Judgment
On a hike up my local ski mountain the other day, I was so struck by the beauty of grasses and wildflowers nodding and bowing in the summer breeze that I stopped to admire them, something I rarely do on my way up the mountain. It’s not at all rare for me to stop and admire some tiny detail of nature, I just don’t typically do it on my way up this particular mountain. I use it as a workout, so my routine is to “motate” up that mountain with no rests, and no turning around to admire the view. I save that for the top.
It wasn’t context that let me see their beauty; it was lack of judgment.
Here I was, halfway up the mountain, so transfixed by the flowers and grasses set in motion by the breeze, that it took me a minute to recognize these plants as the exact ones I regarded as bothersome weeds in my garden. In other words, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the exact same plants I spent hours pulling in my garden and flower beds last weekend. The first thought that occurred to me was that they looked so different here simply because of context, but then I had an insight that allowed me to see the situation with new eyes. It wasn’t context that let me see their beauty; it was lack of judgment. In my garden, they were noxious ugly pests because I’d judged them. Here, in the absence of judgmental thoughts, they were simply life expressing itself in the most exuberant possible way.
Judgment always works that way.
Judgment always works that way. Once we’ve judged something, whether it’s a weed or a person, or a group of people, or even ourselves, we can’t really see it anymore. We only see our judgment about it. So we’re no longer dealing with what’s really in front of us. My hike up that mountain always leaves me with gifts. The gift that day was to see for myself what a teacher had told me: Judgment is always a way of using thought against ourselves.
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