SGM April 2018 Weekly Message Three: “Are Judgments Weighing You Down?”
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Welcome to this week’s edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
This month, our discussion and practice center on the book, “Loyalty to Your Soul,” by H. Ronald Hulnick, Ph.D. and Mary R. Hulnick, Ph.D. In our first Weekly Message, we explored the central theme of this book that “We are spiritual beings having human experiences.” This insight gives us an eternal perspective that can free us from getting lost in the details, tensions, and limitations of our everyday consciousness.
In Weekly Message Two, we explored three practices for living from our Loving Essence: Heart-Centered Listening, Facilitating Responsibility 1: Choice, and Facilitating Responsibility 2: Ownership.
Through Heart-Centered Listening we set our personal agendas aside so that we can truly take in and support the Essence of another and what they have to say. We can use Facilitating Responsibility 1 when we feel stuck and unable to connect with our higher possibilities. Facilitating Responsibility 2 can assist us to take ownership for our inner state through complete acceptance of ourselves, others, and what is happening around us.
In this Week’s Message, we’re going to go deeper into the process of releasing limiting attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. We’ll identify the root cause of our emotional suffering and discover the power in releasing judgment and engaging in forgiveness.
The Hulnicks say that, in their many years of experience as teachers and counselors, they’ve discovered that 99 percent of what people suffer from is of their own creation. Not only do we create our own suffering, but we do it with one predictable gesture. We suffer because we seek to justify the statement “I’m upset because. . .”
We’ve been trained to look at life through the lens of being a victim. Through that lens, we judge life as hard, disturbing, disappointing, wrong, or unfair. Our emotional issues relate to some version of thinking “I’m upset about what has happened to me” followed by finding reasons to support being upset.
At the center of this outlook is one simple action—judgment. By that the Hulnicks do not mean judgment in the sense of using “better judgment” or “poor judgment.” They don’t mean evaluating what is happening and making decisions and choices based on appropriate appraisal of information and feedback. Let’s call that type of judgment “discernment” to differentiate it.
The type of judgment they are talking about is judgment that carries strong negative emotional charge. It is a righteous condemnation that comes from the ego’s desire to be right, in charge, and have things its way. Judgment in this sense is a mental bias that is either “for” or “against” people, circumstances, and events based on a perception of rightness, truth, and value. Judgment in this sense is a strong prejudice that easily leads to emotional upset, especially when your judgment is challenged.
We can readily recognize this type of judgment in religious fundamentalism where judgments are projected as coming from God with dire consequences for anyone who doesn’t see things the same way. We see this type of judgment in politics in which one side is made a villain while the other is made into the righteous voice of the one group or another. On a personal level, identifying with judgments about ourselves, others, and circumstances is the source of our suffering.
The insidious thing about our judgments is that they often go unnoticed as being judgments. Instead we think our judgments simply express “the way things are.” We identify our judgments with “Truth.” Then we argue about who has the real “Truth.”
However, it’s important to understand that experience is an interpretive act. Making judgments is a “heavily” interpreted style of experiencing life. Heavy, because our judgments are like rocks that we throw at others, the world, and ourselves. When we believe in and identify with the rocks of judgment that we throw, we pick up those rocks, and carry them around with us everywhere we go.
These rocks become your baggage. Every time you believe a judgment that you make, it becomes another rock that you carry with you in the backpack of your life history. If you’re feeling like the weight of the world is on your shoulders, it’s because you’re carrying around a backpack full of judgment rocks that you’ve previously slung, identified with, and collected. Fortunately, when you realize that your acts of judgment create this extra baggage, you can then choose to empty out your pack.
A great way to measure if you are harboring a backpack full of judgments is to notice if you habitually think or say some version of “I’m upset because. . .” For example, I am upset because my parents, or my teacher, or my classmates ridiculed me. If that rings true to you, you’ve probably identified with that judgment and continue to carry it in your pack.
So, a productive starting point for emptying your backpack is to take note of ways that you justify being upset.
I’m upset because the weather is lousy. I’m upset because I never have enough money. I’m upset because the traffic is ridiculous. I’m upset because my boss is a slave-driver. I’m upset because life is hard and I never get a break. I’m upset because you put the dishes in the dishwasher the wrong way. I’m upset because that mean bully beat up my son. I’m upset because those lazy people made a mess of things. I’m upset because people are so clueless, insensitive, and cruel.
The list can be endless. If you look at the above statements of upset, you’ll recognize that each of them harbors some negative judgment against “what is.”
Again, judgment is different from discernment based on observation. Judgment tends to over-generalize with a low degree of specific detail. Rather than looking to take in new information it tends to choose a small range of input that supports its position. Judgment contains strong negative emotion and often includes a moral indignation about “right” and “wrong.” It tends to make up dramatic stories about how things are and turn them into morality tales.
In contrast, observation notices specific details of what is happening without attaching negative labels or deep emotional significance. Observation is curious to discover as much information as possible. It tends to lead to a more open and less-biased discernment of various possibilities, choices, and actions.
About 20 years ago, I practiced an exercise for one month that drove this point home for me. It was called a 30-Day Judgment Journal. The basic idea was to keep a journal of every single time that I reacted in judgment. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I may have gotten carpal tunnel syndrome or tendonitis from all the writing I did in that journal. Just kidding, but I did do A LOT of writing in it.
