For some reason or other, human beings like to judge things and other human beings. Well, it's not necessarily that we like it by nature or that we are born this way, but in the early years of our lives we are getting so much used to the personified and causality-ridden way of observing things that we eventually always start looking for "the one responsible" for any sort of malady, mishap or crisis around us.
And while the necessity of human judgment is a fascinating discussion in itself, in this mini-series I merely want to share a little hack to prevent us from getting sucked into the blame-game when we encounter people and attitudes we may feel inclined to despise greatly.
But before we get to that hack we got to take a look at why we judge other people and what we may want to achieve by doing so in the first place, as well as what we are constantly confusing that drive with - a strong inner need to better grasp the interrelationship of all moving parts of existence from a human perspective of limited perception.
Our original intent behind judging people and things may be helpful for better navigating this world, but a faulty model of reality has been superimposed on our information intake that made us confuse the judging of bits of information with the mere sorting of them.
Everything has its place
We're really not used to this sort of idea from our daily lives in Western societies, but as many great teachers of spiritual disciplines have eluded to in some way or other: Nothing in this universe is ever out of place, it's merely our mode of perception and our conditioning that makes things appear to be in conflict, opposites or even worlds apart from each other when they are in fact two sides of the same coin seen from another perspective. Both sides need each other to exist at all. The symbol of yin and yang comes to mind and we will dive into this fascinating theme of polarity more in the future as I'm trying my best to get back on topic right now ahahaha ;)
Alright, the persistent need to judge people we disagree with...
No matter how little we actually enjoy judging others for their actions or way of being, it reasserts itself as sort of an automatic pathology against our own better judgment and our own inner peace - any one of us has their preferences and we're sure to eventually meet someone who is at such dissonance with our way of being that we almost can't seem to help ourselves but to point out his flaws in whatever the ego can come up with.
Especially if we think it involves us in any way.
The odd thing is that while we certainly get to feel superior on an ego-level when we judge someone else for their behavior or way of being, it actually creates quite the unappealing dissonance field in ourselves that can't be quite healthy in the long run. If you have ever felt bitter or outraged at someone, you know what I'm talking about here, it's a sense of heaviness and almost subconscious obsession.
It's like fusing so much energy into dspite and negativity that our own experience starts to turn sour. Like people who obsess about a potential third world war who can't get any sleep at night anymore because their worry has them thoroughly convinced WW3 is about to start when it's actually just a concept with no tangible reality... and the concept in their mind prevents them from feeling secure and at peace even when there is no war raging outside yet. Our beliefs are often handled as "certainty" by our subconscious minds until we confuse our belief with what is.
Judgments lead us to live in our heads rather than in the moment of now.
It's a way of being dominated by illusions in the mind in which we damage ourselves the most, in our tirelessly efforts to project negativity on something or someone else in order futily "root out the negative" ;)
Thoughts of revenge, vengeance and honorable duty work similarly: they are varieties of the same need to judge others recklessly where we become the main point of energetic attachment when we originally wanted to shove XYZ far away from us, here we are talking about it all day because we so disagree with it.
Blatant and overattached rejection can be a graphic example of how much energy these concepts can demand of us if we choose to engage in them without a thorough understanding of what our aim is in splitting the world up into bits we agree with and bits we don't agree with just for the sake of fighting the ones we don't endorse - with all our energy.
Why judging often displays a poor level of insight
When we judge someone, we do several things that can make the cosmos cringe and it's worth experiencing this for oneself at least once. Psychedelics can do wonders in noticing the effects of judging others secretly, it casts waves of energetic impulses for others to pick up on, and it changes our behavioral stance towards them noticeably solely based on our mental judgments. A blatant human judgment puts a lot of pressure onto the field of consciousness locally and even those who are not directly affected are liable to get sucked into that energetic exchange ;)
But what is judging and why is it so unhelpful in trying to satisfy our odd inner drive to give things a name and quality and to relay that information to everyone else around us.
First of all, we make sure to let the world know that we and the dude in question have absolutely nothing to do with one another, and we hope the world around us believes it as much as we want to believe it ourselves. We have "so little to do with him in fact" that we can't quite let go of jumping at the chance to separate and distance ourselves from the dude or circumstance in question, which in actuality kind of points to the opposite of our assumption - If we really hadn't anything to do with one another, why can't I just let you be how you are? Because we do have something to do with each other, that's why ;)
If I had nothing to do with someone, I could easily refrain from criticizing the dude with at times frantic amounts of emotional investment and energetic expenditure on my part. Some people seem to exclusively define their life and mission by what they hate and want to fight against, which can be a very poor basis for a solid footing in life - defining myself through what I resent. Yet, we see it all the time, especially wherever the system channels attention and people's energy into predefined groups or narratives designed for the mere purpose of binding groups and efforts.
Judging someone else directly is sort of a cosmic comedy show for others who are watching, picking out a minute "aspect" of the whole in order to profess that we just can't or won't accept that aspect of it all (at all).
Or as Alan Watts has put it: "The most important game of our society is: my game is more important than your game."
A judgmental series of thoughts can have massive disruptive potential, as I will lay open in an upcoming floor lesson, and it can seed a lot of mistrust among a group or several groups of human beings whom are not very well known to each other yet.
So what do you propose? We just accept and agree with anything and anyone?
NO!
I am not suggesting to become a doormat that welcomes literally anybody for their "questionable" ways of engaging with the world. We can see the merit in their questionable ways while still chosing to remain detached from their mode of conduct and choices, by just observing it but not taking it personally.
The idea behind the judging vs. sorting concept is that we can better manage our sensations about others we meet through thinking about our evaluation of them and their actions as "sorting" - designating positionality and relationship to any aspect we meet and talk about in context to all we already know - instead of judging them for how bad they are based on some fictional assumption of our allegedly absolute understanding into the truth behind things.
Sorting can negate the need for judging and gives us a marvellous overview in a detached state of perception, whereas judging will always make ourselves part of the equasion when we may just lack holistic insight for the interconnectedness of all aspects.
As words are clumsy, we will explore this idea more deeply in the second part of this mini series with some graphic examples.
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