Not only are we constantly trying to find what is wrong with us, we are also constantly trying to find what is wrong with those around us. In fact we do the latter more often and with more dedication. We feel safer in our judgements, most of which guarantee us the sense of belonging in a particular demographic, and promise us to prevent change from happening. (It is not true guys. Change will happen whether we consciously allow it or not.) We use various arguments to support our opinions regarding wrong doing. Some of our favourite are:
-it is not healthy
-it is not right
-it is not beneficial
-it is not positive
Most of the times we do not even know what we are talking about. If we ask ourselves the two magic questions:
a. "Am I absolutely sure this is true?" (From Byron Katie’s healing technique The Work on how to liberate our selves from our own thoughts)
b. "Why is it so?" (particularly revealing for when we think that something is not right)
If we ask these two questions we will realise how most of the time we are not using our judgement to separate good from evil (and thus promote goodness over badness with clarity). Even if these were our intentions, separating good from bad is actually not possible. Life, emotions, thoughts and actions feel scary precisely because it is not possible to separate good from bad. Fear, therefore, the fear of uncertainty, takes up the biggest space in the emotional landscape of judgment. The fear of rejection, of doing something wrong that would ostracise us takes up some more. The fear of being insignificant and therefore unloved, takes up the rest (it is interesting how the more we judge, the more important we feel).
I could write a whole book debating different scenarios on this subject, but today I only want to bring up two:
1) The first counter argument everybody gives me when I talk about this is : “What about murdering people? Is this not a bad thing? “ I love this one because people use it as a free judge-all-you-want ticket. Please consider this perspective: When the issue of murder does not preoccupy humanity as a moral issue (good or bad) but rather as a more complex life issue (spiritual & social) where the fear of the other, the sense of safety and security, the feelings of connection and separation, the stories that the mind tell us about our relationship to others and the world, were at play, then we will have the following benefits:
-there would be no death penalty
-we would not justify any type of murdering ( think of war heroes in juxtaposition with criminals in jail)
-we could not use it as an excuse to justify us going on with our lives judging constantly ourselves and others.
Categorising things as bad, at this moment and time in the history of humanity serves no purpose at all. I truly challenge you to find one.
2) The second case scenario I am thinking about today has to do with sex. It bugs me because I see it so much on tv, movies and series. It is everywhere in our culture. I have heard people say it out loud in my company. (I, also, grew up in a family in which this seemed to be some kind of mantra!) “ It is not right to have sex with people without being in love with them , or have feelings for them, and without the relationship promising to be or become serious. It is a bad thing to be a slut.” It is apparently even more shameful and wrong for women. And I ask you: Why? To this day people in their majority tend to answer: “Because it is not right!”. Some try to prove how this is not healthy, or beneficial to the person, or a positive way to experience sex. I have also heard of course the more sophisticated answers with arguments based on anthropology and biology, about the nature of our species, survival instincts etc. But I am asking you, at this moment and time in the human evolution, why is it not right to have sex just for pleasure and a lot of it? Are we eager to judge particular types of sexual behaviour as moral or immoral, right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy, because then it is easier to frame our own sexuality without feeling uncertainty and self-doubt, without facing the limits and the power of our own desires?
Let’s start by asking “why is this true?”, “am I absolutely sure?” when it comes to issues related the rightness of our own sexuality, then let us answer honestly and enjoy the revelations. And it works both ways (this goes for those of us who judge others for choosing not to be sluts).
Text by Birds WG
Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash
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