What does it mean to not judge? It’s an ambitious goal, because the kind of judging that leads us to mental problems is also valuable for the human brain to evaluate the world.
We have to judge distances from the bed to the floor so that we don’t trip. We make thousands of judgments every day that pertain simply to moving around and navigating the world. But the mind adds to mechanical judgment by putting values on things, and that is also natural.
If you look in nature, creatures have to select mates and they have criteria programmed into their DNA. The female peacock is instinctively drawn to the male with the best feathers, the best colors, the best dance. We have our own selections like that. Our favorite colors, our least favorite colors. Our favorite flavors, our least favorite. Our favorite music and our least favorite.
If you think about it, our entire system of taste is centered around judgment, and that system then elevates to a more intricate and complex level where we assess people from a momentary glimpse of their behavior, something they’re wearing, or a body position. This system is subject to bigotry, racism, and all of the isms and defects of human character.
Call this hyper judgment. It is what happens when we are triggered and living in anxiety states. Our assessments become hyperbolic and start to feed off of themselves. One judgment feeds another and propels us into even greater anxiety. This is the type of judgment discussed in many philosophies, and it is brilliant that humans can reflect on themselves enough to see that this is a problem.
In this case we are first overthinking, second we are creating an anxious nervous system, and third we are projecting the negativity we feel inside onto everything outside of ourselves, and the world becomes uncomfortable. We become so accustomed to anxiety states that even when we feel them, we forget what relaxation feels like. We lose touch with the sensations of ease and fall into a world of opposing concepts, beautiful and ugly, rich and poor, us and them.
The distinction between mechanical judgment and hyper judgment matters. You must know the flavors that are too spicy, or when something is too hot to put in your mouth. These are momentary, necessary judgments. Hyper judgment is something else entirely. It is chronic, compulsive, and always rooted in anxiety, self doubt, and insecurity. We are projecting what we have going on inside onto the world.
If we do not feel beautiful, it becomes easy to look at things and call them ugly.
We can hear about someone who hurt many people and say that person did a terrible thing. That is honest. But hyper judgment goes further, calling something evil while forgetting that the root of all that terrible behavior was planted somewhere in childhood. Humans behave badly in anxiety states. It is in those states that we hurt each other, that people do impulsive and compulsive and destructive things.
Remember that most negative thoughts will connect you to another negative thought. When we feel jealousy, we may start to judge the person we’re jealous of. We feel resentment. We trigger insecurity, self doubt, painful desires that go unmet, and all of it erodes our self esteem.
One negative thought can poison the mind the way arsenic can poison wine.
So what do you do? The first step is to learn how you judge things throughout the day and throughout the week. Pay attention. Keep a journal of your most prominent judgments. Make a list of judgments you can surrender, ones you look at and recognize as unnecessary. Notice how, when you are in anxiety states, you drift into judgment, and notice the reverse as well, how when you start judging, you tend to amplify anxiety. Over time, when a judgment arises, pause and ask yourself whether it is necessary. Most of the time, it is not.
The mind that judges least is the mind that suffers least. That is worth working toward.
Meditation: Catching the Judge
Find a comfortable seat and close your eyes. Take three slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Let the body settle.
Now bring to mind something you judged recently. It could be a person, a situation, something about yourself. Don’t force it. Just let one rise naturally.
Notice where the judgment lives in your body. Is there tension in the chest, the jaw, the stomach? Sit with that sensation without trying to change it.
Now ask yourself quietly, what was I feeling before the judgment arrived? See if you can locate the anxiety or the insecurity underneath it. You don’t have to fix anything. Just look.
Take a breath. And as you exhale, see if you can simply set the judgment down, the way you would set down something heavy you had been carrying without realizing it.
You are not your judgments. You are the awareness that can watch them come and go. Sit here for as long as you like. When you are ready, open your eyes.