How judging affects our life?

In our life we tend to judge everything we see, hear, etc. We judge every person we see, everything they say, every situation we encounter, etc.

Our number one way of judgment is when think in terms of “good” versus “bad”. Making always our own judgments: “This is good, this is bad”, “he is good” and “he is bad”, etc.

I like to Challenge your belief about “good” and “bad” as a way to show you how being judgmental affects your life.

This old story will help me to challenge your beliefs about “good” and “bad”:

“An old farmer used a horse to till his fields. One day, the horse ran away, and when the farmer’s neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer shrugged his shoulders and replied: “bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the horse returned with a herd of wild mares, and this time his neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was:” good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?” Then, when the farmer’s son was attempting to tame one horse, he fell and break one leg. Everyone agreed this was very bad luck. But the farmer’s only reaction was:” bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?” A week later, the army marched into the village and drafted all the young men they could find. When they saw the farmer’s son with broken leg, they let him stay behind. Good luck? Bad luck?

There’s only good and bad in your mind!!!! Shakespeare expressed in a similar way when he said: “for there is nothing either good or bad, but our thinking makes it so.” Your expectations drive you to label things as “good” or “bad”. If you want something to happen in your life, or you want to get something; everything that comes into your way becomes a problem a “bad thing”. Everything that happens in life that you don’t wish to happen to you is a “bad” thing. You are the only problem in life. Because you are the creator of the problems that you see; you create them by your expectations, by your likes and dislikes.

Few examples will convince you that your “old thoughts” are driving you to label things as “good” and “bad”:

Example one: You want to go by plane to visit a nearby city. At the airport you are told that the flight is cancelled. You become nervous and feel “bad”. Just a “bad” thing has happened. Your expectations weren’t met!!!

Example two: You always expect to be happy. So being “depressed” or in “pain” is a “bad” thing. But if you look at your depression in the mirror of your soul, the “pain” that you passed through ten years ago has made you grow and made the proud person that you are now. There’s no “bad” thing in the mirror of time, because with time “expectations” change and “attachments” get dissolved.

Example three: Someone is dead. The air is filled with sorrow. You feel compassion. You think death is a bad thing. But you also know, if you are never challenged you will never achieve anything. Death is the biggest of all challenges in your life. Isn’t death that drives you to achieve things and be aware of every minute of your life? Isn’t death the biggest driving force of your life? Imagine that you can live forever. Imagine the feeling that time has no meaning. You don’t need to achieve anything “now”. Life itself becomes without a meaning. If there’s no death, I bet you will say that you are doomed to live forever. Better to appreciating death, this way, you will start appreciating life.

Conclusion:

Everything comes from our thoughts. Friends and enemies, virtue and vice are in the mind only. Every man creates a world of good and evil, Pleasure and pain, out of his own imagination only. Bitterness and sweetness do not lie in the objects, but in our thinking that brings these emotions to us, they lie in our mind.  

There’s no such thing as” good” or “bad” in life. They are the creation of our expectations, likes and dislikes. When we drop this two labels, we start to experience life in a new way; a life full of acceptance and detachment. Accepting everything as it is without judgment. If we want to be open to life and experience it with love and joy, we must stop judging. Good and evil, pleasure and pain do not proceed from objects, these belongs to the attitude of our mind.