I walk along the streets of my home town, a little town by the sea. Weather is ”good”, sun is shining. The town ”too full” of tourists, those ”locusts” that fill every nook and corner on a ”beautiful” summer’s day. That woman has ”big bouncy” breasts, her legs are rather ”thick” and full of ”ugly” varicose veins. That man is ”shabbily” dressed, his face ”bloated” by many drinks of yesterday. Oh, what a ”slender” body, the ”juicy” bottom moving so ”enticingly”. Oh, and there comes the one who once hurt me so ”badly”. Better to be avoided! There’s the shop where they once cheated me, they are so ”expensive”. I ”like” the other one better! They are ”cheap”. My ”dear” friend, so ”nice” to see you! How are you? How are your judgements doing?

Thoughts on a summer’s day, yours or mine, anybody’s. The judge that we all have installed in the dark and mostly unconscious corners of our mind is busy doing its business, busily judging all and sundry, everything and anybody that comes its way. Nothing escapes its automatic reactions, whether ”good” or ”bad”, ”ugly” or ”beautiful”. Everything is fair game for its ever ongoing judgements. Every day is a day of judgement.

My judgements define myself, they keep myself intact, just as I have always been. My judgements maintain the walls of my box, my world defined by my past reactions, my traumas long gone. My judgements imprison me in my own particular past, they keep anything and anybody that could potentially threaten the precarious status quo of my personality at arms length, they keep the possibility of change away from my life. I am a prisoner of my own judgements, a past person continuously smearing the holy Now with the shit that happened such a long time ago.

Is that really what I want to be? Is the repetitive past of my ongoing judgements the best I can muster? Am I really stuck with being a past person, a shadow defined by my own judgements? Can’t I do any better? Can I stop judging?

And what am I if I do not judge anymore? Is there anything left of me if I stop judging, even for a moment? Without my judgements I am a non-defined blob of something, something unknown. Something to be afraid of, something to be avoided, I suppose.

Maybe I have also judged and defined the unknown? Maybe I have decided that it is not even worth while investigating as that would mean that I would need to stop judging, to stop defining myself and my world by the standards of my past? Maybe I do not want to stop judging, maybe I think that I am because I judge, because I thus define my own precious individuality?

You may actually still be pleased with what you think you are, with your judging self. Then you just need to go on judging, there is now way around it. But if you just happen to have gotten enough of judgements, of your own and those of your neighbors, then you might be interested in investigating further, and asking the crucial question.: What else is there to me than the ever ongoing judgements of my past? What else am I?

What else am I? That’s the crucial question. The judgmental answer is to start judging yourself, and your neighbors, for having kept on judging for so long. Obviously that cannot take you further, cannot give you a clean and simple answer. Further judgements won’t ever solve the problem of your past judgements, it just does not make sense. Judgements cannot ever solve judgements.

Now what else is there? What other modes of action do you have? We are all so well trained to be judges onto ourselves and onto our dear neighbors that it is difficult to find any other modes of action. Maybe the answer actually lies in non-action, in our ability to refrain from judgement, from the crucial definition of ourselves and of our world?

Can I just observe my judgements arising from the unconscious folds of my mind, and then just gently pull them back? Can I let them be without judging them, without trying to do something about them, just seeing them and deciding not to go along with them? Can I see them just as unruly children of my own mind that need to be seen and to be accepted just as they are, without an ounce of judgement?

Can I accept my judgements, all of them, and love them for what they have been and what they have taught me during so many years of my life? Can I love what I have been, and thus finish that judgmental chapter of my own past? Can I let go of what I have been, for that truly is the only way of ever opening ourselves for something else, for something new, for something that I have not yet judged?

Can I let go of my past, of all of my judgements? That is the only possible way of investigating of what comes when the days of judgement are over. Are you ready for something truly new, something that cannot be judged? The choice is yours: To judge or not to judge?