The fin­ger point­ing at oth­ers is your finger

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The Ego and Judgements

I trust by now you get that the ego is the source of judge­ments. This begins in infancy, with the “me/not me” project that cre­ates the sense of self in the first place.

Now, I know it’s dif­fi­cult to step back from your ego, which is actu­ally a construct—it’s noth­ing more than

• the sto­ries you tell your­self about yourself,
• what you choose to remem­ber about your life history (empha­sis on story)
• your sto­ries about how oth­ers under­stand you.

We do not remem­ber the “pre-ego” time, but for sev­eral months, we were actu­ally an undif­fer­en­ti­ated mass, with no indi­vid­ual identity.

The iden­tity you have is a story

It’s made up. By your par­ents ini­tially, and taken over by you. There’s noth­ing either real or true about the story, but most folk will defend their iden­tity to the death.

Imag­ine a big box of Lego. You reach into the box, and build some­thing by select­ing pieces from all of the avail­able parts. Notice that you choose some things, and do not choose oth­ers. The other pieces could be used—they are noth­ing more than the uncho­sen bits. This is how your ego, your sense of self, was built.

Point being, we end up spend­ing our lives play­ing with what was cre­ated, as if it is the only option. In a sense, we become blind to the other pieces, despite the fact that they travel with us, all the time.

All you have to do is notice

It is only by watch­ing the work­ings of our mind that we get to the point of see­ing our­selves cre­at­ing ourselves.

Judge­ment has lev­els

What I’ve just described is actu­ally quite benign. This essen­tial phase is “dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion,” or the first order of judgement—“me/not me.” There are two aspects:

1. exter­nal - I am me and you are you, and we are separate
2. inter­nal - this is a part of me, this is not—i.e. I have blue eyes and not brown eyes

There is noth­ing “wrong” with either of these dis­tinc­tions. In order to live and work in the nat­ural world, we all must act as if the exter­nal world is both real, and “out there.” And some phys­i­cal aspects of self are present in me, and oth­ers are def­i­nitely not. (For exam­ple, I have O+ blood, and no other type.)

All this goes off the rails with sec­ond order judgement

Sec­ond order judge­ment is always sub­jec­tive and built upon black and white think­ing. Let’s use the above exam­ple: “I have O+ blood” is a first order judge­ment. A sec­ond order judge­ment would be: “O+ blood is good and right, and A+ is bad and wrong.”

Sec­ond order is “good/bad, right/wrong” dual­ity. Dual­ity is “either/or” thinking.

Another hard con­cept to get is that noth­ing has a sec­ond order dis­tinc­tion intrin­si­cally. In other words, a sec­ond order dual­ity is always rela­tional. Take “tall.” If we describe some­one as tall, the wise per­son asks, “Com­pared to what?” Tall is rel­a­tive. So are good, bad, right, and wrong. It just doesn’t seem that way.

And the odd piece, when we are pressed, is that often we can­not explain why we judge one thing as good, another bad. In a flum­mox, we resort to, “Every­one knows…” or “That’s just what my fam­ily believes.”

It’s Dif­fi­cult to Let Sec­ond Order Judg­ing Go

We actu­ally will eval­u­ate until we die. “I want more of this, less of that…” “I find this attrac­tive, that unat­trac­tive…” No doubt, we all go there. Liv­ing a cen­tered life, for­tu­nately, does not require that we stop eval­u­at­ing. The cen­tered life requires that we notice what we are doing, and stop our­selves from act­ing on autopi­lot. We have the eval­u­a­tion, and choose the sub­se­quent behaviour.

Here are two things that get in the way of stop­ping the move­ment from judge­ment to autopi­lot reaction:

Story Telling

Most peo­ple rapidly go from a judge­ment to story-telling. I see this in coun­selling all the time. Peo­ple are so unwill­ing to give up their sto­ries. One client spent a decade try­ing to get her part­ner to do things her way. After much effort, she declared that she was going to stop doing this, and accept him as he was.

Next ses­sion, she told me how she berated him for some­thing. I reminded her of her pledge. She replied, “I wasn’t crit­i­ciz­ing him. I just want him to be aware, like I am.”

In actu­al­ity, her story was that her hus­band is defec­tive, and all she changed was the defect she pointed out.

Focussing on Others

Any time you are com­pelled to give advice for “someone’s own good,” you’re judg­ing. Any time you think you are supe­rior to some­one, you’re judg­ing. Any time you are sure you know the truth, you’re judg­ing. Notice, breathe, and let go.

When you Judge, notice

That’s all. As soon as the judge­ment comes into your aware­ness, just name it. “Judg­ing!” Then, let your atten­tion shift from your mind game to the present moment—by hav­ing a breath.

This is the key. Aware­ness, notic­ing, is all about becom­ing clear on what is hap­pen­ing, with­out rush­ing in to do the “right/wrong, good/bad” thing.

I may eval­u­ate and label the expe­ri­ence, but I do not need to make it more than it is.

This is the end­less first step in com­ing into a more cen­tered and present exis­tence. As soon as you notice your­self mov­ing from the label to evi­dence (fan­tasy) gath­er­ing, just stop. As I said above, speak the label. “Judg­ing, fan­ta­siz­ing, blam­ing, story-telling, wool-gathering…” what­ever. Then, gen­tly bring your atten­tion back to the cur­rent moment.

Know your ego

…or your ego will own you. You have to pay atten­tion to your ego, all the time, as the ego is crafty, and wants to keep you stuck in your judge­ments. As a mat­ter of fact, the bet­ter you get at drop­ping bla­tant judge­ment, the more sub­tle your ego becomes.

One friend reported hear­ing the fol­low­ing from a friend: “I am just say­ing, I have come so far along the path, and all I want you to do is to join me and become a spe­cial as I am!” This would be an ego, judg­ing, while shift­ing the lan­guage from gross to subtle.

Your ego knows how to defend itself, and to keep you “in judge­ment.” All that changes is the tone and tim­bre. So, your job is to stay awake and aware.

The best “advice” I can give you is this: learn what judge­ment feels like in your body. Notice what you tighten, what “hurts.” Mon­i­tor your­self for that feel­ing, and use the sen­sa­tion as warn­ing sig­nal that your ego is act­ing up again. As soon as you notice, stop, have a breath, and relax. Then choose the most whole and cen­tered action you can imagine.

This is the first key for let­ting go while com­ing into the present.