Judging is preventing us from understanding a new truth. Free yourself from the rules of old judgments and create the space for new understanding.

Judgment is just another cage we live in so we don't have to feel, know, and imagine. Judgment is self-abandonment. You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right — perhaps even the duty — to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.

The act of judging people in advance will retard their development. If you make a judgment that someone is incapable of doing something such as running a larger organization, will it make sense to teach them those skills or even point out the anticipated deficiencies? Probably not. You've already decided they can't do it.

You judge other people because you’re not comfortable in your own being. By judging, you find out where you stand in relation to other people. The judging mind is very divisive. It separates. Separation closes your heart.

When we set up judgments for others, they become rules that we have to play by, too. By judging others for what we don’t have or because we envy them, we sabotage our own lives far more than we ever really hurt anybody else.

your judgement judges you and defines you

It is interesting to see how the judgmental mind extends itself. It may begin by complaining, “What a lousy serve,” then extend to, “I’m serving badly today.” After a few more “bad” serves, the judgment may become further extended to “I have a terrible serve.” Then, “I’m a lousy tennis player,” and finally, “I’m no good.” First the mind judges the event, then groups events, then identifies with the combined event and finally judges itself. As a result, what usually happens is that these self-judgments become self-fulfilling prophecies. That is, they are communications from Self 1 about Self 2 which, after being repeated often enough, become rigidified into expectations or even convictions about Self 2. Then Self 2 begins to live up to these expectations. If you tell yourself often enough that you are a poor server, a kind of hypnotic process takes place. It’s as if Self 2 is being given a role to play — the role of bad server — and plays it to the hilt, suppressing for the time being its true capabilities. Once the judgmental mind establishes a self-identity based on its negative judgments, the role-playing continues to hide the true potential of Self 2 until the hypnotic spell is broken. In short, you start to become what you think.

To judge someone before understanding that person is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. It intensifies personal insecurities, necessitating more judgment (prejudice) and less understanding. The processes continue in this vicious cycle.

One mental habit that can wreak havoc in our lives is self-judgment. If you watch your mind for 10 minutes after something goes wrong, you’ll probably notice that you’re criticizing yourself. It’s undoubtedly useful to know what went wrong and to correct our mistakes, but usually we go way beyond that. What can we do about self-judgment? It doesn’t work to “just stop judging yourself” because you’re likely to judge yourself for judging yourself. (Remember, what we resist persists.) The best solution is simply to “witness” judgments, letting them come and go.

To let go of judgment does not mean that you don’t see what they do. It means that you recognize their behavior as a form of conditioning, and you see it and accept it as that. You don’t construct an identity out of it for that person.
That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. That liberates you as well as the other person from identification with conditioning, with form, with mind. The ego then no longer runs your relationships. (Ch 8)

Imagine living your life without the fear of being judged by others. You no longer rule your behavior according to what others may think about you. You are no longer responsible for anyone’s opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you, either. Imagine living your life without judging others. You can easily forgive others and let go of any judgments that you have. You don’t have the need to be right, and you don’t need to make anyone else wrong. You respect yourself and everyone else, and they respect you in return.

The first type of judgement is the type where judging you is the end goal... But in fact there is a second much larger class of judgements where judging you is only a means to something else.

"We also have a responsibility not to let ourselves be judged. We do not have to accept others' evaluations of our worth, nor are we obligated to believe in their superiority. Whichever role we are assigned, we can stop the game by refusing to play our expected part. When someone suggests that our recent behavior has undone our right to exist, a useful question to ask is, "What do you want? What can I do to make the situation better?" This often reduces the Judge's voice to silence, because what the Judge really wants- but cannot admit- is to make you feel bad, not to get the floor clean. When we feel secure in our inherent value, we do not have to argue about our worth as human beings. Instead, we can attempt to solve the problem."

Judgment begins when the serve is labeled “bad” and causes interference with one’s playing when a reaction of anger, frustration or discouragement follows. If the judgment process could be stopped with the naming of the event as bad, and there were no further ego reactions, then the interference would be minimal.