What does it mean to judge? To judge means to apply a personal meaning on a subject or a matter. Judging is embedded in humans as a species. The quality of our ability to judge, in many ways, determines the quality of our lives. Think about how handy it is to correctly judge the distance between you and the nearest toilet when you need one… I mean, if you misjudge that, you might end up full of… stuff you don’t want to be full of!!! In the same way, if you are unable to correctly judge how full you are with the stuff you don’t want to be full of, you’re never going to not be full of it…
On a more serious tone, you need to be able to judge so that you can see as clearly as possible where it is that you are operating from. Life is already doing that. Or, better said, your life is the manifestation of your judging quality – you deem this as good, you deem that as bad and you are playing a game of running from one to try to get to the other, but the reality is that you are just continuously motioning through your personal agenda, through the dictates of your personal wounding and emotional trauma. For example: you cannot be in lack if you don’t have some kind of notion about abundance – both those are deeply personal and time-sensitive. So you are continuously assessing what you perceive you have, against what you perceive you wish you had. I know this sounds complicated, but it’s really not… Basically, your individual makeup makes you circle between this and that (regardless of what those are), in order to produce some type of continuous familiarity. Not only that, but you are thinking that your modus operandi is sound and logical, but have you ever really looked at what it is that you are actually thinking and if it makes sense? Have you ever followed your train of thoughts (and it could be a loooooooooooooooong train…) to see where that way of thinking CAN and WILL and HAS BEEN and IS leading you?
As long as you do not sit down and judge, or assess, or look into who you think you are, you are going to function within the same old framework, making the same choices and having the same (painful) results… When you are saying “I don’t want this”, “I cannot do this”, “This is not me”, “I do not like this”, etc., what you are actually saying is that you are unwilling to sit with the pain of looking into and letting go of patterns of thought (and subsequent actions) that lead you further and further on the path of pain. You are being unable or unwilling to authentically judge the framework of your mental processes in a clear, logical, sharp, focused way. And this is what leads to you perpetually seeking some kind of outer response, where it’s nowhere to be found. The filter is in your own eyes, not out there. The judging is faulty in the producing of the judging, not in the reality out there that you judge.
Another thing that is happening is that you are assessing reality and you apply judgment to it: if it feels right to you, you keep producing or wanting to produce the same thing you think brought it about. Life does not work that way. Life evolves and morphs – a tree cannot perpetually give flowers. This is relatively simple to understand and accept… or is it?
The real issue is when your assessment of reality is pointing towards a negative outcome. You have Point A – the point that you are at. And then you have point B – the point that you want to arrive to. Somehow, somewhere between the two, there’s confusion, aka a way of thinking and acting that could never bring you to point B. Let’s say A and B are towns. If you are not taking the right direction, if you do not move further and if you do not keep your focus, you are never ever EVER going to arrive to town B. EVER! If you are operating in a way that is unconscious – aka not judged correctly – there is no way that what you say you want will ever come about.
What is happening here is that you never even leave your point A. The familiarity of it, the familiarity of your actions, of your way of seeing life and the world and the other, keeps you stuck in perpetually only LYING to yourself that you want to leave. But there is no motion in that direction. You just keep looping in the apparent dilemma of why can’t you ever arrive? The answer is simple: your actions are not producing your desired outcome because they are fueled by a mental process that stems from your wounds and not from a healthy mind. If you clearly looked at your actions and the thought processes that fuel them, you will see that you are producing your own unhappiness. Only then it is possible that you stop projecting your pain on another. Only then can you find the humbleness and the compassion to really deeply look at yourself. Only then do you have a chance of being happy.
Lao Tzu had a way of saying this in one phrase: “If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place”
The trap I see OVER and OVER and OVER again, especially in this new-agey empty type of spiritual world, is people circling around their own misery, wearing T-shirts and screaming from the top of their lungs: Stop Judging Yourself… Well… that, in my experience, is a sure way to breed more wallowing in the disease of our minds… If you are a cheater, if you are a liar, if you are a drama-queen, if you are a person who avoids responsability, if you are a person who avoids thinking clearly… good luck with stop judging yourself!! I hope it works for you. For me, for the people in my life who kept doing that, it has not worked! You simply cannot live a lie and arrive at truth.
Have you been inspired by this post? Then please