Letting Go Of Prejudice & Judgment

We judge ourselves and others relentlessly. Sometimes it's necessary. More often it's about justifying our own beliefs and accumulating baggage. How to stop? The first step is to be aware of when you're in judgment mode, and start responding differently.

Transcript

Hello everybody and welcome to mindfulness live.

This week we're talking about judgment.

And today we're going to look at why we judge and the answers are quite surprising.

I've been studying some stuff in neuroscience and psychology,

Very revealing indeed.

But first make yourselves comfortable.

Take a nice breath and let go.

And letting go of the breath of all the thoughts,

Of all the pressure,

Of all the stress,

Of all the have-tos,

And of all the judgments,

Letting go of all that baggage,

And just staying with the breath.

And when you focus,

The breath slows down naturally.

You don't have to force it,

You can watch it slowing down.

So trying to be passive,

Not forcing the breath,

But focusing on it,

Feeling it,

Feeling the movement of breath in your body,

And the movement of your body as it pumps in and out.

And the breath comes in and the breath goes out.

And as you feel the breath,

You feel your body,

You're connected to the body,

You're connected to your body in a special way,

Without distraction,

And without being un-automatic.

Because when you pay attention,

When you're really present here and now,

There is no automaticity,

Not in the front of your mind at least.

So you feel your body and your posture,

Feeling your spine upright,

Straight,

And the rest of your body relaxed,

Letting go.

And you feel the weight of your body,

The mass of your body,

As you sit,

As you take up space in this world,

In this place.

And this is your space filled with your hands and feet,

Your arms and legs,

Your body,

Your head,

And all that that goes on inside you,

Which is what and who you are,

Your feelings,

Your thoughts,

Your sense of self.

And you feel the breath still slowing down,

Growing longer,

Feeling good,

Or perhaps not.

And you feel how do you feel?

It can be a strangely difficult question to answer.

So don't worry about answering it in words,

Just bring attention to your feelings,

What they call your affect,

Your disposition,

And how you feel right now is how you feel,

Requires no explanation.

No justification,

No correction or remedy.

This is the present moment.

And here you are.

You have nothing to prove.

And the breath comes and goes.

You feel it in your chest,

Your throat,

Your nose,

Your whole body,

Breathing to stay alive,

To stay energized and conscious and aware.

It's very hard to explain awareness,

But it's very plain.

You're being aware right now and particularly conscious and probably more focused than usual.

Aware of this moment,

Aware of yourself,

Aware of your mind and where it goes.

And this is why we pay attention,

So we can actually follow our own mind,

Understand what's happening and understand how we respond,

How we process,

How we judge.

And now taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes.

So judgment is something we do.

We judge things to be good or bad.

And it basically comes from a sense of survival.

Is this good for me or is it bad for me?

But it goes so much further.

And while I was preparing for this class,

I was doing some googling and I came up with a wonderful article written in March of this year,

March of 2022.

A scientific study by Dr.

Taj S.

Rai and the title,

I just caught my attention and I'm sure it'll catch yours,

People Hurt Each Other to Signal Their Own Goodness.

People hurt other people to signal their own goodness.

It means the same thing.

So we hurt people in order to signal our own goodness.

What on earth does that mean?

How can we feel good about hurting others?

Well,

The point is that we're justifying our own position.

So when we see people with a position that is different from ours,

I mean,

That's when we judge,

Isn't it?

You know,

I prefer black,

But if you like whites,

Then well,

How can I agree with that?

Something must be wrong with you.

And I have to find out what it is in order to prove that I'm right.

That my opinion is justified.

My judgment is good.

It's basically what it comes down to.

And when I first read the headline,

I thought that's weird.

And as soon as I started thinking about it,

I thought that makes total sense.

It really does.

As soon as you think about it,

We are,

The reason we judge is to reinforce our own judgments and the purpose of our judgments,

In this case,

Or part of the purpose,

It's not the purpose of the judgment.

The reason we hang on to the judgment is to establish ourselves.

In other words,

To justify to ourselves and to the world who we are.

And we define who we are by what we do,

But more by what we believe in,

What we espouse.

And our opinions,

Which are all judgments,

Make up the bulk of who we are,

Who we think we are.

