Video Transcript:

Hello, I’ve got a secret to share with you. My judgments drive me absolutely crazy. When I sit there, my mind is constantly judging everything. It’s judging myself, that wasn’t good enough, that isn’t right. When I look in the mirror, I judge every single inch of my body.

In life, I judge everything and everyone, not in a bad way, but just always judging, always assessing, always working out, always calculating. Judging, judging, judging, judging, judging, judging, judging. And if I stop my mind or stop myself, and just get really conscious with myself, and my mind slips, it is off judging everything about everyone and everything and myself, it’s exhausting. You kind of think, where the hell does that actually come from?

Now for me, we live in a society where everything is being judged, everything’s being critiqued, everything’s being evaluated and there’s very little space to just be. And when I use the word to just be, for me I talk about a state of being and the state of being is the place where I am beyond my judgments. And for me judgments are actually part of our ego, part of our mind.

Our ego is a mind construct, and Tantra being a spiritual pathway would invite us to ask the question about who we really are.

And if I asked you, “are you your judgments?” you kind of go, well now I’m not those, I’m not my judgments, that’s just going on in my mind, that’s not who I really am. And when I sit with my judgments, and I’m kind of, I could get very cross with myself, or I could feel very shameful about my judgments.

If I’m feeling shameful about my judgments, then I can start to close myself down and that’s no good. I start to filter myself, and Tantra’s not about filtering yourself, but it is about being with your true self, and it’s about being with all of yourself. So there’s something for me about being with your judgements.

Now, when I go through this process myself, rather than criticizing myself or judging myself for having judgments, you see how it can start to drive you crazy.

If I kind of let go of that bit, if I let go of the shame, of that voice, like this my judgmental voice, I don’t about yours, says the most terrible things, says the most terrible things about me, says the most terrible things about everything and everybody else.

It just drives me crazy, and that isn’t who I really am. But to get to who I really am I need to sit with my judgments, and what I typically find is when my judgement mind has gone like into overdrive it’s typically because I’m scared about something.

Like if I go into a room full of new people, like a new workshop or a new social situation, one of my defense mechanisms that I use is I can judge everybody in everything in the room and have all these judgments all down, apparent.

And actually what’s underneath that is that I’m scared, and it’s not okay in our world to say I’m scared, I feel unsure, I’m not really confident here.

But would you believe I might sound like I’m full of confidence and I might sound like I’ve got all the answers, but I talk to you in front of the camera as if I’m talking to myself.

And what I do is when those judgments are happening, I kind of, it’s almost like I kind of parent myself. I kind of sit down, and I bring my horrible, it’s like a horrible spoilt six-year-old brat okay, and I’m sitting down on my lap, and I kind of go, “Okay what’s really going on here, What’s these judgments really about, do I really have these judgments about these people or do I really have these judgments about myself?”

And actually what’s really going on is I feel at times less than perfect, or I feel scared, or I feel vulnerable. And for me the art is not to beat yourself up about having the judgments; but the art of being conscious, being Tantric is getting underneath those judgments and really understanding where they’re being motivated from.

And looking at and addressing that part of myself, but I do it from a place of compassion, I don’t beat myself up, I don’t make myself wrong, I don’t think I’m a bad person.

My hunch is, and I’m taking this risk in making this video with you, my hunch is that we all have judgments, that we’re all, actually the whole of humanity is, constantly judging themselves and everything around them moment to moment. And I just wonder, actually for me when I’m in my judgement, it’s like I’m in my own prison cell because actually nobody knows what judgements I’ve got about them.

So actually my judgments are just me in my own prison cell and for me the freedom of getting out of being in a judgmental place is about having compassion for myself first, is about actually going into the scene of where those judgments are happening, ] and and it’s okay.

You know, I can love myself even though I’ve got all those judgments going on, and I can sit with why those judgments are going on, and I can bring compassion to myself. And then what happens is that I’m able to bring compassion to the world. If I can apply the same compassion that I have for myself as compassion to the world, as compassion to different people, suddenly I find that I soften a little bit more and I’m a little bit more generous and I’m a little bit more open and I’m even a little bit more forgiving.

And when someone’s doing something that irritates me, I maybe don’t take that they’re doing it against me, but I kind of take the understanding that maybe they’re doing that because of something that’s going on with them, there’s nothing to do with me.

And actually if I’m looking after my judgments, and I’m having compassion for myself, you know maybe the rest of us can do that soon too; and maybe the world starts to look slightly different.

Maybe it looks more compassionate, and I kind of come back to this teaching about everything I want to see in the world starts with me, and so judgments is one of those things. And I look to see how I can get underneath why I’m having those judgments, and be compassionate and understanding and work through why that’s going on.

And what I found is those judgments then dissipate, and with myself in a more vulnerable, more honest, more truthful relationship with myself, and therefore any more honest open and truthful relationship with the world around me.

I hope that helps. I hope that’s given you some ideas, and I look forward to being with you again soon. Take care now. Bye bye.