The number of times I made negative judgments was “appalling.” Another judgment. Check. I think a single day was enough to pound the point home, but after a month I was so tuned into the internal action of judgment, that I’ve never forgotten the lesson.
So how do we free ourselves from the judgment habit?
You can begin by practicing observation and acceptance of “what is.” I’ve found this to be one of the most essential and freeing practices. It is possible to accept what you see without believing it’s the right view, without labeling it as good or bad, or reacting to it with strong emotion. This enables you to more readily take in new information and make more conscious action choices based on their possible consequences. When you practice this you stop picking up additional rocks and putting them in your pack.
What about the rocks that are already in your pack, or the ones that you’ve been carrying around for years?
The Hulnick’s offer a powerful process for releasing the past judgments that are already in your pack and weighing you down. Before we get into that process, you can start to take that weight off your shoulders by adjusting your view of these rocks. You could entertain the idea that we are all here for learning. If you hadn’t put these rocks in your pack, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to learn how to release them, you wouldn’t understand the process, and you wouldn’t have the opportunity to gain compassion for yourself and others. Life is for learning.
We all put rocks in our pack and we all suffer. Though each of us has different lessons, every one of us has accumulated a nice load of judgments. So don’t think that you are especially good or bad, fortunate or unfortunate. Like all of us, you have been slinging rocks, picking them up, putting them in your pack, carrying them around, and getting tense, tired, and pained in the process.
Your rocks are your spiritual curriculum. They’re your issues. It’s necessary to have some rocks to work with. We’re here to do that.
So, what is the next key step?
We can forgive ourselves for playing judge.
At the core of our being, we understand what we’ve been doing. We know that we’ve judged “what is” as inadequate, wrong, or disturbing. We know that we’ve judged others in the same way. We know that we’ve judged ourselves first. We know that we’ve put the rocks in our pack, and, at some level, we feel bad about it.
Yet, most of this process was subconscious. You didn’t know what you were doing or at least didn’t have the insight that would enable you to stop. You were trained in the judgment habit before you knew it was a just a habit and not a necessity.
You probably did what you did out of ignorance. Or, at least, you didn’t fully understand the consequences of your actions. Everyone else was doing it. It was like living in the land of make believe, but you didn’t know you were under a spell.
Now you have an opportunity to engage in compassionate self-forgiveness to break that spell. Let’s practice the Hulnick’s process for doing that, together, now. I suggest you have a pen and paper handy to write down your responses.
Compassionate Self-Forgiveness Process
(adapted from p. 181-184, LTYS)
1. Focus your attention into the space of your Heart and connect to your Loving Essence. You may imagine breathing in and out through your heart and smiling from your heart to connect with your soul energy. Take several slow deep breaths until you feel relaxed and heart-centered.
2. Bring to mind a recent situation in which you felt tension, conflict, or a negative emotional reaction. Remember what happened, how you felt about it, and what you did in response.
3. Give voice to exactly how you felt and write it down without editing for grammar, content, being nice, or “saying the right thing.”
4. Accept what happened, how you felt, and what you did. Then, shift your perspective to allow that what happened may actually be an opportunity to learn about yourself, heal, and grow. Write down a statement that reflects this insight in relation to that situation. For example, “I see that what happened, how I felt, and what I did in such and such situation is a phenomenal opportunity to gain insight, heal, and grow.” Fill in your specific details
5. Take 100% responsibility for your emotional reaction as a way of taking charge of your inner state. Write down a statement that reflects your ownership of your response. For example, “I take 100% responsibility for feeling such and such in that situation.” Again, fill in your specific details.
6. Write down any judgments about yourself and others that came up in that situation or now as you reviewed it. You can usually find them by going back to Step 3. For example, “I judged so and so as a such and such.” Fill in your details.
7. Forgive yourself for those judgments against yourself and others. Write down a statement forgiving yourself for those specific judgments. For example, “I forgive myself for judging so and so as such and such.” Fill in your specific details.
8. Return to the feeling of your Heart-Centered Loving Essence by repeating Step 1. Focus your attention into the space of your Heart and connect to your Loving Essence. You may imagine breathing in and out through your heart and smiling from your heart to connect with your soul energy. Take several slow deep breaths until you feel relaxed and heart-centered.
9. From a state of Loving Acceptance of yourself and others, ask yourself, “What is a clearer, more effective and/or creative view of the situation that could result in less tension, more compassion, and better resolution?” What could you do differently? Write down any insights you receive.
10. Acknowledge and appreciate yourself for being willing to go through this process, for being willing to use your moment of negative emotional reaction as an opportunity to learn, heal, and grow. Write down a statement of appreciation toward yourself such as “Nice work, insert your name, for being honest with yourself, letting go of your judgment that so and so was such and such, and seeing this new possibility in the situation.” Fill in your details.
The Hulnicks say that the Compassionate Self-Forgiveness Process is the most powerful tool they’ve found. It builds on the exercises from last week and gives you power to shift your inner state from judgment, negativity, and tension to loving acceptance, forgiveness, insight, and positive action.
I’d love to hear how it works for you.
Until next time,
Enjoy the lighter load on your back,
Kevin