They make up the bulk of what we defend when we think we're defending ourselves,

When we're being defensive.

So judgment doesn't appear to be defensive,

It appears to be aggressive,

But the purpose of this study is to show that quite the opposite.

People hurt other people to signal their own goodness.

So I can think of a million ways in which that's true.

But basically the idea is to avoid our own potential feelings of inferiority or shame.

You know,

When somebody thinks that black is better than white,

But I like white,

That's the challenge.

Oh,

Supposing I'm wrong,

Supposing,

Oh that's shameful.

Okay,

I mean,

Okay,

We're not talking about black and white.

Let's talk about left wing and right wing.

Okay,

We'll talk about atheism or deism,

You know,

I believe in God,

I don't believe in God.

These are matters that are important to most people and which we identify with,

That's the whole point.

So judgment signals our identification.

There's a very close correlation here.

When we find ourselves judging others,

It says a great deal about ourselves.

It says almost nothing about the other person.

Really,

Think about that.

And that's what I want here.

I don't want to explain to you what this means or what to do.

I just want you to sit with it and let that penetrate and see instead of looking at the world and judging the world as being something objective,

Something out there that has to be corrected,

That I have to fix the world in order to prove that I am right,

That my position is justified.

Instead of doing that,

I'm letting that go and I'm realizing that,

Well no,

This justification,

This judgment,

There's a whole bunch of automaticity going on here.

There's this self-defensiveness,

This idea of self that I have which goes beyond what I need in order to function.

I need to know who I am,

You know,

Introduce me at a cocktail party and I have to tell you who I am.

A little bit of my history,

A little bit of my beliefs,

All that stuff.

That's social lubrication and it's necessary.

If it's a job interview,

Even more so,

Right,

When we're engaged in something serious or in a sales process or something,

But we carry so much more in our minds.

We are constantly justifying.

I find I'm constantly trying to avoid feelings of shame.

I remember things from my past.

One day I was,

Many years,

Many years ago,

Now this is a good example of being,

Of something very petty becoming more than petty,

Tiny,

Anyway I'll tell you.

So years ago I was at school,

I was 14 or 15 years old,

I was big,

I was tall,

I'm six foot tall and they put me,

They always put me in the rugby team.

I'm not a team sports player,

I'm just not.

I don't take it very seriously,

It just doesn't appeal to me.

Individual sports I like,

I like competing with myself.

Anyway that's not the point.

The point is that there was a penalty kick,

We were all lined up at the goal post and there are certain types of penalty kick where you're allowed to run forward to try and block the ball and there are other penalty kicks where you just have to stay behind the line and wait to see what happens.

So at this particular point in the game I was supposed to stay there and just wait and see what happens but I ran instead thinking oh I'm gonna run,

I'm gonna do this.

I think I had a moment of enthusiasm,

Enthusiasm,

Which is very unfamiliar.

Anyway I made the wrong call and everybody groaned and said oh,

Scatini again,

What's wrong with you,

Why do you do that?

That was,

Let me count,

55 years ago approximately.

When I recall that I still have this sense of embarrassment,

Of shame,

Oh my god,

How could I,

Oh I feel awful,

I still feel awful,

Believe it or not.

So what is that?

That is me judging myself through their eyes and maybe that whole preamble that I gave you,

I don't really like rugby,

Maybe that's my little defense mechanism,

That's my judgment,

Ah rugby's no good because it wasn't good to me.

There's a whole lot of different things going on here,

It's worth just sitting with this and looking and feeling because those little mini moments of shame pop up all over the place.

It's all unresolved stuff which most of the time is unimaginably trivial and this is what we carry around,

This is the bulk of our baggage,

We're carrying around all this stuff.

I doubt if there's a single boy in that game who remembers that or who has ever remembered or thought about it,

Maybe they thought about it that evening,

They told their parents,

Ah you know what Scatini did today,

But that's it.

But me,

I've been carrying it for 55 years,

Every memory,

Every recollection,

I feel that shame,

Embarrassment,

Cringing,

You know.

So how do I get rid of that?

I don't think I can anymore entirely get rid of it because it's become really really habitual,

But I address it now,

I say oh yeah that's me doing that and so it's beginning to weaken,

It's beginning to weaken,

But it's been there for so long that you know it doesn't go away automatically.

