With mindfulness, we can be with the experience in more immediate way. When we find ourselves flooded with an emotion that's come after the judgement, we've often missed the very judgment that triggered the emotion.

Conscience is all about using discernment, discrimination and assessment, rather than looking to the rather crude form of advice from the judge that's mostly attacking our sense of worth or value, instead of giving us helpful information.

Mindfulness is the ability to be aware, to note, to notice. When we apply that to our thoughts and mental habits, we bring a clarity of awareness in seeing what's just an ordinary thought and what's a judging thought that's pejorative or putting us down in some way. So, we first bring that lens of awareness, and then we can do all kinds of different strategies. We can inquire.

I was an angry young man, as you say. I was a punk rocker, blaming the government, corporations, and anything external, like my family, for my anger. I was pretty miserable, festering in my own mind. I began to think, there has to be a different way, there has to be another way out.

A baroque art-rock bubblegum broadcast on a frequency understood only by female teenagers and bred field mice.

I started meditating and as soon as I turned that lens of attention inwards, it was like, okay, game over. This is what I'd been looking for to resolve some of these inner conflicts and pains.

The essence of forgiveness is seeing our humanness and seeing that we all have our limitations and follies.