Judging others

I am trying to stop judging others from their actions/behavior, to being someone that judges by the reflection thrown off by their souls, any advice?

I know, it would be wonderful if I did not judge others at all, but I AM trying to get there.

Thank you so much for any suggestions offered.

wendy

Hi fellow judger! :slight_smile:

stands up
My name is David and I judge.
sits down

I feel that admitting and being conscious of your judgments is the first step. I recently wrote:

The next step for me has been to realize that ANY time I judge others, what I judge IS within myself in some way or form. When I catch myself judging, the steps I take are:

  1. Come into my body, breathe, feel, and connect to the peace within.
  2. I inwardly apologize to the person, thank them, love them, and forgive myself (and them).
  3. Ask myself how, what I judged them for, is within me. Invariably it is, sometimes it is easier to see than other times. I observe it, sit with it, but am careful not to judge it :wink:

I find myself judging less and less and just loving and accepting. It’s definitely a journey though. One I am grateful to be on.

Let it be so. :slight_smile:
I subscribe.

Hello Wendy,

Could you expound on what you mean by “judging”?
It might be very helpful to the discourse.
Maybe an example or two of the actions and subsequent thoughts you are asking about??

Thank you David for taking the time to read and respond with some wise and wonderful advice, and for making me feel that I’m not the only one struggling with non-judgement.
You are a good and true friend to us all.

Thank you IA for making me think, and all of your helpful, witty and intelligent posts on the forums, such a pleasure to read.

For an example, I’ll give you my neighbors intrusion on my ability to relax and enjoy my backyard. I’d love to be able to sit and relax, enjoy the fragrance of blooming plants, listen to the sounds of nature, and frolicking kittens, birds, butterflies, etc., without being bombarded with loud music and arguments every other day. I have been quite generous in my offers of help, and willingness to come up with solutions to this problem. I have been met with indifference.
I don’t seem to react with compassion like an enlightened person should, but become angry that they are so inconsiderate of others. I know I should practice non-judgmentand forgiveness when this situation arises, which then leads me to judge myself, "who am I, to hold myself above or better than them?, or “who am I to judge good and bad, wrong and right?”. I don’t like to think that I’m better than my neighbors, it’s just so hard to let it go and be accepting sometimes.

After reading this, I’m thinking maybe I am being self-centered - as in they are intruding on MY peace and quiet. I don’t know.

What a long journey I have ahead of me.
Good thing I love journeys!:smiley:

That is more helpful Wendy, thank you.

What I have observed and experienced is that we human beings tend to get so wrapped up in our enlightenment story that we blur the line between judgment and discernment. In our haste to look outwardly good and kind and evolved and levitating to others so that they will notice us and commend us for our advanced place on the spiritual path, we loose touch with the authenticity of our humaness- in this case emotions.

I have both cautioned and been cautioned about the ego masquerading as the spirit. In short, white hemp clothes, a perpetual smile, and an indifferent gloss to one’s affect may only be a veneer. All the more reason to study with a sound teacher so that one may have a clean look at one’s self.

Discernment is something that we absolutely need and would benefit from refining. It allows us to know that we are not served by this person’s company, or that we are not empowered by this class, or our body is not ready for this pose, or it is best not to stroll slowly across I-4. Discernment gives us much needed feedback for mindful decision-making.

However when your neighbors behavior is branded with a label as being “bad” (or “good” for that matter) or when you are incredibly ruffled by it even after doing all that you can, then it needs to be looked at, as you are doing now. It is merely another experience in the physical body and perhaps one that your soul actually needs for its evolution. Perhaps your soul lived in a cave last time round and this time it must have some ruffles. Or perhaps its time to move.

Both may be true. But I don’t think you should be too hard on yourself for discernment as long as you are not using discernement to justify your anger and outrage.

Namaste Wendy,

I think there has been before another thread where we discussed the difference between judging and discernment also qat length, perhaps you can search for it.

I agree fully with IA and would like to add the following: remember the outside world is just a reflection of the inside world, the noise on the outside is a noise on the inside. Perhaps you can contemplate this and see what noises inside yourself you suppress or need to pay attention to. I have found many times in my life if I solve the inside noise, conflict etc the outside expression of it sort of disappears or dissipate at least until you don’t notice it anymore.

