Does Non-dualism Mean We Never Judge a Thing Good or Bad? - The Little Prince Series

Does Non-dualism Mean We Never Judge a Thing Good or Bad

? - The Little Prince Series

Daily Spiritual Insight from the Story ofThe Little Prince

Is it wrong to come to a judgment about something in our life? Is to judge something good or bad to fall into duality?

The Little Prince definitively categorizes some seeds as good for his garden, others as bad for it. Rosebushes he wants, whereas baobabs left to grow instead of pulled up by the roots can lead to catastrophe.

If I were to drive down the highway playing video games on my laptop, as a Dutch trucker in Scotland was caught doing last week, I would judge that to be dangerous. Were I to crash into someone and kill them, I would judge my driving while playing a game positively bad.

Does that mean I should be judged as trash, worthless, no good at all?

Humans often write each other off in this way. This is the kind of judgment Jesus condemned when he said in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get."

But there is also a kind of judgment Jesus referred to as "right judgment." When I choose to shut down my laptop while driving, waiting to play my video game when I get home, I make a good judgment. To play the game while driving is bad judgment.

A conscious state doesn't blind us to what things are. Quite the opposite, we becomemoreaware and thereforebetter judges of how to live our life. The more aware we are, the more we can "judge right judgment."

The Little Prince rightly judges that if he lets a baobab sprig grow into a big tree, it will wreak havoc on his planet, perhaps even split it apart.

Baobabs in Africa are just fine. Baobabs on the Little Prince's planet are bad. It's the nature of baobab trees to grow big. They just don't need to do it on the Little Prince's turf.

I want to emphasize that when Jesus said don't judge people, but also said judge rightly, he wasn't talking about judging whether a particular thing is good or bad, but about judging individuals as if they were worthless, writing them off.

I can judge that Hitler did terribly evil thingsthat's making a "right judgment." But I cannot then say that Hitler was scum, worthless, and ought to rot in hell forever.

Rather nonduality asks me to see the evil Hitler perpetrated, and oppose it, while at the same time recognizing he was an individual who was overwhelmed by his ego and its flip side that Eckhart Tolle calls the pain-body.

I recognize that beneath Hitler's Nazi faade, his false self, was a person who is essentially divine offspring like myself. This doesn't mean I let him walk all over me because of a mistaken belief that "there's no good or bad."

Trains packed with men, women, and children bound for Auschwitz are bad. Not the trains per se, but the use of them for this purpose.

Gas chambers and ovens to burn human bodies in the millions are bad.

Yet those who did these things were inherently divine, though they didn't know it.

Jesus didn't hesitate to label people blind guides, hypocrites, and whitewashed tombs when he saw them hindering the spiritual development and wellbeing of others. (Read the 23rd chapter of Matthew's Gospel sometime.) Simultaneously he valued these same evildoers as much as he valued himself, all the while forgiving of their terrible actions.

Nonduality isn't denying good and evil, right and wrong, but becoming all the more keenly aware of what benefits us and what harms us.

In nonduality we are fully conscious. We are atuned to all the many facets of our life, allowing them and valuing them even when they may be distasteful, recognizing they all contribute to our ongoing evolutionary journey.

As we do so, our wisdom increases, enabling us to make better judgments all the time, choosing for ourselves paths that increase our joy instead of generating more pain.

We'll pick this up again tomorrow.

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