Releasing Judgement as a Practice
Sasha Chapin
Judgment can harden your mind and turn attention away from your own feelings. Instead, look for the longing beneath your judgment and see if you can act on it. When you can’t get what you want, accepting that longing can help you feel more open to life.
24 Oct 2026
But judgement is information about you more reliably than it’s information about the world. I have decided that it would be better if my wife did more meditation. What’s the real information there, what I can actually verify? I can’t actually verify that she would be happier. Meditation doesn’t always work, and maybe her current activity is the relaxing thing she needs. What I can verify for sure is that I’m currently not okay with the way that she is.
The truth is that people pay good money for longing. They seek it with romantic poems, films, nostalgia about their early years. Occasionally people opine that they miss the passion of their teenage desires. All of that is still right there, if you dare to realize you want so much you’ll never get. The best case scenario is that you’ll deeply love a bunch of people who will die. If you relax into that, settle into that, you notice that it’s vital, vivifying. When you stop shying away from your longing, it opens you to the world. You can be devastated by insolvable lack, without having an issue with that. I’ve never managed to find peace by making myself into a fortress. But I can, when I’m lucky, find peace in being continuously shattered, right now.