Becoming Blind Through Judgments
By Bart Sharp
Judgments are the source of our emotional blocks and limited life. Everyone has shortcomings, issues that lead us into mistakes and misfortune. Others may see them about ourselves and more easily than we do. What we have such blindness and seeing our own issues?
We judge our issues.
We make judgments in a variety of ways for example, some of us are afraid that others will see our shortcomings so we judge ourselves in fear of being seen in our shortcomings. While others look at other people with extreme criticisms to avoid looking at themselves. Each time we do various forms judgments we lock ourselves into a defensive position.
Judgments do this because we are looking at a situation in a form of wrongness, we judge we do not want to be like this other person as we judge them as wrong for doing what they have done. What occurs when we judge this way, we narrow our viewpoint. Suddenly life is divided, this is wrong while the other side is right. Suddenly the picture is less available to us in a variety of contexts due to the judgments we have made. Wrong is something we likely have judged as something we do not want therefore we will see it differently than the good.
People believe by judging another gives them more insight to the other person, they can discriminate or define what is right or wrong for them or others. in ways it is a false sense of knowing or safety. e have judged, defined and categorized, therefore it is certain for us. This is so far from the truth.
Somewhere in the looking for the wrongness they are less perceptive because once the judgment is made that something is wrong they stop objectively observing the situation. They are either looking for information in a biased way to confirm their judgments or they are not looking at all. They’ve already decided how it is therefore there’s no reason to investigate in a deeper way, less perceptions will come due to the judgments made.
We can choose not to like something in our life and not have judgments about it. We may say the behavior will likely hurt someone, not what I choose so I will not support that. We create detachment while we relate to the person or situation in some way. Then we can ask in a non-judging way, “I wonder what motivates them to do that?” Or “What pain are they in that moves them to act that way?” Through a curious questioning attitude we will open to insights of who the other people are much quicker and profoundly than a judgment ever will.
We can also apply this same ideal to our own life by not judging ourselves and ask, why do we continue to make certain mistakes? We can begin to move the judgments out of the way and start to see ourselves and situation differently. For starters we can forgive ourselves for judging ourselves and begin to look at how hard we have been on ourselves.
In a more accepting state more awareness will appear in how we created ourselves. It is better to never see your life as terrible events but see life as lessons. We may have endured a lot as a kid but likely we did the best possible option at the time, this particularly is true in a dysfunctional family we have to make choices that are unbecoming to us in order to fit into the family. We likely are really smart to get through some of these family obstacles even if it feels like we did a lot of self-destructive or demeaning things to ourselves.
In a neglectful or abusive family the options are often few and because we made choices that seemed as an adult unwise or stupid, we are likely to judge ourselves for it. But in reality we probably did the smartest thing at the time with the limited amount of choices available to us. We begin to start perceiving these situations instead of judging then we open to forgiveness of ourselves. This begins a path of seeing all of life in a non-judging and forgiving way to those around us. We begin to break the habits of judging and when we do a new freedom emerges inside of us. This is one of the first steps to evolving into a detached and happier life.
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