A Little Picture of Non-Judgment

In practicing non-judgment regarding a painful exchange with a beloved recently, (and I do mean practicing as in working on it, not there yet, trying real hard, and not “My Perfect Non-Judgment Practice is going very well, thank you”) I found myself instead responding internally with a great deal of pain, confusion, and anger.   I had some visual aids, or rather some semi-conscious pictures I was using as a way to change my usual way of dealing with situations such as these.  

At first, thinking about the situation, standing near the dresser in the bedroom, I found my anger feeding into judgment, or perhaps it was the other way around.  Surely, it was the other way around.  I felt the equivalent of disembodied fingers wrapping deliberately into a fist, and worse, wrapping around something alive in order to squeeze it down to nothing.  I saw the defining words my mind was choosing, their sharp-edged letters hanging in the air in front of me, and then the black shapes also stretching out into dark ink fingers and wrapping around the object of my scorn, my pain, my hopelessness.  The extending letters were made of iron, stapling down the judged to the walls of my thinking, letting no movement happen, no cry for help escape.  The judged was a prisoner in black bonds, and I felt a terrible delight in holding it there that way; my needs open-mouthed, believing they were about to be satisfied, because I would be powerful, I would be important, I would be the one who decided how this thing went, if . . . I just . . . squeezed . . . a little harder.

But here I found that the fist wasn't as strong as I wished it were, it's grip never quite tight enough to satisfy my anger.  The iron alphabet promised more satisfaction if I added yet more desperate, definite language to this imprisoning game.  I noted that my heart was still breaking anyway, power hadn't taken away my pain, controlling the labels didn't stop my unmet needs from pleading from somewhere behind that prison wall.

            

Unlike Grandpa Adam, who named the first creatures and watched as they took the forms of his words, my words only lied about form.  My words only attempted to squeeze and strap down what appeared to be a cloud of mist, a spray of stars.  My words kept pretending they’d captured it, contained it, named it and finished the process for me.  I looked at the sharp black-staple letters hanging in the air before me that said things like “irresponsible’  “dysfunctional”  “mean”  “cruel” and I believed in the shape they had taken, hung my hope on those inky spikes, decided I could trust the strength of them, strapped my boots on tight with those staples and thought 'I can make my journey from here', counting on it being The Truth.  

     

But I did not know that from this angle that I was the only one who thought so.  Truth, from the other side of this scene, defied my attempts at shaping it.  Again I noticed my heart was still hurting.  I tried walking on this judgment-heavy foundation and found that my steps were still faltering.

            

And I knew I was judging.  And I wanted so much to just please stop.  But it's not so easy when the grip I’ve held by my hand and in my head is practiced through lifetimes of learning, generation by generation.  The practice of Solving-by-Defining, Controlling-by-Judging, is nearly automatic.  Judgment is what happens first, for me, for us all, having been told a million times by a million hapless teachers that it is The Thing To Do.  It is what we know, having experienced it being done to us just as often. But I want not to be imprisoned any more.  I want not to be the imprisoner any more, either.   I want no more to be caught by words of final decision like that.  I want a whole new world without those familiar hard, rigid, unwilling-to-change descriptors, heaped upon me and everyone. 

So I step back away from the burning fist, duck underneath the twisting, grabby letters hovering before me in the air.  I pluck the threads that connect them to me out of my thinking and start from a beginning I do not fully understand.  I go to a location I have rarely been before.  I take a deep breath, I call upon my heart, and wordlessly, hopefully want for it to make this situation holy.  I decide to see something different, here and now.  And from the center of my self I watch in wonder, as a breath, a deep slow breath, moves forward toward the judging words, and silently, lovingly, carefully, without any effort at all, begins to loosen the letters, to undo the grip.  

It is as if stars begin to bloom in front of me, out from the iron constriction.  The letters themselves begin to dissolve but not disappear, for they too become even more stars, the increase widening quietly, slowly - a flower of stars with it's soft center made of open space, a cervix of stars with a birth-way forming as it continues to dilate, to expand.  I breathe deeply again, and this time I open, I widen my chest in imitation of the opening, dissipating judgment.  This time I spread my hands at my heart level, moving them in a graceful expanding circle.  All of me, my body, my mind, my heart, moves with the cloud of sparking mist.  I am listening to the tiny bells in it, the near-silent crackling of infinitesimal lightning it it, as it expands into a whole spinning galaxy there in the room with me, still standing in front of the dresser, my feet on the carpet, my eyes closed, my breath continuing.         

A galaxy there, shaped by my dancing hands, spinning and opening like the energy from my heart, the dark words having transformed into beautiful glinting stars, shows me from it's center of this widening world another kind of what is True, and this time, it is pure possibility.

            

I recall the exchange with my loved one again now, and hang it here in this blossoming light.  Deliberately, I put no words out to define or describe it, but instead I watch and see that there are myriad possibilities of meaning it could contain, none of which I grab hold of, keeping my hands open, my heart open, my mind free.  Instead, I just watch, in wonder at all that it could be.   And in this state I find that my pain is still there, but it, too, now is opened, expanding like all the rest here, and exposed to the healing balm that seems to be here.  My pain is no longer strapped and stapled to the object of my previous judgment, but rather is a resident of my own heart, there long before any surprising communication touched it and brought it to my attention.  My pain is also made of stars, and it spins softly, slowly into the blended galaxy of light here in this room with me. 

Because it comes from within me, because this pain is mine-all-mine, and because I am expanding from my heart in this moment, love begins to cover it like a delicate frost, to trickle over it like a warm water wash.  I realize that it can be in the care of no one but me and I want to tend it like a mother to her own child.  I do not offer it the black letters of descriptive words to define or detain it, either, but rather I breathe again, widen my fingers softly even more to caress it’s edges with care, and watch, watch, wordlessly and maybe somewhat more wise in this moment.

And here, at last, is the mind’s area of expertise.  Once the heart has allowed expansion, acceptance, all-possibility and love to illumine it, the need comes forward, a delicate beautiful universe of its own, a flowering of pure potential as well.  And here, here, the mind can then define, guided by heart, and lovingly label this need just enough to bring it down to manageable size, to also then be able to think up reasonable, rational, realistic and action-oriented solutions to feeding the hunger at the empty center of it, to water the dry soil of it, to soothe the pain of it.  And once it is met and cared for, I can kiss it as it finally goes to sleep, contented and satisfied.  This is where the expertise and skill of  the mind can be of utmost value.  But in this, my love, and not before.  Not before the heart has opened and revealed the Universe of all  Possibility.

For a moment, I came to Non-Judgment, and I practiced over and over and over again every time the compelling, competing, controlling definitions came up again, and they did.  Oh yes, they did.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing of all in this was that my true needs also opened up to my view, no longer squeezed themselves by the iron grip.  In discovering them, alive and awake and attended to, I realized the answers to taking care of myself in this particular dilemma.  For that is always, always what the heart, and the mind as well, are trying to do, each in their own way, even in judgment, even in lack.  They are trying in their unpracticed, often unsuccessful ways to meet the innocent needs underneath. 

Here's to infinite opportunities to practice Non-Judgment.  We will be granted this gift today.  Perhaps in the next 5 minutes.  Perhaps right now.  Good luck, my friends.  Good intentions.  And so good for you.