releasing judgment

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By: Hermas Lassalle
Edited date: August 19, 2021Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Conducting our lives within a mindset based on judgment can be a toxic way to live. Resorting to unconscious judgment robs us of the opportunity to take responsibility for our own lives and actions. We commonly use judgment to soothe the ego by justifying our own thoughts, actions and opinions, cultivating the perception that we are right and good while others are wrong and bad. Judgment is a way of conforming to what is commonly accepted, making it more likely that we ourselves will fit in and be accepted, or in essence, loved. The fear of not being loved and accepted can lead us to shun and reject others in an attempt to ensure that we are not shunned and rejected. By living life in this way, we are submitting to the ebb and flow of the consensus rather than living with a conscious intention for what we want our lives to be. Judgment robs us of the ability to hear our inner guide.

This pattern of judgment is often passed down to us from our parents, who learned it from their parents and so on and so on. We heard and absorbed our parents’ judgments as we grew up and then began forming our own as our fear of rejection developed. Thus, a cycle is formed that instills a need for defensively justifying our thoughts, opinions and actions rather than consciously assessing individual experiences and situations in our lives with objectivity and openness. 

So the challenge facing those who want to break the destructive cycle of judgment is to discover why a black-and-white sense of good and bad and right and wrong is so important to us. For most of us, a world without the crutch of the consensus to lean on is a really scary place because we suddenly become individuially responsible for our actions, words and values. We are no longer colluding with our parents, society and culture. We can no longer perceive ourselves as being in a safe commonly accepted space but rather it is revealed that we are susceptible to unsecured outcomes from which there are countless possibilities including growth and love of self as well as the possibility that we may get it all wrong. In essence, we become solely dependent on our inner guides. The question is whether we trust ourselves enough to listen.

If we are guided from within, we need not fear the corrupting influence of the ego. By trusting in our inner guide and listening to it, we empower ourselves to control our egos, freeing us to objectively observe and assess the experiences we have in our lives. We will be free of the need to judge and can accept what is without resistance. There are always consequences for every action. By letting go of the need to be right, and hence, the need to be accepted, we actually free ourselves of the vulnerability of being hurt by rejection. Creating a perception that we are right is only just a perception. It is no real protection. so whatever we do, or choose to say in each moment, an effect will take place. It is then up to us to let it be or judge it. 

When we take responsibility for our actions we are naturally cultivating self-love. Our actions are inspired by the soul.