Thoughts on judgment

There is a line in a song by Eddy Brickell that goes:

“ This eye looks with love,

this eye looks with judgment,

free me take the sight out of this eye.”

I have played that song and that line in my head for I don’t know how many times. Sometimes I sang it to myself as a heartfelt wish, please stop judging yourself and others. Sometimes I sang this line as a statement of fact, I do have two ways of looking at the same thing, so...?.

It got me thinking what judging means and I have stumbled on a few things.

One way of judging is very black and white, it is either good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, ugly or pretty, guilty or not guilty. I thought about how I feel judged when the verdict is negative and praised when the verdict is positive. Which is funny because a verdict is still a verdict, a label, a canvas, a way to categorize.

Then a funny image popped into my head. An old fashioned jury next to a skating ring, the ones that were there when the Olympics were still in black and white, the ones with serious faces and old fashion hairdos, that would hold up wooden signs with there marks painted on. Those judges would give marks for artistic qualities, how intricate the moves are, and the overall entertainment value or something like that. This way of judging seemed to me to be more fair, after all, a lot more things are taken into consideration. But you still end up with a way to categorize, bronze, silver, gold or go home empty handed.

I use both systems to judge myself, others, food, art, the weather or sounds. So I sing: “free me take the sight out of this eye.”

Then it dawned on me, what if I stop judging mind for judging. Why don’t I let mind do what it is good at and let it have control over concepts, and let mind sort out a way to weigh pro’s and con’s. Mind is no dummy, it knows we are in a permanent state of flux, it knows it is not the be all and end all, but mind does need a place. So today I formalized it for my mind; I gave mind a job; find out a much as you need or can about any behavior of self, others, situation or a subjects, than map out as many merits as is fair to judge these behaviors, situations or subjects on. With the full understanding that anything can change or needs to change at any moment. Mind leaped at this near impossible challenge and finally be able to do what I has always done but now without the fear of being judged, and the rest......the rest feels very free.