You Be the Judge

"Sunset Orchid" by Alixandra Mullins

My favorite high school teacher, Mr. Tom Barton, once said: “You are prejudiced if you are prejudiced of prejudice.” I recall thinking: of course it’s not right to be prejudiced, and if we don’t have any sense of judgment we’d all be lost. Still, I trusted him, and so I never forgot much of what he taught me. Last week at a network meeting, as I judged a stranger for his judgment, I finally understood what the good Teach was talking about. As this man went on and on becoming more superior by the second I felt my ire rising. Had my filters been down I probably would have started hacking like my cat when he has a hairball caught in his throat or I may have poked myself in the eye repeatedly. But since neither were socially appropriate I did some self talk.

I felt behind what the other person was expressing. I took my perspective to the bigger picture. Fueling his judgment was the longing to connect, an illusion of separation from the other, and a deep sadness related to being misunderstood. These are universal feelings we all wrestle with at one time or another. As I stepped back my mind, my heart stepped forward and I relaxed. I was able to hear his frustration, and the judgment didn’t seem as important.

Even though the Buddha is often mistakenly credited with this quote, it actually appears in a

Embracing Conscience and Eschewing Nasty

Fritz Perls

   It’s surprising how many people do not distinguish an inner critic from
   their spirit voice or soul aspect. I remember asking a client to participate in
   Fritz Perls’ “empty chair exercise.” This is a Gestalt technique in which
   the client engages with an aspect of themselves, an emotion or another
   imagined person. The client takes turns to play both herself and the other
   aspect. In this case I asked my client to engage with her inner critic,
   playing the critic first. She sat up straight in the chair positioned across
   from the couch where she had been sitting and chided: “You are going
   nowhere! You’re a loser, and you’re wasting your time.” After the critic
   lambasted her for a while, I asked her to move back to the couch and
   respond to the nasty critic. I was floored when she said, “You’re right.”
   Before I could interject in her defense, she continued: “But I’m making a huge effort to makes strides and I’ve come a long way.” Engaging in this manner helps clients to hear just how hard it is to rise above an inner voice that is pulling the rug at every step. They begin to feel how they are walking around as their own worst enemies.

It’s pretty tough to hear the voice of the spirit or soul self with another part of the self firing condemning insults. How harshly we judge ourselves sometimes is in direct correlation to how egregiously we judge others. Referring to a friend of hers, a client said to me: “Come on. You have to admit anyone who treats a goat like a pet is ridiculous. It's a farm animal. It's meant to be milked, not pampered.” As I glanced at the goat hairs poking from my jacket hanging on the back of a chair, I purred: “Tell me about what that means to you.” Clients sometimes defend the inner critic, assuring me that without that voice they would get nothing done. They would become lazy, good for nothings. They would repeat their mistakes and never rise to their potential.

I’m not recommending giving up our consciences for Lent, becoming hussies and addicted to gambling.