A.4. Gratitude
Sometimes, when I buy a book and begin to read it, it falls flat, and I wonder if it was a good purchase.
I do that, too. Why do you suppose that happens?
I don’t know, but I shelve it, and then sometimes I later pull it off the shelf and now it’s brilliant.
What book did you just re-discover?
Integral Mindfulness1, by Keith Witt. He’s a psychotherapist often interviewed by Jeff Saltzman on the Daily Evolver podcast and Corey DeVos on the Integral Life website. He has an “aw-shucks” way of speaking, and I didn’t pay close attention to him at first. Over time, when I did start paying attention, I got interested enough to buy this book. And yesterday, I picked it up again.
Do you have some new insight to share?
Of course! Dr. Witt talks about the virtues of meditation and defines mindful awareness—a goal of meditation—as
“Being aware with acceptance and caring intent, on purpose, with compassionate judgment, in the present moment.”
Sounds familiar…
Yeah, he points out that Jon Kabat-Zinn2, the developer of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, defined mindfulness as
“Being aware, on purpose, without judgment, in the present moment.”
There are a couple of differences, but “compassionate judgment” instead of “without judgment” stood out for me. After reading his explanation and thinking about it, I came up with this summary:
Judgment—No Judgment—Compassionate Judgment.
Let me explain.
Both Kabat-Zinn and Witt would agree that we are walking/talking judgment machines. We are constantly evaluating things based on danger, social impact, taste, correctness, values, piety, godliness, and so on. This constant chatter in our brains is making us a little crazy…or a lot.
One of the central instructions in meditation training is to learn to let go of thoughts, opinions, worries—all these mental activities—just letting go while making no judgment about them is a practice that makes letting go easier. So, this middle step of my summary is a developmentally appropriate skill to learn. But Witt thinks we don’t ever get very good at this and suggests we need to accept this as part of our nature.
That’s kind of surprising.
That’s what I thought, so I read on. Since we can’t stop judging, he suggests we learn to judge compassionately. He says, “Compassionate judgment is experiencing what’s more/less attractive, more/less good, more/less true…with deep understanding that includes care for everyone.”
OK…what’s the big deal?
He’s recognizing a couple of core values of development theories: first, our grasp of truth is always partial and incomplete, and second, with effort, we grow into people who can eventually care for everyone. (Remember the stages of care: care for myself, care for us (people like me), and then care for everyone.) Integral theory and developmental thinking enable us to see that there are always better versions of us to grow into. Judging compassionately means to take our awareness that people are at different stages of development, to appreciate that deeply, to understand that they think or behave as they do because that is how they see the world at that stage. Our job is to love them at all stages. Compassionate judgment means we love them, or ourselves, right where they or we are.
And the connections with meditation?
Meditation is the training ground for our nervous system. We get better and better at the compassionate judgment of those unskillful thoughts in meditation, and over time, these new judgments start appearing in our daily lives!
Now that’s pretty cool.
Yep. Thank you, Dr. Witt.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Integral Mindfulness: From Clueless to Dialed-in, Keith Witt, pp 5-11.
Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness, Jon Kabat-Zinn.