Judging others

A friend of mine from work emailed me this today saying "I think you will like this..." and I absolutely love it. To me this is one of the most if not the most important thing to realize in life. I dont know who the author is but I will try and find out...

"How quick we are to form an opinion of a person, to come to a conclusion about them. It is satisfying to the egoic mind to label another human being, to give them a conceptual identity, to pronounce righteous judgement upon them.

Every human being has been conditioned to think and behave in certain ways- conditioned genetically as well as by their childhood experiences and their cultural environment.

That is not who they are, but that is who they appear to be. When you pronounce judgement upon someone, you confuse those conditioned mind patterns with who they are. To do that is in itself a deeply conditioned and unconscious pattern. You give them a conceptual identity, and then afalse identity becomes a prison not only for the other person but also for yourself....

To let go of judgement does not mean that you don't see what they do. It means that you recognise their behaviour as a form of conditioning and you see it and accept it as that. You dont construct an identity out of it for that person.

If their past was your past, their pain your pain, their level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as they do. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion, and peace."

Colin, that is very self-aware. My mother used to tell me this when I was a child; it does help sometimes to see things from another point of view. It is something that, overall, has helped me a lot.

(However, if someone is being nasty to me I rarely care about their point of view - there's no excuses for being mean, no matter what my mother used to say.)

Very very true!!


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I just google the text and I found out the author is Eckhart Tolle :)

The Flying Butter, I agee, it definitely helps to see things from other peoples perspective. Often people are so stuck in their minds and so attached to their opinion they find it very hard to let go of that, they dont want to accept the fact that what they're thinking is only their opinion...and with that limited view of life we greet and welcome suffering into our lives and we wonder why on earth we feel stressed out, depressed and lonely.
But your also right about the other thing, it can be difficult to react with love and acceptance to those who are mean to you. But in my opinion, the more you focus on that which brings you joy the more you will bring joy to others, judging someone and hurting someone never helps, it only hurts (emotionally) and creates fear and hate. Sometimes we simple need to be reminded of that :)