Posted on February 19, 2010 - by Rasham

DEAR RASH-ABBY:

Letter From Anonymous:

“When I met your friend at (location not mentioned to protect identity of actual characters), he lightly patted me on the shoulder. Who does that? I almost laughed, I almost let my tongue free. It was insulting, and let me know that he is probably rich, definitely condescending, probably has a superiority complex, and is insecure. I noticed when you and I took a picture, you also were leaning on my shoulder. I thought to myself, do these folks go around feeling a little superior? Just food for thought ”.

Thanks for the food! Here’s the thought:

Every person you encounter is an amazing resource for something, and the instance you form a judgment, you have blocked the lesson; you have disrupted the flow. It takes more work to restore the flow than it does to disallow judgments.

Judgments are our way of making sense of things so we may understand them better. So often we form judgments, devaluing our experiences by valuing what we consider the validity of our observant and critical minds; we interpret and define, label and assess, dissect and pick apart; all so that we may form an idea of an experience or thing in the language of our thoughts and context of our personal histories. To this idea we become attached, perhaps for many reasons, though mostly because it feels good when the world fits our pre-established judgments of it; our learned, acquired, and adopted preconceptions that contribute to form what we call our reality. Our reality is not to be confused with reality; indeed, our reality means our interpretation of what is, but reality implies ‘what is’, and what ‘what is’ is pure being; it exists independently of our assessment of it, and is free standing and infinite. We come into the world and inhabit a tiny space for a small amount of time, and we are allowed the mental capacity to experience it with our senses and form ideas and thoughts, and figure stuff out, and communicate about how we lived it. That’s great, but it is not reality.

When we form judgments we take away from the thing being experienced; we pull it from its inherent reality (its pure being) and make it a form in our minds; it becomes like a test subject on the operating table of our imaginations, and we take from it and add to it until it resembles little of what it actually is because it is no longer real and it is no longer itself as it bears characteristics of our own personalities while missing aspects of its original form.

We now control it as we strive to control everything; through judgments we discover we can control everything because everything becomes something to which we can attach in some way or another.

It feels good when the world fits our pre-formed judgments of it; otherwise we experience FEAR. From fear is born the binding power of our own minds: from fear is born judgments. The unknown, the unfamiliar, the unsettling, the new; these types of experiences give rise to fear;fear sparks the desire to understand; desire to understand stimulates the process of forming judgment; judgment forms opinion; opinion becomes action and action leads us either to regret or embellish; either way, to act on a judgment is to act selfishly, trusting in the mind and allowing it the power to guide us in isolation from the guiding force of truth, actuality, and pure being. Selfish is to trust the mind and its judgments, to wander through life an ego on a spine, walking and talking and forming relationships as one sees fit; judging, therefore resenting, elaborating, denying, repulsing, blindly influencing and ignorantly interacting as though the head is impervious to all and all else is impervious to it.

This is not the case; a friend described people as having tentacles, and every word, action, interaction, smile, and look that manifests within us extends to affect others like the tentacles of an octopus extends through space, influencing the flow of the surrounding environment with only mild intention: we control the birth of the action or word, that is, we can decide to extend our tentacles, and we can direct it towards a desired result via intention by choosing how to deliver the word, action, interaction, or smile,  BUT how our tentacles are received is out of our control. Therefore, we mustn’t be careless with our tentacles; we must be impeccable with it. Never let loose a tentacle of judgment: from it can only be born more tentacles of judgment and more tentacles still until the original thing is so swallowed by tentacles it ceases to exist or has been sentenced to exist in a state of misery, or it passes us by like dissolved possibilities for great friendship, opportunities, adventure or service.

Tentacles are our connection to each other and our world: why spend them freely and carelessly? To feel safe from fear is the desired state: but when the bearer of thought is open to the truth of impermanence it seems that security is nothing but an adjective used to describe the way life sometimes is, sometimes isn’t. That’s all everything is really. It sometimes is this, and it sometimes isn’t. These are not judgments; they are affirmations of acceptance of the nature of life’s flow.

It doesn’t bother me when people share judgments, I simply don’t reply: when someone shares a judgment they have actually invited you to become impressed by their words whereby they expect some reaction: even when there is no reaction they interpret lack of action as reaction. If I choose to play, I can either defend myself against the judgment or partner with it, forming a judgment of the judgment either way, committing to a conversation bound for nothing but failure, amounting to little more than wasted time.

In order to maintain a peaceful presence, to engage humanity on a higher plane I smile at judgments and seek to offer these words as a reply, skipping gracefully over the sloppily strewn tentacles: ‘is that so’?

I hope people get it; with judgments, you move nowhere, you get nothing and your tentacles become so rotted that no other tentacles born from healthy beings are willing to unite; you will be alone with your tentacles in the company of other rotted tentacles. While all the life of the sea is available in limitless potentials those rotting tentacles will forever isolate you from the rest so long as judgments are allowed to maintain you, the bearer of precious consciousness.

BUT, with openness and a willingness to see beyond what you think is, or perceive as, or assume to be; to recognize the power of your tentacles and to accept that the ways in which we all collide in thought and action are inevitable and constant, though changing and with variance, you can have EVERYTHING.

Energy is precious, life is priceless, and though love is infinite our bodies are not: I choose to engage people in conversations of betterment and progress: undress the mind, simplify, and practice practice practice laying those tentacles with pure intention and grace. “Watch as the whole world becomes you friend”, is what was said to me. It truly has. It can be for you too.

So!

Dear Anonymous,

I will neither embrace your judgment nor deny it; it is neither right nor wrong; it merely has no place. If we were face-to-face, I would have swallowed my pride (as I am a beginner in studying the art of ‘being human’), and replied, ‘is that so’?  And, despite the context of your message and message of the subsequent discussion, I love you, anonymous you who has lit my fire and allowed me hours of pleasurable writing. I love all of you. You see: Love is not limited, it certainly is not founded in judgment: to say I can not love this thing because I am already in love with this thing is a gross misunderstanding of love. Love is not mine to decide the quantity, it is not born in me and requires no rules of distribution to be felt and experienced. Love is not to be rationed or controlled or denied or accepted. Love is. I am love. I don’t need love. I don’t want love. I have nothing to do with love. Love is greater than me. I am small, but I am loved, whether I exist or not.

Namaste,

Rasham Writes