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By Scientist, Today 06:52 AM
Quote: Originally Posted by Megan
...When we withdraw judgment, there is a palpable lifting of oppression, and they are more free to behave in resourceful ways
If we are modeling those higher ways, it potentiates their growth.
I know this whole idea is counterintuitive, but maybe just sit with it awhile, better yet, experiment with it, I would say.
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So, I just need to let go and stop judging people? I need to stop thinking about other people and just focus on how I want myself to be?
My thinking about what other people should or shouldn't do is interfering with what they are doing and not doing? How is it that my thoughts are able to affect other people?
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Scientist, I'm in the process of working this out in my own life, so my answers are, of course, provisional, at best, for myself, included--'working hypotheses,' you might say.
I think this understanding of nonjudgment is a kind of cultural groundswell, though, and that a lot of people are coming to this consciousness, sort of all at once, even though this understanding can be found at least in Buddhism and Christianity, that I know of.
I think it has very much to do with
feeling, and not just
thinking and analyzing.
Buddhism teaches compassion, "feeling with," and I think this is key to this process. When we judge a person, we withdraw compassion from them, and make them "other." Perhaps a moment's reflection will suggest the impact that withdrawing compassion from our fellows has had on human history.
In the Christian tradition, Jesus was asked, "Who is my neighbor?" He responded by telling the story of the man who fell prey to thieves and was beaten and left for dead, and subsequently passed by by two religious travelers on the road. Then a good Samaritan (a hated sect) man came and gave him aid. Jesus then asked, "Of these three, who was a neighbor to this man?"
The Samaritan could have judged the unfortunate man worthless, as did the other travelers, but he is described as having compassion, literally, "to have the bowels yearn for," in other words, he was deeply moved by the man's plight.
So it is not that we just mechanically "stop thinking about other people and focus on how we need to be." It's having a growing sense of compassion for other people, as the Buddha and the Christ taught, and seeing ourselves in those "others," identifying with the human condition altogether and ceasing to see even the most wretched people as "other."
Our thoughts affect other people profoundly. Think about people you have known who have seemed to have an 'attitude' towards you, maybe a teacher when you were a kid, for example, but it remains unspoken. Think how draining it is to be around people like that.
There definitely is that energy imbalance between people, and I don't deny that, but I say we can learn to transcend it.
We can learn from our ancient spiritual traditions, or we can learn from each other and our own hearts. How we learn is not important. But
that we learn is literally a life and death matter. That's why I said that this may be Steve's most important blog ever. The implications of our learning to relate to each other in an impeccable way are immense.
If we want George Bush to be an effective leader, the best thing we can do is take responsibility for our own judgments about him, work on the things in ourselves that we are judging in him, and send him all good wishes.
That's not to say the political process is unimportant, but it is not adequate if we are destroying ourselves from within by negative judgment.
Americans currently seem to be suffering from a collective psychic autoimmune disease.
We'll not have more compassion on others than we have for ourselves, and so nonjudgement is dependent on a certain
gentleness to ourselves to build upon.
It helps to laugh.
Quote:
Nonjudgment Day Is At Hand! When a majority of human beings would rather laugh than condemn, we will have an uncritical mass, and this will usher in Nonjudgment Day.
On Nonjudgment Day, we will all win beauty contests. Lawyers will disappear, and all our trials will be over. On this glorious day when enlightning strikes, our clown chakras will open, we will become fooly-realized, and we will finally get the joke. The world will stop and everyone will get off.
--Swami Beyondananda
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