Judgments as Symptoms >>>
You might already see where I’m going with this…
Imagine the possibility that the judgments we experience in our lives are symptoms of beliefs around unmet needs in us that we have the choice to address with (1) mindfulness, (2) ignorance, or (3) disdain (that is, more judgments).
Let’s look at 2 and 3 first.
Many of us may more often not even be aware (or are in a state ignorance) of the nature of our judgmental thinking.
Not unlike a repeating hospital patient who fails to recognize his symptoms and is therefore unlikely to be aware of the roots to his health problems, a great lot of our society operate at a constant speed of force (often violent) without much clarity or awareness at all of the difference between the judgments that arise in our heads and the actual phenomena (read: observations minus the judgments) that we are witnessing.
There’s little reason that such a person is intending to operate in this way. If they were, they’d already likely be in contention with themselves around operating differently, or at least may have begun understanding some of the underlying origins of their constant distress (or constant stress).
Instead, the reality in one’s mind (“people are mostly stupid”) becomes enmeshed with the reality of sheer perceptive experience (occasionally one encounters a person who acts in a way that he disagrees with or doesn’t understand), and depending on for how long and how severe the enmeshment has been developing, the two may be rendered nearly indistinguishable.
In such a case, becoming “enlightened” to this enmeshed condition is not typically so easy, so complex and self-protecting such a condition can be to resist coming to one’s attention by some “sudden awakening.” A person may continue to choose an overtly judgmental way of life until the very end, adding more and more structure to the beliefs supporting their (enmeshed) reality, as to come to believing that their experience is the only way there is to experience reality.
Believing this reality to be the only possible reality, or the same reality as everyone else’s, has a way of protecting oneself from the pains or sufferings to which judgments try to help us shift our attention. (Example: “That guy looks like a terrorist — I better keep my on him.” The judgment, when given conscious awareness, points out how much I care about being safe and protecting other people around me, even if it unfortunately fosters a disconnect with the person I’m judging and implements a willingness toward violence, in some way or other, over a willingness toward connection and peace in addressing his behaviors if I don’t like them.)
It may be a long road derailing such self-defensive beliefs, and it’s unlikely there will appear to be any good reason or motive for doing so if the belief is managing to sustain itself and has served us to whatever degree it has in protecting us. Only a recognition and growing awareness to the downside to judgmental thinking hold the possibility for change in our interpretive habits and worldviews.