I see a lot of judgement these days, friends. It’s certainly not normal to our souls, so it must be something we’ve been programmed to do. Culture is a big culprit. News programs, pundits, comics – people we trust to give us “information” – are constantly judging others, presuming bad motives, ignoring contradicting facts, etc. And so we tend to think that “right and wrong” and “good and bad” thinking is normal. It is not.
Whenever we name what’s “right” and “wrong” in the world, we imagine the good things as being magically within ourselves, whereas all the bad problems are on the outside. Wow, isn’t that convenient? And we think that if we can just get rid of all the bad people, everything would be fine. But that’s fairy tale thinking… doomed to fail. All it results in is a constant state of unhappiness. And we do it to ourselves!
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Here’s the kicker: the only time we look for what’s “right” or “wrong”… is when we believe there’s something wrong with us!
The true battle in life is to accept the parts of ourselves that we were taught, as innocent young children, were “wrong.” That means that if you were raised to be “selfless,” you have to discover and accept the parts of you that are “selfish.” Getting rid of selfish people is never going to be a solution. Accepting your selfishness is. Likewise, if you think others are “racist,” you need look no further than within your own heart… and accept your own racism. It was never truly yours… it was simply conditioned into you. Accept it in yourself. See how it got there… see the innocence of it, see it with compassion… and you’ll finally be able to accept it in others. You won’t have to search out culprits anymore. That’s how you’ll know. You’ll simply see your past thinking as ignorance… and not evil. Each person’s stance is just as valid as ours… and just like ours, it comes from conditioning outside themselves… and deserves the same amount of patience and respect we must give ourselves to resolve them… patience and respect that perhaps we didn’t get from our parents… but can give to ourselves, today.
Once we allow all the parts of us to be “right”… even the ones we were taught were “wrong,” we won’t even use the words “right” and “wrong” anymore. We’ll see how useless they were, how self-condemning!
“Judging a person does not define who they are. It defines who you are.” —Wayne Dyer
Only by giving up self-judgements, seeing our true beauty — warts and all! — will we ever be able to truly free our hearts… and never judge others again!
Joy Biscuits 