Q: I’m looking for a practice to stop judging so much. I actually know what it feels like. But I haven’t felt it in a while. It feels good!
A: Good!—we’re glad you’re here.
If we could stop judging and did nothing else, if that was the practice, just all judgment ceases—I don’t mean discrimination or making important decisions or knowing the difference between this and that, ceases—but if all “judging” would cease, that’s it. That would take you as far as it’s humanly possible to go. Ram Dass tells a story that for forty-five years…he carried a note in his wallet. It’s all tattered, frayed. It’s his own reminder, and all it says is: “Cease judging.” He said he was still trying to achieve it.
Let me say a few words about ‘not judging’. It isn’t what you think it is. Unless you’ve had a profound shift where there’s not a lot of judging going on (and maybe many of you have had that), it probably isn’t what you may think it is. It doesn’t mean judgment “stops”. Because we’re so conditioned, so trained almost from birth, so ‘messaged’ by the society and by the people around us, and by friends and enemies alike, to judge. There’s a constant push to be judging: “This is better than that; Coke or Pepsi; this is better than that; that’s not as good as this.”
Judgment “ceasing”, doesn’t mean you will never again feel or experience “a judgment”. It really means: you will never again be fooled by it. You will never believe in it the way you used to believe in it. It won’t have the hold over you. You can choose whether to listen to it or not, follow it or not, put any stock in it or not. When judgment has really ceased, the interesting and unexpected thing is you choose almost never to follow it.
The mind is a judging machine. It comes up. When judgment ceases, sure, a lot less of it comes up. But don’t think the ceasing of judging, being beyond judgment, or having transcended judgment, means no judgment ever comes up. They come up now and again. More than anything, you laugh at them, because you see how ridiculous these judgments are, how absolutely meaningless, without any real value. It’s funny they are called “value judgments,” because they are without any value at all! They should be called “no-value judgments.”
Judgments are the way your mind keeps you from being right here, right now—fully satisfied, fully happy. How can you be happy if you’re judging something as ‘not the way it should be’? There’s no judgment any of us can have that doesn’t, at its base, say, “Things should not be the way they are right now”. It’s another way of saying, “I’m not happy. It’s not OK.”
This is a group of smart people. Everybody in the room raises their hand when I say, “Who is interested in being less judgmental or ceasing judgment?” Because everybody knows deep down that judging is the road to hell. That’s the people in this room. There are about six and a half billion people who aren’t in this room. Many of them are completely snowed, completely fooled by judging. They think it’s good stuff. They think the more they judge, the better off they’ll be, the clearer things will get, the more they’ll define their territory, or what’s important.
The people who come to a meeting like this have had the tremendously good fortune and the true grace of having realized that judgment only leads to more judgment. It doesn’t bring you anything. It doesn’t add to life. In fact it detracts. It’s a self-contained poison system; it just goes round and round. You have to first and foremost, before anything else, be glad. Be glad that you are among the rare few people on the planet who have figured that out, who have somehow come to that wisdom. It is wisdom, it’s absolute wisdom. Remember that most people do not realize this. Most people think it’s good to judge; the more judgments the better. They have a strong opinion: “That’s what makes you who you are”. No—that’s what guarantees you unhappiness.
Good for you!—that you’re already ninety percent of the way down the road—to have actually recognized that judgments don’t serve you. I would much rather be in a room with you guys, than those other six and a half billion. Because that belief in judgment, leads to all kinds of craziness, all kinds of hostility—misunderstanding and hurt. Nonsense. Craziness. Conflicts.
Already, every person in this room is a helper for the planet, being that there’s one more individual who’s not caught in the judgment trap. I’m confirming to you that you may not be as caught as you think. If you already know that, that’s one of the ways out. If you already know that judgments don’t take you anywhere, then probably without realizing it, you’re already doing a great deal that serves everything and everyone—because you’re not a ‘full participant’ in all the nonsense. There are probably things you say “no” to, without even really realizing it. You don’t choose to engage in what the rest of the world is busily doing, usually involving some kind of conflict or negativity. Good for you! First realize that. Give yourself credit for that. You may not even realize how significant that is. That’s on my job description to tell you. It’s something you may not see about yourself.