Excerpt from the upcoming book, “Body Consciousness”
By Bart Sharp
Principal of Body Consciousness
The more we judge others, our body and situations in life we create limitations to block our path in being in communion with our infinite self.
Making a judgment is the most direct way to create us as limited. When we judge we begin turning off our perception to see all options in a situation and create a hardness or density within ourselves energetically.
If we say, “The poor man begging on the street is disgusting and dirty.” It is not an observation but a judgment because of the label disgusting. So much about judgments are within the attitudes we inflect with the statement or thought. Disgusting comes from a variety of judgments we have had with similar experiences.
In general, our family and society teaches us to judge. Our parents may have judgments about homeless people and as we saw them with our mother/father we heard them say how disgusting they were. Since they are our parents we most part will agree with their values or in some cases have polarity with the parents by disagreeing. Either position is a judgment. We as children have yet to learn of detachment, we do not have to have the same or an opposing position to a situation but can allow people to have their judgments without any reactions from us.
As a school teacher I heard countless complaints from my teaching peers of how hard the work was, or how bad the stresses were or how unfair the system was for students etc… It was a ongoing challenge to remain detached, as I listened to the stories. All I could do is listen, if I agreed I would be in the same judgment, if I disagreed I would be in the judgment. Listening with allowance of the person to be in their judgment was the most expanded point of view. I knew somewhere in their world their were deeper judgments, repressed pains they were stimulating through their griping as if the verbal negativity stimulated repressed emotions and they were reliving them.
It is an addictive cycle many live by; tell a negative, judging story to stimulate an emotion (anger, sadness, fear etc…) with an reaction in our adrenal glands to charge us with with the energy the emotion stimulates. It is unconscious practice and each time we do it the body becomes a little denser with the emotion and decreases our mind and body consciousness.
In teaching there are ongoing challenges, it is part of the work. We can either acknowledge we will face testing situations and it is part of our job or be in reaction to them and carry the stresses it entails.
The lightest perspective I could live by with teaching is “I chose it”. Every year I made a decision to re-new my contract and life by the regulations and expectations the position required of me. A heavier perspective, with judgments, I sign my contract because I have to have a job in order to pay my bills.
When we take responsibility for where ever we are in life we begin to detach from the judgments we are the affect of or the victim of our own life (judgments). Remaining in the attitude of a question “How did I create this?” begins to opens us to a different perspective, an opening for our mind to learn a greater body consciousness.