The More We Judge; We Create Limitations.
Excerpts from the upcoming book, Body Consciousness
By Bart Sharp
Making a judgment is the most direct way to create us as limited in Body Consciousness. When we judge we begin turning off our perception to see all options in a situation and create a hardness or density within our body, cells 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 most likely would come from a variety of judgments we have had with similar experiences.
In general, our family and society teaches us to judge. The western world in particular is a judging world, but the concept occurs everywhere.
For example, our parents may have judgments about homeless people and as we saw them expressed by our mother/father we heard them say how disgusting they were or something more subtle such as; anyone wearing sloppy, old clothes was unacceptable. 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. These judgments we made way back when remain in us until they are directly addressed.
As a school teacher I heard countless complaints from my teaching peers of how hard the work was, or bad the stresses were or unfair the system was for students/teachers. It was an ongoing challenge to remain detached, as I listened to the stories. All I could do was 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 there were deeper judgments, repressed pains they were stimulating through their gripes, 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…). What occurs internally is a reaction in our adrenal glands to charge us from the energy the emotion stimulates. It is mostly an unconscious practice and each time we do it the body becomes charged through the re-traumatizing. More so, is we are judging again; the body becomes a little denser with the re-playing of the emotion.
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 carrying the challenges it entails.
The lightest perspective I could live by with teaching was “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 would be, (with judgments) “I signed 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. We open our perspective of seeing how we created such judgments. When we ask the question we then might have a memory arise of our parents who complained regularly. We simply joined in believing it was the right thing to do.