  1. Concentrate. I, for one, if I am absorbed to an activity I am really interested in, I don’t hear, I don’t see.
    This might just be a test of your patience. Once you develop the necessary patience, these trouble will go away. They are there only to make you stronger.
    I know, sometimes we just feel the need to be left alone. Realize that your backyard is not that place, instead, it is a gauntlet. You say, you are entitled to have your peace. This is simply not true. Find another place to rest, it must not be a garden. Use the backyard for what it is, a clash of various interests.

  2. Argue, quarrel, fight, make a stand, get your message through. Express your disturbed state. You can be a badass, too. I bet Jesus was a badass when he has drown the merchants out of the temple. :slight_smile: Arjuna, I bet he was a badass when he killed his own brethren. Compassion is in the heart, not in the actions.

Wendy, have you considered that perhaps your pleasant response to your neighbours rudeness IS non judgemental? I would say you have behaved with remarkable tolerance in such an instance.

I tend to view situations like this as a gift. What is it I need to learn/do in this situation? Most things are sent to us to help us learn.

Perhaps you don’t need to be “non judgemental” here. The lesson might be that in the world we live in there will be things we need to deal with in different ways. The lesson might also be as Hubert suggests, an opportunity to improve your focus and concentration to the point of ignoring your neighbours. Only you can decide what your lesson is in this circumstance. I wish you well.

some thoughts
if you are resistent to your neighbors, resistence is normally met with resistence. If you feel resistence to who they are and what they do, they will probably pick up on that before you even say a word to them about it. So, how can you address this without resistence, that is where creativity comes in. If your neighbors argue with each other then they may have some internal struggles within themselves. They are hurting inside, can you find compasion for them? How well do you know your neighbors, maybe build a rapport with them before tackling this issue, become their friend and if you do it from the heart, most likely they will become your friend to. WHen someone cares about you because you care about them, they will do things for you because they care. Life is like a coin, we often only look at two sides. If you can live on the third side you will roll along nicely. Easy for me to speak these words, living them is another story. best of luck

we are one, in the same
brother neil

Thank you all, for the wisdom you have offered me.

I don’t know where to begin, as I’m still trying to absorb the advice you have given me.

First of all, I need to get past my solutions involving gathering up a posse of neighbors (the others that are bothered by the neighbors actions) and marching over there to resolve this. Visions of pitchforks = not good. I am trying to observe these thoughts instead of judging them.

justwannabe - I think you are right about my resistance. The first time I approached the neighbors to welcome them was with open hands, the next was probably with closed fists, and a pointing finger - even if it was only in my mind.

Alix - what a great way to view situations like these! thank you.

Hubert - so I can go over there and beat them with a stick? :grin:
You are so right, I need to develop more patience.

Pandara, thank you, I will search the forums for that thread.

InnerAthlete, I get you on the not throwing away judgment for the sake of being perceived as nonjudgmental.

I will focus on accepting where I am now, rather than worrying about becoming nonjudgmental, which seems to be a goal, and aren’t goals being about the future - which would take me away from being in the present??? Now I’m confused again. :rolleyes:

Wendy, you made me snort my tea with the visions of pitchforks and an angry mob! Thanks for the early morning giggle.

It’s so nice to start the day off giggling.

I almost lost my tea also - when I read IAs chai snorting post!
I think he must need help becoming nonjudgmental also, he seems to think that chai in a box is a BAD thing.:stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=wendy;14279]What a long journey I have ahead of me.
Good thing I love journeys![/quote]

My sister, I am also your traveling buddy on this journey. Let’s all promise to our turns making each other giggle as travel along:D

Judging others can be useful. Otherwise how can we develop discernment ? Important is not to stop with judgement, but to realize where it comes from. In fact it is part of our practice to watch other people, because in their case most of the time we are more objective, unbiased. This objectivity can and must be extended to our own person. When someone becomes able to judge oneself objectivley, that is where real self knowledge starts. And this is where the coin flips back. We will be able to see others objectivly as they are, only when we aquired the ability to apply this objectivity to ourself. Objective judgement is knowledge, necessary to find our path.

[QUOTE=wendy;14265]I am trying to stop judging others from their actions/behavior, to being someone that judges by the reflection thrown off by their souls, any advice?

I know, it would be wonderful if I did not judge others at all, but I AM trying to get there.

Thank you so much for any suggestions offered.

wendy[/QUOTE]

We must still make judgments in our life, but we don’t have to be slaves to a predisposition to judgmentalism that is causing us problems. Awareness is step one. Now that you are aware, start scaling back. Instead of judging start blessing others.

