Judgment Calls
Often, we blame ourselves or others when situations make us feel uneasy. But if we learn to discern rather than judge, we begin to see our difficult feelings for what they really are.By Sally Kempton
Judgment is like cholesterol: There's a "good" kind and a "bad" kind. My friend Angela calls the good kind of judgment "discernment." She calls the bad kind "the enemy of love." "It doesn't matter what situation I go into," she once told me while suffering through a spell of the bad kind. "I can always find something wrong with it. If it's not the weather, it's people's clothes or the way they're talking. Whatever it is, I hate it." You can't win with your inner judge: It even judges itself for judging. Sometimes that judgmental state feels like a sword driven right into the delicate fabric of your consciousness. Any feelings of love or relaxation or peace that you might have been nurturing are chopped to bits. Whether you're judging others or yourself, it's impossible to aim negative judgments in any direction without experiencing the sharp edges of judgment within yourself. Doubly so, in fact, since the faults we judge most harshly in other people usually turn out to be our own negativities projected outward. Unleashing our inner judge can give us a quick hit of superiority. We feel smart when we can wield a skillful insight or pinpoint our parents' mistakes or the pretenses of our friends, teachers, and bosses. Moreover, judgment fuels passions—a sense of injustice, sympathy for the underdog, the desire to right wrongs. It gets us off the couch and into action. For many of us, judgment and blame are a kind of emotional caffeine, a way of waking ourselves from passivity.
Ego Mania
Despite the tendency to confuse judgmental blaming and discernment, they have as little to do with each other as dogs and cats. In fact, they come from entirely different levels of our psyche. According to traditional yogic psychology, discernment is a quality of the buddhi, a Sanskrit word that is sometimes translated as "intellect" but that really refers to the higher mind, the seeing instrument that our inner Self uses to observe the play of our inner world and make decisions about what is and is not of value. Discernment is an awareness, often wordless, a clear insight that is prior to thoughts and emotions. Blame Game
Blame is one of the smoke screens that the false self throws up to keep itself from facing the pain of our human fallibility. Blaming, like anger, creates drama, movement, action—it is, as politicians know, one of the greatest of all diversionary tactics. If you look at what happens inside you when you feel unhappy, confused, or threatened by a situation, you may be able to catch the moment when blame arises. First, there is the discomfort, the sense that something is wrong. The ego doesn't like unpleasantness, so it squirms, looking for a way to avoid the feeling. At this point, we start to explain to ourselves why we feel uncomfortable and to look for a way to fix it. Often we do this by looking for someone or something to blame. We may blame ourselves, thus creating guilt. We may blame someone else, feeling like a victim or perhaps like a hero coming to the rescue. We may blame fate or God, which usually creates a feeling of nihilistic despair. In any case, we create a screen to separate ourselves (at least momentarily) from the discomfort.
Warning Signal
The irony is that if we could let ourselves feel the discomfort without assigning blame, that very discomfort would connect us to our real source of wisdom and strength. The feeling that something is wrong is actually a signal. At the deepest level, it's a direct communication from our authentic Self. If we can catch our feelings when they first arise—before we start to assign blame, find fault, or judge—they will often give us the information we need to understand any situation. Not only that, but when we acknowledge feelings of discomfort without trying to escape them, we automatically put ourselves back in touch with our authentic Self, which is the source of real discernment.
Channel Changer
If you want to switch channels from blaming to discernment, start by paying attention to the feelings that arose right before you started the blame spiral. Find out what they have to show you. Think of it as a process of retracing your footsteps. When you find yourself blaming, ask yourself, "What feeling started all of this?" Be patient, because it might take a few moments to become aware of the feeling, but when you do, let yourself stay with it. Then turn inside and ask, "What perception lies behind this feeling? What is this feeling telling me?" The perception might be something totally unexpected—an insight into yourself, a realization about a situation. You might see that it's time to act in a situation that you've been letting slide, or that you need to stop struggling and let a problem resolve itself on its own. After you've sensed an answer, look again. Notice whether the perception you are experiencing feels clear or whether it's another layer of the judging mind. The way to do this is to notice the feelings around your perception. If you still feel confused, angry, self-righteous, unhappy, overexcited, or full of desire or any other hot or swampy emotion, you're still judging. In that case, ask yourself, "What is the root perception behind this? What does this feeling really have to tell me?" If you stay with it, this process of self-inquiry can give you practical solutions to situations in your life. It can also shift your inner state quite radically. Real discernment, I've always found, starts with the willingness to ask questions. If you keep asking those questions, you will often get to the place where there are no answers at all, the place where you are just…present. Judgments dissolve in that place. Then you don't have to strive for discernment; discernment is as natural as the breath.
Excerpts from her article in Yoga JournalSally Kempton, also known as Durgananda, is an author, a meditation teacher, and the founder of the Dharana Institute.
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