Stupid.
Smelly.
Sickening.
Racist.
Disgusting.
Many of you who read the above words will experience a feeling of discomfort.
When a word evokes an unpleasant or uncomfortable feeling from an individual, the word is sometimes said to "carry a negative emotional charge". Every word you speak, think or write carries an emotional charge-which is largely determined by the experiences and perspective of the listener/thinker/reader.
Writers are particularly aware of this. Just as visual artists use symbols, form and color to evoke or convey emotion, writers use things like word choice, punctuation and adjectives to evoke certain emotions from their readers-this is how they convey the meaning of the story-and keep people interested in reading their books!
When a person assigns a (most often negatively) charged word to a situation or thing, they are often said to be "judgmental"-and this is often vilified by the New Age Community.
Are they?
OF COURSE THEY ARE.
But is this necessarily a "bad" thing?
Of all the words in use in our language today, especially among those of the New Age Community, I feel that the word judgment carries the biggest negative charge of all. Many Spiritual Teachers teach that judgment is a by-product of the ego, and therefore is something that must be released in order to attain true enlightenment. Buddhist philosopher, Chogyam Trungpa had this to say;
"The attainment of enlightenment from the ego's point of view is extreme death".
While I agree that attachment (another no-no among the Non-deist philosophies) stems from the ego, and that judgment is a form of attachment , I think that the attachment that is inherent in being judgmental is more subtle than just the ego trying to perpetuate itself.
Let me explain.
With regard to our New Age friends, what you are really "attached" to here are the assumptions that;
1) A always represents B.
and, ironically
2) To have this point of view is always a bad thing.
But let's take another look at the nature of judgment.
Many of the day-to-day decisions made by our brains, based on the input of our senses, happen automatically-and far too fast for us to really register that a decision has been reached.
(Now, for those of you who adhere more strongly to dictionary definition may feel that this continual process does not really qualify as "judgment". But the thesaurus gives many equivalents to the word judgment, such as estimation, evaluation, decision and intelligence, which may be more acceptable to you, but still mean the same thing. This is a good example of a judgment-that judgment is an inappropriate word based on your beliefs. I'm not doing this to get under your skin, dear literal friends-but I am trying to make a point.)
So what this means is that a person is immersed in a constant stream of information that that comes from the outside stimulation, which, in turn, is interpreted by their senses and influenced by their own beliefs and perceptions-in other words, judgment. They do this many times a minute-even a decision as simple as "I will sit in this chair because I judge it sturdy enough to hold my weight" is a judgment.
Forming a preference is a judgment.
Making a decision is a judgment.
Expressing a desire is a judgment.
Taking a step is a judgment.
Being human means being judgmental. That's it. It's that simple.
So judgment is really not the issue here and has gotten a bad rap.
The problem comes, as I see it, when a particular word carries an emotional charge, and that causes us to attribute a value judgment (to deem better or worse with relation to something else) to it which evokes a reaction from you that does not serve you. That is the "attachment" that the Non-deist and New Age philosophies would have you avoid, not the word itself or even the meaning.
Our preferences are not what hold us back; it is the belief that our judgments make us a better or worse person than someone with a different judgment. It is also the fear that the opinion of those who assign us a negative value is somehow more valid than our own.
Judgment only becomes dangerous when it is used to shore up our own self-esteem or to undermine the self esteem of another.
So, what to do.....
The first step is to stop beating yourself and others up over doing what your very nature compels you to do.
The next step is to loosen the hold of our value judgments. This allows us to examine more closely the world around us. We are forced to examine each thing, in each moment without getting hung up on whether something is negative or positive-better or worse.
It simply is and is allowed to exist as it is-which, in my judgment, is pretty good. :)