But Hubert summed it up that we can’t go through life blind. But we can cut back a notch on injecting our ego into the eqation.

I am so appreciative of all your advice, and trying to put it in to practice. Sometimes it’s hard to bless others, but I’m getting there, slowly.

I would much rather hang out with Nichole and giggle.:smiley:

This is hard. I think I have an ego problem too, thinking I’m better then others too often. Maybe I need to look at how that’s affecting my relationships with others. Once again - this is hard. :frowning:

[QUOTE=wendy;14279]…my neighbors intrusion on my ability to relax :-D[/QUOTE]

Here is an old post I wrote. Maybe something in it for you. Your neighbor story reminded me of a talk by the DL in NY Central Park. Get it from your library.

But any way you cut it - peace practice is not a perfect journey. I highlighted the passage below as to why this is so. Good luck

How do you lose anger?

This is what separates the enlightened mind from the unenlightened mind and why enlightenment can’t be forced on someone.

Can you force someone to lose the anger if they are not ready to?

Tired of being angry?

Just relinquish control and anger will be diminished.

Anger and control go hand in hand.

Some of these tendencies come from habit other times they stem from ignorance. Either way we can change our habits or extinguish ignorance with knowledge, mindfulness and practice.

The first step is realization that something is disturbing our peace. And for many this realization can come about through writing or journaling.

Putting our complaints down on pen and paper first crystallizes in our heads what needs to be changed or accepted in our lives.

Getting it all out and putting it all down is the first start of this recognition process that leads us to toxic rage recovery Kater.

Without this recognition, that we are sick or something is wrong in our lives, we cannot develop the desire for change.

We don’t even know what is wrong to change!

Writing your complaints down is the first start to making the roadmap for restructuring your life.

Restructuring our lives is very important if we want to get peace from our rage addiction.

Those things that cannot be restructured need to be accepted.

Either way we can find peace – by change or acceptance.

When you write, it uses a different part of the brain that mere speaking uses and I seem to get amazing results from writing as compared to just talking.

Writing helps crystallize your thoughts, it shares recovery with other addicts and they can know they are not alone.

Just remember what the Buddhists say in the eightfold path about right actions.

We have to use the right thoughts, the right actions and take the right direction with recovery.

Just spinning our wheels in the wrong direction does little for recovery, so write about things that matter to you and your recovery.

On page 90 of the AA’s 12 and 12 the writers mention how the addict cannot afford “justifiable anger” and it should be left to those better qualified to handle it.

With reference to this statement – it is gospel - there is no argument here. We can always settle such disputes by looking deeply into the person, place, thing or emotion in question and ask if it helps or hurts our practice?

Does having anger and hatred in our hearts ever increase our peace or serenity or does it diminish it?

Even is we are justified, so called, in having this emotion does it suddenly become a peace generator in our life with this newfound license to hate or is it still a peace buster whether we have an excuse or not?

The path is clear about which direction to take and all that remains is the release of the anger.

Some people get confused with this anger question and beat themselves for still experiencing this emotion thinking they should be a “perfectly spiritual individual” and above such lowly emotions as getting angry.

They think they can perfect their lives and wipe out natural law with one blow called spirituality.

Due to the diversity of thought we humans are capable of we have all sorts of thoughts and emotions that pop up in our heads. Without this ability we could not think as we do.

But, just because thoughts or emotions pop up in our heads the choice is ours alone whether we foster and build on any particular thought or emotion.

Spirituality does not eliminate such thoughts - it just helps decide what we do with them.

[B]Anger is also part of our natural make up. Anger is an emotions that can serve us when we need to summon it up in a life or death situation such as self defense or when our species had to hunt big game for a living - hunt with spears, clubs and rocks.

Even if we are dealing with life or death self defense and must generate anger, the byproducts is still a disruption of our peace as we recover from the circumstance as a shaking and rattled mess.

So, even if anger is justified, so called, it does not magically become a peace promoter in our lives instead of a peace destroyer.

Anger is also an important emotion for self preservation in less dangerous circumstances than big game hunts, for without feeling anger we wound not seek out change - changing our environment that might be an unhealthy one for us.

