person deserves respect and dignity. Interestingly, I was able to do this more the most part with my patients as a nurse. I have guiding ethical principles in my career and personally to never treat someone differently as a nurse even if I don't particularly care for them on a personal level. I am a nurse and I have a job to do and duties to perform. Every patient will get that from me. Maybe that is why I have so many personal judgments. They are all pent up from work....

All in all, I think my judgments lead me to believe that I am an expert in certain areas of life. This can be a dangerous position. If I already know everything there is and have an opinion about every last aspect of life, what more can I possibly learn. I am only 36 years old. I really know very little. I lived almost half of my years under the grips of alcoholism, I don't know that I was learning much about life other than to make it miserable for myself. I guess that is why I was interested in writing a blog. I have a long way in this journey and I was hoping by writing that I would discover more and learn something from my fellow bloggers and readers. I most certainly have which makes me think it is kinda lame to be so judgmental all the time (that was a judgment against myself by the way). But, like GI Joe said "knowing is 1/2 the battle". Time to do some working on willingness.

Keep a Beginner's Mind!