Self-judgment

In a place of softness. Not quite silence - occasionally disturbed by thoughts (as opposed to just thoughts coming up) - but softness is the word. A nice peace.

I am not going to spend much longer, I don’t intend, with the self-judgment parts. But, just to do a little. The failure piece seems the most strong. It is both a self-judgment and a fear for the future. It embraces so much. Fear of “being like Dad,” of getting it wrong, of other people getting it right, of not being loved/accepted (because no one loves a failure), and, generally, of really not being good enough.

So it is worth observing that I have done so well at living richly. From writing to reading to spiritual practice, to coming out and being more erotic and more loving. I have really flowered as a human being. So, it is true that certain markers of success have so far eluded me, and troubling. But other markers are so present. If I am still loyal to Dead Poets Society, I have seized many a day, and my life really is extraordinary.

It’s hard on the self-judgment piece to really go into “there is no I” here. Because the whole thing is on the relative level anyway. Absolutely speaking, of course I am not a failure, or not loving enough or whatever – I’m God. So self-judgment is always wrong on the facts, but then, so is almost everything else conceptual. Like with Guy’s metta talk, sure, we could translate it into “The thought arises that within the bundle of opinions and thoughts conventionally designated as this individual, there is inadequate X or Y or Z.”

I suppose the real insight, & with this maybe I’ll almost close..., is: it’s not really a thought primarily. It is a feeling that gets thought-concepts attached to it. So, it is a thought in the sense of it’s a mental event, but not in the sense of it is primarily a statement of fact, like the thought that “the sky is blue” (without looking at it; the thought not the perception). Muse on that.