So, we should never regret feeling anger, but just as anger and excretion are two naturally occurring parts of being a human, we should let them serve us instead of we being enslaved to them.[/B]
Anger comes in two-forms: Nature Based Anger and Toxic Based Anger

Always remember, anger is a nature given tool of defense and living right. But it takes humans to tun this healthy tool into an unhealthy, toxic tool of destruction.

Besides justified anger, there are HUNDREDS of other things that one cannot “afford” in their life is they desire inner peace.

Sure, we can all white knuckle it and just scrape by with, ready to slip off at a moments notice if we want to put our desires before our practice.

But, learning what fits and what does not fit comfortably in our life is the ongoing battle we all have to undertake if we want peace.

In short, we have to ask if a peace based life can “afford” the many things we come into daily contact with. And the measure of our success will be determined by how well we live within our comfortable means by asking this “affordability” question.

Before I could find lasting and peaceful recovery I had to learn to refuse many areas of my old life that did not serve me any longer.

The 3 paths that addiction (Yes, anger is addictive) can take are these: the addiction can be increased, it can be decreased or can be frozen.

These 3 paths shows us which direction we are headed in with our recovery at any given moment.

Once the rage addict has this affordability mindset in place they can direct their thoughts towards the cultivation of recovery, so that whatever action they are engaged in - it is always evaluated from this perspective and they can find great success from applying this single minded dedication to change.

Suddenly they find their recovery practice and life can become as one and asking such questions becomes second nature for them.

But again, this is the textbook or idealistic way of looking at this affordability question, we need practical application in the real world.

Many of us have families and jobs and to be a total renunciate of all things disruptive to our peace and our recovery program is not always possible or desirable when looking at the big picture.

I often hear excuses from other rage addicts saying they can’t stop this or that because of their family, jobs or other obligations, so we need to balance these two extremes of being a total renunciate with the other extreme of being paralyzed and not changing a thing because of excuses and justification.

We have to work towards a balance if we want peace and just like exercise, we always seem to find reasons for not doing what we know is right.

The way I work it is to be aware of what is disruptive to my peace and to change it if possible as a first choice or work on accepting it as the serenity prayer says as a second choice.

I try to stay away from justification or looking for excuses to continue on the wrong path.

I either change things or work on accepting them. If we base our decisions of proven principles of recovery it helps takes us out of the decision making process and rests our recovery on solid foundation instead of excuses.

I don’t beat myself for not being able to perform well in every given circumstance under the sun.

I know that I do not mesh well with everything and everybody in life and I have certain limits and abilities.

To do otherwise would say that we have the right to be perfect and violate our make up and that we have no limits or boundaries to govern us and are godlike.

The 12 step programs reminds us to work within our limits by “staying right size” on pages 122-125, so it tells me right there I am not immune to all things destructive just because I work the 12 steps.

In SCA they have a tool called abstention. They abstain the best way they can from people places or things they have found to be detrimental to their recovery program efforts from past experience with them.

My recovery success is based a lot on abstaining from people, places and things that do not mesh well with me and if I cannot avoid them, then I work to make the unavoidable fit better by changing things on my end.

Yes, we cannot change others, but we do usually have control of ourselves and how we participate in dealing with others.

Even though we cannot completely change or wipe our many problem areas in our life we can usually change some aspects of most problems to make them more bearable.

So, I am always looking for small changes to make in the right direction and this recovery orientation towards the direction of change helps by giving hope of possible larger future change as well.

But bottom line is either you must change from the inside out - or life will change you ‘its way’ from the outside in and this tends to rot your insides with the byproducts that a life of toxic anger produces.

Anger can be used, but when it uses you, than it is trouble. :wink:

Thanks for all you’ve written keepitlow, I will have to think a bit before giving you a proper response. Thank you Hubert for taking the time to keep sharing your knowledge, I do think it is slowly sinking in. :stuck_out_tongue:

I don’t know that I have an anger problem (maybe I just don’t see it?) as much as a problem judging. If I do get angry it’s fleeting, and then I feel sadness and disappointment in the actions of others.

When I feel that I’m better than someone else, it’s not always directed at an actual person. I’ve felt better than someone (I don’t know who) that emptied their ashtray in a parking lot. I feel that I’m better than those CEOs taking multimillion dollar bonuses, as their employees struggle to keep jobs.

I really don’t run around constantly feeling anger or judging people, I just wish it wouldn’t happen at all. I want to continually grow to be a better person.

I’ll keep working on it, with both persistence and patience.