Judgment

It often feels like things “happen” to us, that the problem is in the external circumstances, and that’s why we don’t succeed or things don’t go as we want. We find ourselves repeatedly stuck in a cycle, feeling trapped, without a way out and without a sense of control. To begin the journey out of the cycle we are trapped in, we need to befriend ourselves, to know intimately how we perceive reality and react to it, our triggers, and our automatic emotional patterns. When we feel them, it never feels like something new happening for the first time. It feels like an old emotion that has always been there. This means our early tendencies to feel hurt, angry, jealous, guilty, ashamed, or invisible.

Our perception of reality, through our senses, happens in a flash and triggers a chain of internal and external experiences that make up our emotional response. We give meaning to this rapid process, and before we even blink, we already have a certain feeling that leaves no room for doubt: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. With this rising feeling, we judge the outside world as “good” or “bad.” Emotions rise strongly, and we tell ourselves a story or a full narrative about the experience, which becomes certain, fixed, and solid. Along with the story, our sense of self also becomes fixed and solid.

The issue is not the patterns themselves, because all humans have them, but our clinging to early tendencies that make us interpret what we perceive in a fixed, absolute way. This is the tendency to pull toward what we want (pleasant) and push away what we don’t want (unpleasant). Our interpretation is usually related more to past experiences than to the present. When we are in this certain, absolute place, there is no room for questions, reflection, or observation. For example, you are walking down the street and see someone you recognize from work. You are happy to see them, wave hello, and they keep walking. If your early tendency is to feel unseen, unimportant, or worthless, the meaning you give to the experience will follow that tendency, and that becomes the story. It comes with contraction, leaving no space to examine the facts, uncertainty, or other interpretations, like maybe they didn’t notice me, or maybe they are preoccupied. This happens almost without our noticing; we label the experience and judge it as “good” or “bad.” Judging others and situations also means judging ourselves, which leads to feelings of worthlessness, shame, and loneliness. Lack of judgment allows a better understanding of the challenge we face, freeing us to address it with much more clarity and ease.

The way to break free from conditioned early patterns is to weaken them. Train the nervous system that seeks certainty and control to stay directly with the experience, without judgment, without the story in our heads. This is very hard because the conditioned pattern happens in a flash, and we want to escape feeling it. We want to shortcut to judging the outcome as “good” or “bad,” to be certain. But there is always the option to stop emotional escalation, observe our thoughts, feelings, and impulses, return to the body, locate the emotion, and breathe with it, even if only for a short moment.

I heard Pema Chodron describe anger as a rising fire within us, just like the flame of a candle or a volcano. We need to engage with it without the story, without labeling or judging. Connect to the living energy of the emotion, as something that connects us to other people, not something that separates. Christine Neff, a Buddhist psychologist, suggests a mantra for this moment: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I offer myself the compassion I need.”

Every time we even just notice that we are trapped, it is a lot, it is a sign we are on the path. We learn to befriend ourselves, to love who we are, and to know that we still have room to grow.

SELF LOVE IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT

Picture taken from Pinterest