Righteousness, Judgement and Indignation

How many times have we sat in judgement?

How many times have we been so convinced that we are right and someone else is wrong?

How good does it feel to be the see-er of truth. If only those other “idiots” could see things the way we could, then life would be so much easier.

Look at the battles which are ongoing between both sides about the covid vaccination situation. Remember the awful never-ending debates over Brexit. The list is endless.

I’m sure that even the mention of these emotive topics is getting some of you riled up internally.

And yet these are just words on paper. What these words do though is stir emotions in us because these words convey ideas which get us thinking about what we believe in. Our beliefs feel very real to us. They help us make sense of the world. Beliefs are important as without them how could we function? We need to believe things or else the world would feel too scary and uncertain. They also help us create an identity for ourselves (another blog to follow about this).

They create a framework for us within which our minds create thoughts and these thoughts run our everyday lives. Every thought we think is created out of our belief system. Every thought we think makes complete sense within the context of our belief system.

What we don’t realise is that although many beliefs are very clear to us there are many more which are so deeply embedded in our sub-conscious mind that we never challenge them because we are not even aware that they are there.

This is why problems often arise. Someone does something which irritates us. We think to ourselves they “should” have done this or they “shouldn’t” have done that, with outright indignation.

What we may not realise is that we have a hidden belief driving this thought along the lines of “Other people must do "the right thing" and meet my expectations, in order to be worthy”.

This belief is at the root of a lot of our suffering and causes a lot of conflict in our world. It gets in the way of healthy, happy relationships.

The point we miss is that we are judging their actions through the lens of our thinking / our belief system.

When we do things ourselves, we know what our intentions are and so we judge ourselves by a different standard. We judge ourselves by our intentions. Well “I know I’m a good person”, “I know the right thing to do here is …”. We feel like superior beings.

We judge other people by what they do and what they say regardless of what their intentions might be. We don’t stop to think what they might believe or what may have motivated them to do what they did.

Can you see the double standard at work?

How often have we been misunderstood by someone only to get an angry response and we say “I’m so sorry, that wasn’t my intention”? We often get it wrong because we jump to conclusions and too often step in with judgement.

One point to take from this is that people behave in a manner which is completely consistent with the belief system they have and the intentions they have.

If we only took a little time to ask :

“Help me understand why you think this.. said that.. did that?” and then if we

listened to really understand what motivated them

our relationships would improve enormously and this would change our world.