judging others by Yaz Rooney
‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. This religious idea confused me for a long time. In fact, it created havoc in my system because I found the judgement of others to be a perfectly natural thing. It’s what human beings do, every last one of us. We do it through the justice system, we do it through the religions of the world. We do it in our communities. It’s a part of our nature and it’s as essential to us as eating, drinking and breathing. It is a protective mechanism, a critical safety and security measure against the evils of the world. It is a hazard to the health NOT to judge others. And it is hazardous on a spiritual, emotional AND physical level.
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When we are first introduced to another, we are subconsciously guarded. We instinctively assess whether or not this new person is a danger to us, either physically, emotionally or spiritually. It is based on this judgement whether or not we enter into further relationship with each other. Even when we find blogsites that we want to follow, we tend to check out the ‘About’ section first. We need to know who the author is, if there are similarities in the way that we approach life. We want to know if these people will hurt us in some way, if there is some kind of ‘danger’ in associating with particular people. Judgement is a natural human instinct that is occurring within us whether we like it or not.
On a very simplistic level, unless we judge both other people’s behaviours, and our own, we have no benchmark on which to measure the idea of ‘good’ in the world. In watching someone’s cruelty to another, and observing the emotionally devastating result of it, we can safely establish that cruelty is not an activity we want to engage in. My parents were unkind to me as a child, and through my judgment of their behaviour, I became a kind and loving mother myself. Throughout my life, I met incredibly good people who were role-models for me in my quest to re-establish my sense of Divinity. To know what I wanted to be, I had to judge these people’s behaviours against those of the people who had hurt both myself and who hurt others. To go on to emulate ‘good’, I also had to judge what was ‘bad’.
My most profound learning point was in finding that everything in the universe is interconnected. I discovered through keen observation and meticulous study that we all gravitate towards each other through our commonalities. Like attracts like, in other words, whether it is the environment we live in, the food that is available to us, the animals we keep or the people who are in our lives. We all have something in common, and it is through these common attributes that we learn who we are. In judging everything around me, I see myself in full view. I can only fail myself when I judge someone or something and I refuse to see the reflection in my own nature.
For me, therefore, the religious statement ought to be revised; it ought to read ‘judge other’s, and see the mirror in your own character…judging will redeem you‘. Judgement is only ‘bad’ when we look upon others with a superior attitude, seeing their faults and not seeing the mirror in our own thinking. It is ‘bad’ simply from the point of view that we miss an opportunity to grow as a human being; we miss an opportunity to heal.
On a very simplistic level, unless we judge both other people’s behaviours, and our own, we have no benchmark on which to measure the idea of ‘good’ in the world. In watching someone’s cruelty to another, and observing the emotionally devastating result of it, we can safely establish that cruelty is not an activity we want to engage in. My parents were unkind to me as a child, and through my judgment of their behaviour, I became a kind and loving mother myself. Throughout my life, I met incredibly good people who were role-models for me in my quest to re-establish my sense of Divinity. To know what I wanted to be, I had to judge these people’s behaviours against those of the people who had hurt both myself and who hurt others. To go on to emulate ‘good’, I also had to judge what was ‘bad’.
My most profound learning point was in finding that everything in the universe is interconnected. I discovered through keen observation and meticulous study that we all gravitate towards each other through our commonalities. Like attracts like, in other words, whether it is the environment we live in, the food that is available to us, the animals we keep or the people who are in our lives. We all have something in common, and it is through these common attributes that we learn who we are. In judging everything around me, I see myself in full view. I can only fail myself when I judge someone or something and I refuse to see the reflection in my own nature.
For me, therefore, the religious statement ought to be revised; it ought to read ‘judge other’s, and see the mirror in your own character…judging will redeem you‘. Judgement is only ‘bad’ when we look upon others with a superior attitude, seeing their faults and not seeing the mirror in our own thinking. It is ‘bad’ simply from the point of view that we miss an opportunity to grow as a human being; we miss an opportunity to heal.
The theory of relativity does not only apply to the physical environment, but to our values as human beings as well. To judge a set of behaviours as ‘bad’, one has to find an opposite set to judge as ‘good’. We need benchmarks in order to establish where we are and how we are progressing. We need mirrors in which to evaluate our current status, and our human counterparts serve that exact purpose. I discovered that the people that we meet reflect back exactly the issues that we need to deal with in that moment. Positive experiences show us what is right and balanced in our world and the negative experiences point to our attitudes and behaviours that need addressing. In judging the person in front of me, I am in fact judging myself, and that can only be a good thing.
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I know that others around me do judge me, and always will. Whatever people see in me, they will see in themselves. We have to judge. It is Divine Will that we judge. Without judgment of others, how can we possibly evolve on our journey back to our True Selves?