We may occasionally become aware of our inner thought processes, running as a constant stream of judgements and comparisons. Most of these were planted there as seeds by diverse influences around us- personal, social, cultural or political.

We collect and carry all of these obvious and subtle influences with us, believing them to be an integral part of who we are. We place so much value in these learned attitudes and behaviors, that we often do not question the true worth inherent in most of them.

We allow our biased thinking to color our thoughts, frame our attitudes, and control our reactions towards everything that we encounter. Under this veil of ignorance, we let our compromised understanding, run our daily lives.

We trust our beliefs as truth and completely identify with them, so much that we do not even hesitate pushing our cherished views on others! Without understanding their true roots, we attempt to impose our worldview on others around us. This is how we participate in spreading ignorance.

We carry on as individuals and social entities, completely trusting our whole mechanism, never questioning the relevance, appropriateness, necessity, or the validity, of many of our established and frequently used thought patterns.

Our daily lives are strewn with the thoughts of judgements and comparisons, that affect all our opinions. These are used to gauge everything that crosses our path.

Through these acquired patterns, we constantly judge others and ourselves. We compare, evaluate and assess everything through the colored lenses of our conditioned mind, shaped itself by all the influences it has absorbed from the outside.

We compile all our experiences and opinions acquired from the past, to build a standard, with which we then measure everything new that we meet. Whether it is people or events, we always have a ready reference to compare them with!

This reference is pulled out from memories, is often a fraction of the whole truth, squeezed and trimmed to fit our self-centered, biased personal views. This is a dead scale that we use, a shrunken corpse, to measure all that comes to us new, fresh and alive.

When we meet the new, it is often forced to fit into the narrow vessel made of our expectations, we try to match, accept or reject it, based on how well it can align with what we believe in. A mold made up of our stale old concepts, in which we pour all the fresh situations and new opportunities that come our way. We summarily discard everything, that would not take its predetermined shape!

We go on rejecting potentially precious gifts that life offers us, because we do not trust anything that does not match our preconceived ideas and presumptions of our prejudiced mind. We close our hearts and minds to all those pieces that do not fit in the right place, within the perfect picture assembled by our personal preferences.

Through our biased perspective, we can only focus on a tiny sliver of the whole reality that permeates everything. Because we see only a fraction of what is, we misunderstand it, we struggle to find true meaning, a purpose, or peace and harmony in our existence.

Through this deeply shaded lens of our limited perspective, we see darkness. This little piece of perceived truth is completely distorted by its separation from the context of the whole.

We cannot understand or justify what we see, because it is only a small part of the whole, it is separated from its context of the totality, and in its isolation, it does not make much sense to us.

We see the world as unfair and unethical. We see rampant deceit, cruelty, immorality, and suffering. We feel frustrated and complain about the enormous struggles, the difficulties that we seem to encounter constantly in our lives.

We are afraid, we see ourselves and others as victims of existence, nature as cruel and life as a reason for inevitable torment. We only see the partial truth and subject ourselves and others, to unnecessary and poorly informed judgements and comparisons! We are not impressed by the magnificence of existence, because we focus on the suffering, the gloom and doom that we see all around.

We reject the beauty, vastness, the expansive wisdom of life, because our limited body-mind is conditioned to see only through a narrow key hole of its prejudiced notions. The majesty, splendor and the inherent balance in the totality is lost to us, as we trudge along through life half asleep, with our eyes drooping under the heaviness of all our projected convictions.

We take for granted the sheer incredibility of anything existing at all. Instead, we hold a grudge against all that is, we feel we are entitled to something better, not appreciating the perfection already inherent in everything! The perfection that we fail to see, because of our flawed worldview.

We run through our lives, panting and heaving under the heavy weight of our accumulated assumptions and certitudes, often suffering the consequences of our mechanical and ignorant reactions. These standards that we impose on everything around us, support the structures of illusion, and strengthen our ego. We suffer in isolation, as we take a high moral ground, pretending to be superior to everything that we encounter.

We do not question or doubt, but continue defending these, never pausing to realize that these burdens are alien to us, unconsciously acquired, unwittingly embraced, none of these is truly who we are!

Ignorance spreads like darkness when we are in the shadows of our gathered beliefs, blindfolded by our concepts and views-  the influences that we have acquired from the outside.

In this darkness, our conditioned mind does not see the beauty and awesomeness of the wonderful life. We are blind to our real context, to the awesome whole totality of existence. We trivialize the magic of our own existence, the mind boggling miracle of simply being alive and aware!

But all the darkness of ignorance recedes in the moment we return our bright gaze of alert awareness towards these thoughts of judgement. Our gentle attention throws its light on all those dark corners, where the thoughts arising from ignorance hide.

The simple act of looking with awareness, being present to whatever is happening in our minds, noticing– is enough to change the emphasis from the darkness of ignorance to the illumination of wisdom, within a moment.

This moment of awareness shifts our perspective, and the more often we align with this shift, the more we erode and weaken the strong clutch of ignorance on our psyche.

Thoughts steeped in ignorance arrive unnoticed, run rampant spreading and growing their roots deeper into the mind. Being aware in the moment when such a thought arises- as a prejudice, a bias, a rejection or a judgement- can diffuse the sharp focus of the arriving impulse. We just notice it, and remain consciously present to it.

When the thoughts of judgement come into our awareness, they lose their grip on us, becoming weak they start to fade away. If we can sustain the alert awareness, these thoughts eventually move on, leaving a vacant space behind.

As we repeat this process frequently, every time the thoughts of judgement arise into our alert presence, they are noticed by our attention. The tendency to continue judging weakens. Each instance of noticing them with full alert presence is enough to discourage these thoughts of judgement from arising frequently.

Each time they arrive, they are noted and quickly let go- we do not strengthen them, not elaborating or indulging in them. Simply notice, acknowledge and remain passive to them. The more often we could sustain awareness during the incoming thoughts of judgement, the more we erode their life-long habitual hold on us.

This approach of being present with full alert awareness, to receive each thought in the moment it arises, weakens all the deep-rooted patterns of ignorance.

We simply collect our scattered attention and return it back to our pure centre, that single point of alert-aware-being-knowing Reality, experienced as the feeling of ‘I am’.

In the moment when we are aware, we jump out of the scale of duality- of the one judging and the one being judged! These are both outside our true centre. Abandoning this complex identification, we stand alone inside– as the alert aware presence, the simple one Reality that we are!