Becoming truly free - by giving up judgement

Judged again today?

"Even if you are a deeply spiritual person, you need a 'healthy ego' and good jugdement in this dual world."

I have often heard it said in this or similar terms, especially by contemporaries for whom overcoming the "dual world" is a central goal.

But aren't both Ego and judgment - the cause of this illusionary world? Can we really leave or overcome duality as long as we cling to its cause?

And what would our life here be like if we went through the world without ego and judgment?

Overview

• Can we judge at all?
• We have made the world this way with our judgments.
• Easier said than done
• The jewel of discernment
• Surfing instead of fighting
• Are you always open-minded?
• Bless instead of judging

Can we judge at all?

I deliberately put this question at the beginning. Far too seldom do we know the prehistory, hardly even the essential and secondary connections. The Lebanese author Mikhaïl Naimy has illustrated this beautifully in his wonderful "Book of Mirdad" in the chapter "On judgment and the Last Judgment":

...Shun every judgment seat, my companions. For to pronounce a judgment on anyone, or anything, you must not only know The Law and live comfortably thereto, but hear the evidence as well. Whom shall you hear as witness in any case at hand?
Shall you summon the wind into the court? For the wind aids and abets in any happening beneath the sky.
Or shall you cite the stars? For they are privy to all things that take place in the world?
Or shall you send subpoena to the dead from Adam till this day? For all the dead are living in the living.
To have an evidence complete in any given case the cosmos must needs be the witness. When you can hail the cosmos into court, you would require no courts. You would descend from judgment seat and let the witness be the judge.
When you know all, you would judge none.

In other words: We can never judge fairly without inviting the whole universe as witnesses. Each of us probably remembers enough of our own misjudgments in the past.
Only God - Allah, Brahman, Tao, the I AM - has the overview and real power of judgment. "If you know everything, you will judge no one." Why?

1. Firstly, because even in the illusory world of maya, justice prevails through the law of karma.
2. econdly, because everything is connected to everything else and every judgment falls back on us. We only judge ourselves.

Shouldn't we therefore stop our misjudgments? 

We have made the world this way with our judgments.

Yes, because it is precisely these misjudgments that have made our world a very imperfect world. Isn't every judgment inevitably an attack against the other person being judged or condemned? And doesn't attack always mean discord, if not war?
We arbitrarily choose what is allowed and what is not. However, this is precisely how we repeatedly come into conflict with others.

With our own judgments and arbitrary choices, we separate ourselves mentally from our divine self and therefore also from God. "Eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" threw us out of paradise into the dual dream world. Suddenly we were "abandoned by all good spirits", alone and responsible for everything.
Seemingly forced to work hard, compelled to constant conflict and condemned to constant suffering. 

The good news: as soon as we become aware of these connections, we can free ourselves step by step.

Easier said than done

The first thing we can do is to stop judging. But that is easier said than done. Even I don't always immediately recognize which of my observations contain hidden judgments. 

We can recognize it more easily if we start from the result. The world as I see it is the result of my projections and judgments. Is it peaceful? Is it loving? No. At least not when I look towards war and corruption, betrayal and manipulation.
But that's exactly what I've done too intensively in recent years and quickly got the receipt for it. In the form of "chronic" back tensions.

Even if I don't recognize in detail where I have judged or am still judging, I can now make a conscious choice immediately:
“I loose the world from all I thought it was.“ This Lesson in A Course in Miracles beautifully explains the effect of our thoughts on the world and describes how we can rid the world of them. 
It is almost simultaneously a process of forgiving our own mistakes and recognizing the illusion of the dream world.

The jewel of discernment

How do we get out of this dream world? Firstly, by consistently abandoning all judgments and idiosyncratic projections. Secondly, through the "jewel of discernment“.
In the book of the same name by the Indian scholar and realized yogi Shankara , we learn the central importance of discernment for our awakening from the Maya dream world.

While our ego-mind is permanently denying the dream life in a judgmental way, we also have a higher intelligence at our disposal. This intelligence allows us to learn to distinguish the all-encompassing, unified truth from various worldly deceptions.

Being able to discern is quite different from judging. When we talk about the need for judgment in everyday life, we often actually mean discernment.

By using and cultivating our discernment, we are able to awaken to the truth of God and perceive the world for what it is:
A temporally very extended dream that seems to serve our evolution for a while. Until we realize that our divine self is already perfect and we can simply wake up.

Surfing instead of fighting

As soon as we wake up, we increasingly feel that our lives are getting easier. And more and more often we feel a groundless joy as we surf the wave of life virtually without judgment or thought - at one with all that is.

At this point at the latest, you may be wondering how you can master everyday life without a 'healthy ego' and 'healthy judgment'.
Try it out. You'll be surprised. 

Our little ego is constantly on the move, wanting to change everything, on the assumption that otherwise we will inevitably perish. But its measures always backfire and make the situation worse. Individually or for humanity as a whole. 

Yet everything is actually much simpler. Without constant control by our ego instance, nothing goes down the drain. Giving up this control opens the door to neither "illness" nor chaos. 
On the contrary: as the title of a book by Lola Jones directly describes: Things Are Going Great In My Absence.  So while the ego is gone. 

Are you always open-minded?

Have you also noticed that we all assign ourselves to certain so-called "bubbles of consciousness"? We involuntarily separate ourselves from one another - in all our beliefs, whether religious or ideological.

We are often virtually trapped in such a bubble. Trapped because members of one bubble very rarely have the interest or openness to engage with views from another bubble that are perceived as alien. As a result, we remain stuck in our own "swamp" instead of engaging in a constructive exchange with those who think differently.

Our ego always needs suitable confirmation. And it finds this in the bubble it has chosen at some point. And it likes to make sure it sets itself apart with various judgments. 

Spiritual openness, on the other hand, is a key prerequisite for being able to truly forgive. It arises automatically as soon as we stop judging, which keeps the mind closed. 

Bless instead of judging

Spiritually open, we can finally surrender to the flow of life and boldly approach the unknown. No longer as a dissatisfied consumer, but now as an awakened, affirming, active being who sees and blesses ALL LIFE as sacred.

Perhaps we still find it difficult at the beginning to really bless everything. Because that also means loving everything unconditionally. But our active self-observation alone allows us to easily recognize where we cannot love. We then often find out quite quickly what is holding us back.
And we can be sure that life will confront us in an appropriate way with what we need for our healing. And for our ability to love.
We should accept every event and use it for our healing and development.

These articles fit the topic well: