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"Judgment" by Marie H. Beach and other articles

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Judgment

by Marie H. Beach, C.Ht., CI

Think back to when you first fell in love. How each and every atom and molecule in your body vibrated, every receptor heightened as the world was bathed in the most beautiful rosy lavender light. . Everything was possibility. The adored other could hang the moon.

Then the cold light of reality began to intrude. The other, who was so perfect…ohmigosh, isn’t: they slurp their soup, they tell the same boring stories, their dental hygiene doesn’t meet your Good Housekeeping Standard of Approval, or they’re glued to the TV, or are Republican or Democrat or worse. Confronted with such humanness some stay, while others (less courageous or perhaps wise) walk away.

What just happened? Why did what once glittered tarnish into dross? What happened to unconditional love and acceptance? What happened to the seamless fabric of love when first the nubs and irregularities appeared?

What happened is the original feelings were hallucinations and what replaced them was an honest-to-god human being and the stars in your eyes dimmed because you did what humans do best – you judged, (of which we have logged in centuries of experience) leading to wars and pograms.

We’re not talking here about discernment that is required to make good decisions and choices. Judgment usually occurs when we criticize the behavior and attitudes of people in situations which differ from our take on how things should be. In judging, the first question to ask is, do you have the right to judge? What gives you that right? Do you have all the information necessary to do so? Do you do it with a less-than-peaceful, calm feeling or a negative clutch in your gut? And have you “walked in the other’s shoes” as Native Americans urge?

It’s easier to hear judgment when we hear another person doing it. Haven’t you heard a friend retell an account of how s/he was attacked, or unfairly treated, and for the life of you can’t figure out what was the big deal? I have, last evening – a person who has felt constantly offended over the many long years I’ve known them. The main object of complaint this time was a co-worker, who they perceived as having a tone of voice that felt like attack. What this offended person is missing completely is what Matthew calls “the plank in their own eye.” For years the complainant has used the same tone of voice.

The Tao, Scripture, Alcoholics Anonymous, Eastern thought regarding karma and Hume’s cause and effect (which poses that for every action there is an equal and opposing reaction) as well quantum physics (demonstrating that every part contains the whole and that all life has an underlying unity) are big champions of our interconnectness which would render all judgment a blow to ourselves. A simple example of the interconnection is how often we bump into or receive a call from someone we’ve just been thinking about or we know who’s calling before we pick up the phone. How this interfaces with judgment is put in plainer language by gospel writer, Matthew. “That which you do to your brother, that you do to yourself.”

And further he tells us that we’re gonna get back as good as we get: “for what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” He calls those pointing out someone else’s deficiencies without first taking out the “plank” in their eyes, “hypocrites!” In Eastern religions cause and effect is referred to as “karma” - in which every thought acts as a cause. The average person experiencing this universal law (reaping what they’ve sown) rarely is in touch with their thinking actually having any effect. But A Course in Miracles warns, “”there are no idle thoughts. All thinking produces form at some level.” The spiritual treatise goes further and declares that “thought and belief combine into a power surge that can literally move mountains.” Sound familiar?

Judgment is a major source fount of loneliness for it assumes a superiority, an infallibility, and arrogance that none of us has. None of us want to hang around such people. Often judgment is practiced to a high art in people related by blood. Even in cases where judgment seems perfectly acceptable, in self-destructive behavior for instance, we are urge not to judge, as tempting as it is.for we are, after all, of finite intelligence, and have no clue as to what a soul needs to experience for their growth. Two such examples of people who literally “rose from the dead” are Bill W. founder of Alcoholic Anonymous; another is a personal acquaintance, Mike McClary, who was a heroin addict on the street for eight years. Eighteen years ago, Mike created the Good Samaritan Ministries in Richmond as a place where addicts could “get a hand up – not a hand out.” Subsequently, he and benefactors without one cent of government support, have built apartments, a job program, two thrift shops, a car repair facility, a school, and a day care center. Mike is successful because “he was there”, he knew what those similarly afflicted needed.

AA preaches that “if you spot it, you’ve got it.” Carl Jung, a student of Freud, called our pointing fingers reflecting back our “shadow self,” a self containing denied fragments and characteristics that are not acceptable to us so that we feel impelled to get rid of them and foist them onto someone else. We do reside in a world of duality which means for every high there’s a low, for every up, a down, and with kindness, there’s also unkindness, with gentleness, a brutality, even if it only remains at the thinking level. After all, it isn’t usually mental patients who are on highways exhibiting “road rage.” Psychotherapist Elizabeth Kubler Ross, who wrote seminal books on Death and Dying and Grief and Grieving was fond of saying that “there’s a little bit of Hitler in all of us.”

Judgment really finds its niche when we get to the welfare poor and disenfranchised in the ghettoes, who usually take the hit for everything that’s wrong with America. You’ve heard people point their fingers in this direction as if everything would be just fine if it weren’t for them. Instead, let’s take the advice of Native Americans to walk in our brother’s shoes. put yourself for a moment in the ghetto where every night you hear gunshots and see the outlines of dead bodies drawn inside the circumference of yellow police tape. You’d turn to your father for answers, if you knew who he was, or if today was the day you visit him in prison. Your mother is a teenager, who dropped out of school so her resources are all taken up in survival and sitting for hours in the social services office or the city hospital emergency room. She’s scared so she yells and screams a lot and you have no clue what you’ve done wrong. Given such a negative scenario, who do you think you would be? Might you look for heroes or mentors or a connection to something bigger than you – like a gang? If you state no to that question, I am forwarding your name to the Vatican for canonization. Given that we get back in judgment what we mete out might we ask the question– “is the violence we feel toward the criminal, helping to foster more?”

How to get out of this vicious cycle of getting back what we have “meted” out in equal measure? Beautifully, there’s a universal law available. It’s called the Law of Attraction and it means, unless you’re a little thick in head (as my mother would say) you will notice a pattern of bumping into that same person or situation in various guises which can, with an open eye, provide us a mirror reflecting our denied warts and spots. Sometimes we fall in love with this person of our pattern, sometimes right off the bat we can’t stand their guts. No matter. What raises your hackles, rolls off someone else’s back. Why? Because they don’t have those same warts and spots or “shadows”. It’s simply not their bag to claim. In denial, and instead of doing the hard thing – running an “inner” check, “ we run or move away, avoid, find other people, other marriages, and other workplaces but until the inner work is done, and unconditional love replaces judgment, it’ll be the same old stuff. Sometimes the saddest part seems to be that some of us die with fingers pointing outward. It doesn’t have to be that way unless you refuse to do your work. Read the words of English metaphysical poet, John Donne as to how he described our oneness and connection, the last line of which became the title of one of Ernest Hemingway’s most acclaimed novels:

“Death, thy shall not Die,
Devotions upon emergent Occasions
No man is an island of itself
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in Mankind,
And therefore never send to know
For whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

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