In this book I am reading, the author states quite aptly that "the life in us is diminished by judgment far more frequently than by disease." I agree with this completely. Disease, while it batters you and wears your body down, goes away completely after some time, and after a while, we forget that we were ever bogged down by it. Judgment, on the other hand, seeps into your soul and sticks to your very consciousness that those who constantly seek it or who pattern their lives by it are so changed in their ways.
Why do we let other people's judgments get to us?
I am lifting a few paragraphs from Kitchen Table Wisdom again, because it has helped me, and I hope it will help you too. Let us try every day to be free from judgment, be it other peoples', or our own.
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On Judgment
by Rachel Naomi Remen
Our own self-judgment or the judgment of other people can stifle our life force, its spontaneity and natural expression. Unfortunately, judgment is commonplace. It is as rare to find someone who loves us as we are as it is to find someone who loves themselves whole.
Judgment does not only take the form of criticism. Approval is also a form of judgment. When we approve of people, we sit in judgment of them as surely as when we criticize them. Positive judgment hurts less acutely than criticism, but it is a judgment all the same and we are harmed by it in far more subtle ways. To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others. Approval can't be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it.
Some people spend enormous amounts of time considering the impression that their words and behaviors create, checking how their performance will affect their audience, playing always for approval. x x x A great deal of energy goes into this process of fixing and editing ourselves. We may have even come to admire in ourselves what is admired, expect what is expected, and value what is valued by others. We have changed ourselves into someone that the people who matter to us can love.
x x x
Parts of ourselves which we may have hidden all of our lives out of shame are often the source of our healing. We have all been taught that certain of our ways don't fit into the common viewpoint and values of the society or the family into which we have been born. We make ourselves less whole. It is only human to trade wholeness for approval. We can remember our wholeness at any time. In hiding it, we have kept it safe.
One of the most dramatic manifestations of the life force is seen in the plant kingdom. When times are harsh and what is needed to bloom cannot be found, certain plants become spores. These plants dampen down and wall of their life force in order to survive. It is an effective strategy. Spores found in mummies, spores thousands of years old, have unfolded into plants when given the opportunity of nurture.
When no one listens, children form spores. In an environment hostile to their uniqueness, when they are judged, criticized and reshaped through approval into what is wanted rather than supported and allowed to develop naturally into who they are, children wall the unloved parts of themselves away. People may become spores young and stay that way throughout most of their lives. But a spore is a survival strategy, not a way of life. Spores do not grow, they endure. What you needed to do to survive may be very different from what you need to do to live.
Plant spores are opportunists. The life force waits in them, scanning the environment, looking for the first opportunity to bloom. But people may forget that becoming a spore is only a temporary strategy. Few check the environment, as plant spores do, to see if conditions have changed and they can find what they need to bloom and reclaim their wholeness. Many of us still hide the parts of ourselves that were unacceptable to our parents and teachers although our parents are long gone and their world with them. x x x The world we live in now offers far greater opportunities for expression, but we may still live in it as if it were the hostile terrain of our childhood. The saddest part is that we may have forgotten what it is like to be whole.
x x x
Reclaiming ourselves usually means coming to recognize and accept that we have in us both sides of everything. We are capable of fear and courage, generosity and selfishness, vulnerability and strength. These things do not cancel each other out but offer us a full range of power and response to life. Life is as complex as we are. Sometimes our vulnerabilit is our strength, our fear develops our courage, and our woundedness is the road to our integrity. It is not an either / or world. It is a real world. In calling ourselves "heads" or "tails", we may never own and spend our human currency, the pure gold of which our coin is made.
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She hits it home with every point. I don't dare add anything to it, for fear that I might muddle the author's message. I just feel blessed that I was able to come across this article, and even more blessed that I am able to share it with you, whoever you may be.
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