What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Swimming in a Sea of Judgment
July 27 2010
Judgments. Critical thoughts about other people — and about yourself.
You might judge someone as unfriendly, a bad driver, or disorganized. You might judge yourself — well, with any number of labels!
The more you become aware of these judgments, the more clear it usually becomes that they’re inaccurate and unnecessary.
But this is only the surface of a much deeper sea of judgment — an almost constant flow of thoughts evaluating your experience and comparing it to some sort of ideal or to an expectation.
As I wrote recently (in How Wide is a Thought), your thoughts — in this case, judgments — create your experience. So when you consistently evaluate or critique your behavior and your experience, you’ll tend to feel sad, frustrated, or angry about yourself and your life.
This can be remarkably subtle.
One of my clients, who recently tuned in to this flow of judgment in her own thoughts, said, “It’s like the fish that doesn’t know it’s wet. The fish feels the strong currents — the big judgments — but the consistent flow of water is imperceptible. That’s how I feel about this flow of thought evaluating everything I do, think, see, experience. That flow has always been there, but it’s seemed normal, just the way things are. I never considered it to be judging. Now that I see it, though, I also see its profound effect on my experience. Wow!”
As she’s realized, these deep layers of judgment erode your ability to allow things to be as they are — and your ability to access silence, peacefulness, and self-compassion.
Wondering if you might be swimming in your own sea of judgment? Here are some ways to look deeper at what’s happening.
Are you comparing?
When you compare aspects of your experience, you’ll find yourself judging one of them as better than the other.
In comparing your experience to what you wish you were experiencing or believe you should be experiencing, you’ll discover a judgment about your actual experience.
As one client explains, “Sometimes I find myself comparing whatever I’m doing to an ideal — to what I believe someone in my situation would be thinking and doing if they were a truly advanced human being. It’s an easy way to end up unhappy and angry with myself. If instead I allow my experience to be what it is, I can find compassion instead of frustration — and then my actual experience becomes more spacious.”
What are you expecting?
When your experience isn’t what you expected, it’s easy to judge it — and yourself — as falling short.
If, for instance, you expected to be energetic and productive, it hardly matters if you’ve got a headache because you didn’t sleep well. You’re still likely to judge yourself and your experience relative to what you’d planned.
But plans seldom go exactly as expected. When you judge the flow of life as being out of alignment with what you thought it “should” be, you’re only putting yourself out of alignment.
Life simply is. Your thoughts about its failure to match up with your expectations is an argument with reality — and that’s an argument impossible to win.
Instead, see what happens when you allow your experience to be what it is, without trying to change it in any way, no matter how subtle or minor. What happens to your experience when you stop judging it for being out of alignment with what you expected?
What’s the rule?
For many people, the unwritten rules in their lives create judgments when their actual experiences or actual desires don’t fall in line with those rules.
One client told me, “I’ve been creating rules about how I’m ‘supposed’ to take time to enjoy myself, have fun, relax. And I do often need to remind myself to slow down and take a break. But then I noticed I was actually judging myself as wrong when one evening I truly wanted to keep working!”
It comes back, once again, to noticing what your experience actually is, and allowing it to be that, even when it’s not what you thought it “should” be.
It’s just thoughts
As I’ve said many times, there’s no switch to shut off the stream of thought in your mind.
But as a client said, “In learning to observe my thought-stream instead of diving into it, I’ve realized it can be just a background commentary. It’s like hearing the radio play without listening to it. And the relief of not being dragged around emotionally by my thoughts and judgments is huge.”
As she noticed, when you’re no longer drowning in a sea of judgment, your experience becomes more open and spacious. “When I can see these judgments for what they are — untrue thoughts — I’m free to be with whatever happens. And my actions are free as well. The choices I make about what to do become spontaneous, arising out of what actually is and what I actually want instead of what I thought should be.”
“If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgment of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgment now.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 121BCE - 180BCE, Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor from 161BCE - 180BCE. Known as the last of the Five Good Emperors.
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