I've been going through phases of being content and happy, but you can see that's not where I'm speaking from at the moment. I drop into phases of depression and anxiety and believing that I'm a separate self. I know that I get it, and sit in awareness, or feel that I'm that a decent amount, but how can I still end up constantly believing I'm a separate self, and how do I get out of it?
Francis Lucille :
But you see, your question already makes the assumption that you are a separate self, believing to be a separate self.
Question :
How do I not believe it? When I'm in those moments, I feel so contracted and limited and judgmental that it's hard to end up in a place of inquiry.
Francis Lucille :
Yes, because you are judging yourself for being judgmental. So you are piling up judgment upon judgment. Why judge yourself for being judgmental? Judgment happens. Just like rain happens and wind happens, judgment happens. It's a cosmic event when it happens.
There is nobody to judge for being judgmental. Judgmentalness happens like the flu. You don't blame yourself for getting the flu. The flu happens during flu season. And judgmentalness or judgmentality happens during judgment season.
If we try to do something about it, it's because there is someone wanting to get rid of it and the one who wants to get rid of it is one judging himself or herself for being judgmental. Allow for it to flourish. It's like a poisonous plant in nature - it's beautiful. Look at the datura plant - beautiful, beautiful white flowers! So there is beauty also in it. Not beauty of judgment, but beauty of the whole game.
Also, understand that in the moment when you are being caught by being judgmental, to try to do something about it always comes from the wrong place: judging yourself for being judgmental. So that's already the beginning of freedom, because you see it - so you stop trying to do anything - it's very important.
Do you understand, as a separate person, our powerlessness? To fully accept our powerlessness as a
separate person - there is humility in it. We have to start from this humility, this recognition of our powerlessness as a separate person.
It is not that attempt to get rid of the judgment that is going to take you in the right direction. It comes from hatred - hatred for yourself, hatred for being judgmental. And hate always takes us in the wrong direction.
Only love, love for the truth, interest. To be interested in what we truly are. But in these moments when we are judgmental, these are not the good moments. It's like when it is storm season, hurricane season, you just board your windows, and you go somewhere else.
To 'board your windows' means don't listen to your fear, to your desire to judge yourself, to do whatever against it.
To 'go somewhere else' would mean to leave the body-mind house. You are not in it. The body-mind house is in you. To leave the body-mind house means first to investigate, if you can, in this moment.
But a true investigation is an open-ended investigation. It is an investigation that has no personal agenda in it. That's a big difference. As long as there is a personal agenda, such as in this case: 'I don't want to be judgmental any longer.' Forget about it! It is better to do nothing, than to do the stupid things this agenda will make you do.
Open-mindedness in an investigation means I let the investigation take me where it's going to take me. I don't know ahead of time what the outcome is going to be.
Question :
But how do you end up in an open-ended question from a place of fear and contraction, wanting it to be different?
Francis Lucille :
You first have to renounce what this frustration is telling you to do. What makes you renounce it, and board the windows and the doors in this house? It is the understanding of your powerlessness, and that whatever you are going to do is only going to make things worse. That's why I started answering your question from this vantage point. Understand that the desire to get rid of judgment, comes from judging yourself for being judgmental. Which is more judgment. So you have to stop this layer of judgment. That's the first thing to do.
Now the second thing to do is to understand that the reason for being judgmental is that you believe yourself to be a separate person. Because it is both the separate person who is being judged for being judgmental, and it is the separate person that judges, saying, 'It is not convenient for me to be judgmental.'
So when you see this entire process, there is an intelligence that comes into play. So that you just stop. Whatever is going to happen next, you don't know, but at least you've let go of the process, even for one millisecond. That's a moment of intelligence there because you have been somehow out of the process. But, you are not involved in this judgmental or whatever ignorant behaviour all the time.
We all have moments of availability, moments of interest when we think about the truth. The thought about the truth comes spontaneously to us. In these moments, we have the desire to investigate, not because we have a personal agenda, but for the sake of truth alone. And it is only in these moments that we should investigate. We shouldn't investigate with a personal result in mind. Then it's better to watch a movie, to do something stupid. We should reserve meditation investigation for these moments when we truly are interested, because then it becomes effective. And it is these moments, when we are truly interested, when we want to know without projecting what the outcome of this investigation is going to be.
It is these moments that in fact liberate us from being a person. Because they lead to an understanding, they lead to meditation, and they lead to moments of freedom when we experience our freedom. And later on, this freedom is experienced as peace, and then as joy. And that's how the cure takes place.
It is not bad to recognize, to be aware of these moments when we are judgmental. What is bad is to judge ourself for being judgmental. What would be much better, would be to say, 'WOW, I just noticed that I was judgmental! I congratulate myself.' Because in this moment, when I saw it, I was out of it. I was in my true nature. Even for a split second, I was out of it. So you should congratulate yourself for having distanced yourself, even for a very short moment, having seen it. Because most people, unlike you in these moments, they are not aware of it. They are judgmental all the time, all the time. That's their modus operandi.
This youtube video is the source of the above transcript.
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