It's a mental habit,

It's one of these patterns that we have to deal with,

We don't just make decisions about how we are,

We have to respect the patterns,

The momentum of the patterns and the familiarity with our way of thinking.

So that involves a lot of acceptance as well and by coincidence judgment and acceptance are polar opposites.

So what I'm looking at here is to accept my behavior.

I made a mistake,

A tiny silly ancient mistake,

So that's what I tell myself every time.

So it feels a lot,

I don't feel so bad,

I don't feel bad for so long,

But my initial reaction is oh oh and there's a sort of a,

I get this tightness in my stomach and cringe.

So this is what we're dealing with,

Our own minds,

Our own susceptibility,

Our own vulnerability.

And judgment is the way in which we try and protect that,

But it does the opposite.

When we judge other people what we're trying to do is entrench our own position and the purpose of that or the nature of that position is to make us more judgmental because more defensive,

The two go together.

Being judgmental,

Being defensive,

According to Dr.

Rai,

Pretty much the same thing.

Not in every situation there are other sorts of judgments,

You know,

There are rational judgments which we make about how much broccoli we need for dinner,

That sort of thing,

But this moral judgment of each other and of ourselves,

This is heavy baggage.

So this really is worth sitting on,

Paying attention to,

And not disregarding.

Disregarding is the worst thing you can do,

It just goes a little less.

What I've been doing for 55 years,

Disregarding that feeling.

I always told myself how it doesn't matter,

But I never really felt it didn't,

I always felt it did matter,

So that little rational decision had no effect at all on my emotional state.

That's the way the mind works,

So that's what we're dealing with.

Now make yourselves comfortable,

Take a breath,

And let go.

And perhaps you can enjoy that breath,

Just knowing that so much of this stuff you don't need to hang on to,

Even though you're still hanging on,

Even though the triggers are still there,

Just knowing that it's okay to let go.

Wow,

What a relief.

And now all I have to do is practice letting go,

A little bit each day,

Trying to catch all these little moments of self-doubt,

Embarrassment and shame,

And especially of judging others.

When I judge somebody else,

What am I defending?

That's always the question.

When I judge you,

What am I protecting in me?

What am I holding on to?

And if I can see,

That's good,

And if I can't,

I just let go of the breath.

And each time I breathe out,

I let go.

With each letting go,

You give yourself permission,

You tell yourself that you are a letting goer,

Somebody who practices letting go,

Who is always looking out for the baggage,

Aware that if I don't pay attention to it,

It burrows deeper and deeper into me.

It feels like who I am.

At a certain point,

It's hard to imagine that I can let go of it.

It's me.

Well,

That's how it feels.

But by practicing,

By first letting go of the breath,

And allowing yourself to relax,

Allowing your mind to clear and focus,

Gradually you see into yourself,

You see those judgments,

And you remember that your judgments have nothing to do with the other people.

They're all about you.

So what are you defending?

What are you avoiding?

What are you justifying?

And why can't you just let go and be whatever this moment allows?

And that's a bit of a question,

And it's a bit of a how-to,

Because the answer is I can let go.

I don't have to hang on.

Although it seems like it's me,

I know it's not.

I know that none of these things are me.

They're just thoughts.

It's me,

Just a story.

My name,

My history,

My moods,

My thoughts and skills,

Even my possessions.

I may identify with them,

But I don't have to.

So why do I?

What am I defending?

And what is the judgment?

What is the accusation?

What is the fear?

Staying with the breath,

Feeling that breath in your chest,

Feeling it in your throat,

In your mouth,

Your nose,

And letting go,

Being here and now,

And allowing yourself to be defenseless,

Vulnerable,

Letting those icky feelings rise to the surface so you can see them,

Identify them,

Then you can let them go,

And if they come back,

You let them go again,

And again,

And again,

Because you can let go,

You can let go of feelings of shame,

You can let go of your judgments.

By understanding your need to judge and where it comes from,

You can let go of your defensiveness,

And you can even let go of this protected,

Coddled sense of self,

And just be who you are instead,

Which is something that comes and goes and changes from moment to moment,

Just like the breath,

Just like the breeze,

Just like the whole world and everyone in it.

And everyone in it,

Staying with the breath,

And taking three more breaths,

Open your eyes,