All humans do both; we blame, judge, and project our judgments out. It's just what people do. And because it is what people do, I am prompted to seek the function or role of these, often seen as negative, acts for how it is they may actually serve FOR us; I've come to see that both judgment and projection play vital roles in the consciousness process – either serving to perpetuate victim consciousness OR to evolve past our limiting judgments into greater awareness and consciousness.
Here's how negative judgment and projection work together:
As soon as we see something about ourselves that we disapprove of, or find unacceptable, we tend to criticize and judge ourselves harshly. We tell ourselves we shouldn't be that way … that it indicates that we're not doing the process right … or that we're not evolved enough, that there's something wrong with us, that we are dumb … and so on ad infinitum.
Such self-critique & condemnation is very painful, so we find ourselves avoiding these harsh self-criticisms; it's like we go unconscious around the thing we've judged as unacceptable about us! Certainly, we push it down.
But of course, the painful judgments don't just go away because we don't like them – if anything the resentment we feel towards ourselves festers and gets bigger the more we judge our ‘shortcomings.' Sooner or later, we need an escape from our own self-judgments. The pain of self-criticism drives us inevitably to denial, which does not resolve our self-criticisms, or lead to a place of healing through self-acceptance – but leads automatically to the act of projecting our self-negating judgments onto some other “lucky” recipient.
In other words, we inevitably judge others for the very things we have condemned & rejected about ourselves!
We then start resisting them, trying to shame, control, or eliminate them altogether from our lives – as if, by getting rid of them, we can rid ourselves of similar unacceptable qualities (that we've denied). Sometimes we take them on as a project and even try to fix them for the very thing we have not accepted in ourselves) for that which we are holding against ourselves.
This is how our inner judgments end up taking on a life of their own.
But there is another option rather than the cycles that we have just described: self-condemnation (leads to) judgment (leads to) projection (leads to) blaming others/persecution (leads to) their retaliation (leads to) reinforcement of our belief which proves us right!
Rather than condemning ourselves & blaming others, we can come to recognize when we are blaming others, and follow it back to our judgment, or inner condemnation of ourselves … and intervene there! Instead of insisting on blaming someone outside us for that which we have not made peace within us, we use judgment, projection, and blame as tools to clear our own blossoming, and peace-seeking consciousness.
May it be so.
Blessings, Lynne
3 Responses
Love this “judgement/projection” idea! I heard an anecdote that Werner Eckardt of EST, etc had an expression something like: “When it occurs to you that you’re in a conversation with as asshole…you’re the asshole.”
Im so sick of spiritual life. Working so much on myself whike the rest of humanity seeks to kill each other.
When will it be enough torture? When will thus agony of human birth end?
What is the point…all these people and so called gurus go on snd on about bliss. .and this torment doesnt end.
Im tired if philosophy meditation mantras tapas and misery. When will it end. .it all seems like bullshit.
I HEAR you, Lola! I feel the same way – Especially when I think people are supposed to be better than that! When I believe that, then it looks to me like they are all liars who say what is expected of them and live out its opposite … I felt the same way for years – and then suddenly it occurred to me that it was ME I was talking about when I judged them for living like that!
I was the one that said one thing and did another! I was the one who blamed and hated others for not seeing things the way I did! (the “RIGHT way!”) I was the one that the world I was mad at was reflecting back to me!
And then slowly the realization dawned in my consciousness that perhaps the world IS the way it is supposed to be! It’s just that it’s not the way I THOUGHT it was supposed to be!
It’s not supposed to be peace and love – Earth is not Eden – it’s boot camp! I think that might be because we humans don’t seem to learn much from “happier” state of consciousness! We learn from experiencing more direct (and painful) consequences of the belief systems we blindly believe.
The world is the way it is to SHOW us what we believe and how we treat ourselves; to reflect to us the results of our painful beliefs so we can make them conscious and begin to choose something different.
Whether this is true for you or not, this is the understanding that I have found brings me the greatest peace of mind. And since peace is created from what we believe and think, regardless of what the world is doing, isn’t it good to know that by shifting what we think we can create a better internal world for ourselves? 🙂