socially acceptable judgments are judgments

I once recall Adyashanti saying (paraphrased just in case– yet, it’s really strange how the stuff I hear him say in person sticks to me as if he said it just five minutes ago–maybe that’s what ‘happens’ when speech is clear and inspired and infused with the presence of the moment), “Everyone wants to be enlightened, and still get to judge their neighbor.”

One of the hardest things in the last three years particularly (honestly, the first year post-awakening it was quite hard to even consider judging folks, too busy fascinated in exploring the nuances of the multiplicity and delight of diverse personalities from an entirely new perspective to fall into trap–yet), is to see through the judgments that are socially acceptable.

by http://ailukewitsch.wordpress.com

One example that is almost done playing out in my life:

Capitalistic/materialistic people we love to hate. Now, I don’t hate these people–but even the slightest aversion is a judgment. And although I did once have a popular business, social media, and marketing blog–it was always slightly unconventional, and I never was much of a money chaser.

However, for some reason I can’t fathom entirely–probably because the entire Universe conspires for our awakening–all the way, I was almost thrown into every extremes of tiniest of aversions in last three years. No matter how slight, they became magnified and looming.

So slowly I started hanging out with a bunch of folks from intentional community/off-the-grid and other eco-green folks, to New Agers particularly in 2012 Ascension crowd (I’ll debunk that another day), to underground artists of all kinds (street musicians, street/recycled fashion, graffiti artists,  zine writers, slam poets–yada yada), to gutterpunks and such that the only common thread (truly, as some of these groups don’t even like each other) was they all in their own ways had “issues” with The Man. And, by association, money and the economic system was His primary tool.

I have just finished reading the book, Zero Limits, by Joe Vitale, as I practice Ho’oponopono on and off since 2003 and was slightly surprised by the unabashed vitriol in the Amazon reviews. I know Vitale is definitely one of those folks that provocatively aims at pushing people’s buttons around money issues so they can drop them, and at that pushing he has succeeded.  The trick is to realize that those reactions of disgust and “how could you tarnish Divinity with your advertisements and money-grubbing” are plain and simple judgments and our own reactive projections.

Anyhow, the point being is that I was TOTALLY unaware of my pushing away greedy capitalists and money being any kind of conditioned reaction whatsoever as I was socially supported in my judgments until about two months ago when I started to re-apply Ho’oponopono clearing. (That I needed any technique to simply be in the grace of non-resistance surely was a clue…. yet I was so contracted and in my head that the idea of dropping into Awareness of No-Mind didn’t even occur to me. That’s okay–as Ho’oponopono if one looks squarely at our own projections will lead one to remembering it is much simpler, and then the technique is abandoned like a boat after we’ve crossed the waters onto the shore.)

p.s. I’m not saying judgment is ‘bad,” but it’s certainly not true and they become an overlay on Reality as it is. Especially if one has realized All, we’re all That yucky stuff we push away too–and pushing hurts. Partly explains why it has felt like an enormous struggle for me last few years–it is when I fight self in the “guise” of Others. Struggle is not our true nature–that’s what resistance to what’s true feels like.

p.p.s. Other techniques to cross to shore (the ‘shore’ being metaphorically equivalent to nirvan, enlightenment, self-realization, etc.) that are helpful include any type of seeing and accepting our  projections ala Carl Jung’s shadow work, The Work by Byron Katie, and ho’oponopono. Also Adyashanti’s method of writing down and journaling only what we know to be absolutely true is helpful.