The Topic: The Harm of Judging Ourselves
Dear folks of Baba,
Darwin was very insistent that we give up judging ourselves negatively, maintaining that it is one of the most insidious traps of the ego. We were young in Baba, and this was welcome news, because most of us had grown up regarding judging ourselves as a normal thing to do. Darwin has said, “Baba is not judgmental in any way, nor does He hold our weaknesses against us.” We had never met anyone who was like this, although for many of us, our mothers may have come the closest to this kind of love. In reading about Baba’s training of the mandali, we might conclude that He was often judging and disapproving of their behavior, but in fact He was only acting in their best interests. He is like a music teacher with perfect pitch pointing out that a student’s guitar strings are sharp or flat, which is interfering with their performance. Although Baba’s love is unconditional and not judgmental, from our side we must do our part by developing self-compassion and self-acceptance (two qualities, as Marion says, we must have in our “tool box”). Darwin would say, when we are hard on ourselves, we are interfering unnecessarily in our reception of Baba’s love which He is ever-ready to shower on us. Our receptivity is infinitely more crucial to our life with Baba than we could ever imagine. We must be absolutely accepting of His love and not buy into all our psychological and moral limitations. Baba is inviting us to be more loving, to truly love ourselves as He does, and each effort we make toward becoming more loving is His victory in us.
Why is it so difficult to refrain from judging ourselves? Among the many ways we do this, there are two that are particularly difficult to avoid. It seems only natural to hold ourselves accountable when we are selfish or do something “wrong”. It is our habit. And we must continue to make efforts to be more loving. But Baba says in His description of the provisional ego, which He encourages us to adopt, that we must think it is “Baba doing everything.” He says, even when we do something wrong, we should think it is Baba doing wrong. That for me was one of the greatest hurdles I have had to rise above and still struggle with. I would think to myself that Baba would never be as critical of others and as petty-minded as I am! Too often, we unquestioningly take credit for what we do, good and bad, but Baba insists that He is the sole doer. We must continue to strive to live by the most loving values we are capable of, but unfortunately much of the struggle in our lives is due to the fact that we are often trying to improve our personality self exclusively, our lower identity, rather than thinking more and more of Baba and aligning ourselves with Him who is our higher Self.
One of the most surreptitious contributors to negative self-judgement is our mental ideals that we have bought into, which are set too high for what we are really capable of achieving. We wind up always falling short and even after decades, we may find that we are still harboring the thought, “I’m not good enough. I feel so inadequate.” Our negative self-judgment may even be secretly masquerading as humility. One thing I learned from the mandali is that our ideals should be practical—what is the next baby step we can take—not the impossible achievement of the highest ideal. We don’t learn patience or forgiveness overnight. The ego has a way of colluding with the mind to guilt-trip us when we fall short of our mental ideals. On the other hand, the ideals formed in the heart are much more compassionate, not so black-and-white. The heart knows just what we are capable of in the present, our next step. In fact, the ego is fighting a battle for the supremacy of our attention, and it is a victory for it when the ego can get us thinking negatively about ourselves instead of remembering Baba and others with love. The ego can also hide in feeling superior to those who have a healthy attitude toward themselves, seeing their attitude as naive and an expression of the ego! Or the ego can hide out in envy of others, rather than having a positive appreciation of the valuable qualities they express.
All the time we spend thinking critically of ourselves, we all know, is time spent away from thinking about Baba and responding to the love He’s asking us to share with others and this world. In judging ourselves, we are clearly not fully in the present where Baba is most found, but rather we are mentally in the past or the future. And consequently, we are not really in a receptive state in the present moment either to Baba or to others.
Rumi has said,
“We are so obsessed with the bad stitching on our sleeve
That we’re blind to the magnificent beauty of our own garment.”
In His love, Jeff
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