One of the essential roles in the legal system in the United States is that of a judge. Whether elected or appointed, the judge’s job is to be impartial and strive to properly interpret the meaning, significance, and implications of the law. In the spirit of the it depends reality of the dynamic world of law, if a judge is to render the decision rather than the jury, they recognize that “justice” is more than just interpreting the law — it is also about compassion and understanding both sides of the situation. Their role is to offer a deeply considered judgment.
Moving from the legal world to the world in which we normally function, to understand judgment, its best to see how it is defined in the dictionary.
Merriam-Webster Dictionary says, Judgment is an opinion or decision that is based on careful thought.
That sounds like what judges’ do. Is that what you do? In the daily world we live in, the word ‘judgment’ has really come to mean, in many circumstances, personal opinion. The type of judgments we are talking about here today are not about what color to wear or which car to buy or any number of mundane judgments we make in our daily life, but about shifting our consciousness from the ordinary to the philosophical. To the bigger decisions about the kinds of black or white, good or bad, right or wrong, good or evil duality based concepts of judgment our monkey mind provides on a non-stop basis.
What I’ve come to understand is that discernment is perception without judgment and neutrality, being neutral, is the key.
Whatever is, is, right? You can certainly discern someone’s actions without making a judgment about it, you can stay neutral. It’s work, but you can do it!. Without judging what is in front of you, you accept and thereby enter into the consciousness of a higher order. To just be with what is, instead of judging it, makes us kinder, gentler human beings.
Every year on my birthday, for the past 50 years or so, there is a different theme I work on through the year, from birthday to birthday. Some years ago that path for the year was for me to begin to learn how to exercise non-judgment. I remember thinking “What’s that?” and then I remember telling a friend of mine about this path for the year and watching her laugh out loud at the very idea. “You can’t do that!” she said, “How the heck can you do that? Everything is a judgment one way or the other.” Being an attorney, I thought, “Yeah, you know, that’s hard! How the heck am I going to do that?!”
Well, you know what? Over the course of that year I learned the truth of the matter and discovered the difference between judgment, discernment, observation and neutrality. I found out for myself, through being mindful and working on not judging myself, other people, and everything, as much as humanly possible, that an understanding arose within me that everything just is what it is doing what it does. I stepped off that wheel of judging everything in my life as good or bad or right or wrong or whatever, and I learned the joy that comes from releasing judgment. It’s with the concepts of discernment, perception, observation and neutrality that we can begin to change up our need to “judge” ourselves, each other and everything.
So consider taking this theory into your professional and personal worlds. How would it be if you approach your work world from a perspective of non-judgment? Talk about a stress reducer! Consider how it would impact your life if you could cultivate the ability to consistently do your best and show yourself and others compassion and understanding, no matter the result of a situation. You might find you feel much better.
Maybe worth experimenting with, eh?
Judging is a natural and reasonable action; resides at a profound level of human nature, but we also know that judgment jeopardizes the effectiveness of the helping relationship. The propensity to judge often prevails over the possibility of understanding the other’s reasons. There is less space dedicated to listening which seems aimed at expressing judgment rather than towards authentic understanding.
So if we want to suspend the judgment we have to find an individual path, a method that can put us in a position to contain and control our congenital way of living together and depending on being judgmental.
As regards the legal and normative judgment, in the current social conscience the feeling of compassion or pity is incompatible with the conduct of suppression of human life.
Darity, in the beginning of your article the statement based on Merriam Webster definition of judgment, and its careful opinions to bring about thoughtful judgment struck me in a way that I immediately thought; how many times have people really taken that much time to think before passing judgment! Many times I have experienced such. Great Article.
Very interesting! Thank you Darity!
Very interesting article, Darity. We are taught not to pass judgment on others. When we pass judgment on others it is often based on our feelings, prejudices and so on. As far as passing judgment on ourselves it can be biased for or against ourselves. The only judge who is qualified to pass judgment is G-d as only he can decide a person’s fate. When a legal judgment (i.e. the death penalty) is handed down it should be with compassion but the issue in a case like this does a person who wilfully killed somebody or acted in a manner that caused the death of another we must take into account the compassion for the victim and their survivors. It is right to be compassionate and as non-judgemental as possible.