Thursday, 7 February 2013

Judgement and juryment

Judgement-I'm trying to stop it.Aware that I'm preprogrammed to judge and that my whole culture does it on a daily basis,I'm coming to the conclusion that judging decreases my quality of like (and potentially others).Its like this: You do something 'wrong', you're 'bad'-the feelings are possibly a mixture of guilt,depression and shame.Now that is a mental position-its not a fact-that you are wrong that you are bad etc. So my new position is I feel remorse,I witness the effect of what I did,I refrain from judging myself and others.Instead I feel my feelings,I listen to the feelings of the others in the equation, I learn about how much they valued something which was taken away,destroyed or damaged. I witness that I, too have a value system and how I feel and how this contributed to my course of action. I listen empathetically to myself and give myself a chance to do something different next time. I ask what the person I affected would like me to do differently next time. This is not semantic romantics;it isnt liberal 'touchy feely' claptrap. I've been doing this for a few years now with remarkable success.I have grown closer to others,connected with myself and experienced less shame,anger, guilt, fear and depression.
Judgement needs a perpertrator and, neccessarily, a victim.It just occurred to me that judgement removes personal responsibility.It can entrap both 'victim'and 'perpertrator'.Blame imprisons. How many times have I heard the bitterness in the victim even though the perpertrator is imprisoned.or dead-they've been executed. It doesn't change their stance or feelings.They still feel (or should I say think) themselves wronged.. The other compassionate approach has neither.It frees you because you can actually feel,you can communicate compassionately (with yourself and others).You are in charge of your thoughts and therefore the  feelings which follow them. True, their ingrained nature can make habitual thoughts hard to shift.

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