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Imagine
living your life without fear of being judged by others.
Imagine that you no longer judge others including yourself. -don Miguel Ruiz
By Susan Marshall The New Year is a time for new beginnings. This is the traditional time to take steps towards self-improvement. The success of your New Year’s resolution, however, often lies in the underlying reasons you made the agreement in the first place. Do you dread starting on your New Year’s resolution? Does it feel like a chore? Perhaps your New Year’s resolution isn’t fueled by self-love but rather the fear of not being enough. Is this something you want for yourself that you are excited about, or is it something you think you should do? Did you come to this decision because it ignites your passion and inspires you, or is this an attempt to reach some unobtainable standard based on the opinions and expectations of others? If it’s about being more perfect, strike one for the Judge! If our News Year’s resolution is not uplifting or fueling a burning desire, we just may not really be in the mood to carry it out. If it stalls and we are left with failure then its Judgement Day. We didn’t achieve the new level of perfection we set out to. Instead of a time of new beginnings, our best intentions crash and morph into self rejection and excuse abuse. Strike two for the Judge! Turning off the voice of our inner Judge can be daunting – but never-the-less it is possible. To do so it is helpful to
understand how we create the voice of the judge in the first place. From the time we are born we are taught to judge. To compare and categorize. We learn rules about what is right and what is wrong. What is good and what is bad. As time goes on the rules become more complex. Many of the words we learn hold a connotation and an emotional component based on our experience of them. For example, words like naughty or nice; annoying or delightful. When we use them or hear them, our interpretation can evoke pleasure, pain, dread or a variety of other sensations. When we are young, we have little self-awareness. Everybody you come in contact with has an opinion about you and how you should be. Adults tell us what we are – “You’re adorable, moody, the cause of her pain, special, irritating….” They even tell us things like “If it wasn’t for you, I could have……” Since we don’t know any better, we take their word for it and believe them and often end up feeling responsible for their happiness. As time goes on, we begin to construct a whole reality based on the opinions we learned from others – a book of rules. Most of the time our fear is about how we think others will judge us. But actual pain comes from what we think and judge about ourselves. Our Book of Rules is the perfect weapon to use against ourselves. It constantly shows us where we went wrong. It allows the Judge residing in us to determine how we should be measured, and if need be, punished. Sometimes the judgement hurts so much that we live in emotional suffering unable to forgive ourselves. How powerful is the Judge? Sure, it is easy to forgive little things, but is it possible to forgive the big things? A friend of mine recently shared a phenomenal revelation with me. As a little boy Tom grew up learning what it meant to be a “good boy” and do the right thing. He always tried his hardest to follow the “good boy” rules presented by his family and teachers. At the age of 19, Tom was trained as a soldier and sent to Vietnam. There it was his job to kill and orchestrate the killing of human beings. When Tom returned from duty, he struggled with certain questions that he just couldn’t get out of his head: “How can I deal with what I can’t deal with? How can I live with what I can’t live with?” He wanted to feel like he was a caring, decent human being – not a sociopath, a person who could do the things he had done and not care. Tom could not change what had happened, nor could escape the crippling pain and self-rejection. Tom sought help. Through counseling, he was told to use forgiveness to heal his emotional wounds. He understood that forgiveness could work , but he struggled to get it to work for a few of the things he was holding against himself. He could figure out how to forgive others for what he thought they had done to him. And slowly he began to forgive himself for what he did to others. But he was still stuck. What finally worked was forgiving himself for what he had done to himself. Tom had been living by a code, a code he invented, borrowed from the world dream – the code of virtue. He was taught that a whole range of emotions belonged to the code. It was virtuous to feel guilty. Tom’s use of a moral code caused him pain and led him astray. He was using his code of virtue to abuse and punish himself. In his mind this was preferable to believing he was a sociopath. As Tom became aware of the beliefs and agreements he assembled throughout is youth, he began to notice that he was intrinsically moral. His body had told him in those moments that now haunted him what was true. The integrity of his being told him when he performed his duties what was truly moral - that what was happening did not feel right to him. His body balked and threw up at times when he did things he was told he was supposed to do. He had been so committed to the self-punishment dictated by the code that it effectively blocked consideration of forgiveness for himself for the damage he had done to himself. The limitations of living by such a code were finally clear to him. He discovered, as a result of his new-found awareness, how to cut the legs off the Judge. He didn’t have to compare himself to a moral code of behavior anymore. He knows he is a totally decent person, and he doesn’t need anybody outside himself to tell him that. He now knows in every moment the only feedback he needs is self-trust. Tom no longer has any rules about virtue. Tom is now able to say in a loud voice, “I trust who I am. I trust in my inner intent and what will come out of my intent moment to moment to moment.” Tom’s incredible story is an excellent example of how we can rid ourselves of self-judgement. When we turn off the Judge we experience freedom. It gives us the opportunity to use our emotions as guidelines in every new situation and to base our actions on how they feel. When we operate from this point of view, we can make different choices. When there are no more judgement days, our choices
can be fueled by our heart’s desire and not the approval of others.
Life changes and we drop the struggle and are ignited and driven by passion.
Now that feels good!
Property of everyday Wisdom 2005. All rights reserved. Reprint rights are granted to all venues so long as the article and by-line are reprinted intact.
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