digital ⋆｡𖦹˚.★ ritual
only god can judge me (and god doesn't judge)
a prayer
As someone who has often lived under the immovable sludge of guilt and shame about not doing enough good in this world, so much so that when people have called me out as privileged, or embarrassing, or ignorant in regards to my lack of goodness, I’ve often responded in fear, either by doubling down or throwing the weight of my fragile ego against anything that reinforces to me and them that “I am good, I swear!” But suddenly my being is shifting out of that desperate fog, perhaps more from exhaustion than anything else. I’m not entirely sure when or how or why, but the judgments from others over my goodness, or perhaps put another way—my moral correctness—are losing their once strong held power. It’s hard to take so seriously the critiques of any and everyone when you begin to tighten the sphere of whom you’ll accept them from, while also accepting and forgiving your own shortcomings.
I’m surrendering the need to be perfectly good, which I learned is actually the fear of being bad—of not doing enough, and essentially, not being enough for this world. But as it turns out, no one can be enough or not enough, not ultimately, because we simply already are. It turns out the immovable sludge of shame and guilt is actually rather malleable when you cup it from everyone else’s hands into your own and begin to reshape it. I am leaving the shores of contempt and arriving on board with the reality that I may very well die before utopia is attained1, without having done enough to contribute to it, on the wrong side (to someone), still flawed and unrealized. And when that day comes, I trust I shall choose to feel content with all I did and all I failed to do, because it will not be god who ultimately judges me, and so why should I? My heart is teaching me that what I come from, and will seemingly be returning to, is beyond judgment.
As swiftly as I’m entering my ‘only god can judge me’ era, I’m realizing that in fact, only humans can judge me because god doesn’t judge. Not the god I’m speaking of, anyway, which is not the god the bible speaks of, and in all honesty is not really something that can be spoken of at all. The god I speak of is beyond language, beyond reason, and beyond all of my mortal toils and meddlings. I am speaking towards the god beyond god2. I am speaking, loosely and inaccurately, of the unsayable absolute of which we belong to, are expressing as, appear to be separate from (but aren’t), and will never have solved or captured or figured out, because we are but a fleeting wink of the thing it-self.
There is not much that can be said about god beyond god, it’s too big and unreasonable, and I won’t spend much time on it. But if I may be so bold to assert that if god beyond god cares about anything, which I confess I don’t think is the case3, it’s certainly not between who is right or who is wrong. It would seem god beyond god prefers everything. Is purely wild. Is infinitely discoverable. Is only free.
The “God” we so often speak of, and who I’ve often referred to as “gob” in many of my posts, is a word used as a conceptual placeholder for the indescribable, vast mystery from which we have awoken. It’s how we try to make sense of the senselessness and utter awe of this plane. This (more or less) fiction can be our friend who guides us and holds our hand, or for some others, is our authoritarian dom daddy who tells us what to do and punishes us when we fail to obey. We love him when he’s good to us and we question him when we don’t get our way. In our image we created a fair-weather god, an eerily mortal god—he punishes some but not all, it seems seldom those who might actually “deserve” it. I understand this god plays a role for some of us in our shaping, coping and relating to reality, but I’m coming to find this “god” isn’t the source of existence.
As I like to say, “Everyone is doing god’s work.” Not just the do-gooders, everyone is playing their part. God doesn’t reward some and not others, or favor some and condemn the rest. A god who judges (and who I can judge) is a projected god, and not “god” itself. This means truly, only humans are judging one another, judging meaning concluding what is ultimately good and bad and thus who should be rewarded and who should be punished, but really, who are we to judge? I’m not asking this ironically, I think it is something worth considering with care. Who are we to judge? Of course we will judge because we can judge and perhaps we even need to judge. But that doesn’t mean our judgments are wholly accurate or true.
A bit ago, I wrote a piece as a response to a reader (and dear friend) question about what to do with judgement, and after having re-read it I find the words I gave were sage. In it I point to the fact that it is not about entirely removing judgement from ourselves because judgement is part of what we do as self-conscious creatures. But we can liberate (aka release) judgement by calling it what it is when we experience it. The best we can do is notice when we are being judgmental (of self and other) and pause. We can probe our judgements, and yet be gentle with them. We can be light and sparing with them, which in turn makes them more meaningful, more thoughtful.
Our judgments are fickle little schisms, anyway. More than anything, they’re guesses—preferences—conditioning, which we’ve managed to confuse for absolute truths. We’ve projected these “truths” into the world, quarreling over who is right and who is wrong about them instead of comforting and tending to the pains we all cause and share in. I think this is partly why we create (and worship) judgmental gods’—because we have done wrong, been harshly judged and punished for it, and so-too do the same.
What I judge in others is what I judge in myself, and the judgments I accept from others are already something I possess and have agreed to. I’m finding that the inner creates the outer, and that the outer is no different from the inner, not really. Those of us who make hell of this place feel apart from it, othered by it, and are scared to death of it thus seek to control or be controlled. Those of us who make heaven of this place trust it, co-create with it, and let our fears stay teachable, thus workable. Neither is ultimately right or wrong, but a way of relating. Heaven and hell are not eternal sentences awaiting us at our timely demise, they are inside of us, right now. We are the ones who make heaven and hell for ourselves and for others, and we are the ones who can choose other realms beyond those.
I want us to stop mistaking our fear of being bad for what goodness actually is—grace. In whatever we do, whether it be activism, self-care, or inspection of the cosmos etc., I want us to consider that only humans can judge, and that god is not judging us because god (beyond god) is beyond judgement. Since no human is, in truth, above any other human, I want us to take responsibility for our judgements (even though they are never wholly ours alone) by simply noticing when we are expressing from them, and learn to pause with them, feel the shape of them, to let our tongue’s caress familiarize them before casting their spell. And—I want us to, if even in only the briefest of moments, give up our judgements entirely, abandon them, surrender all knowledge of them. To empty ourselves of our-selves, and silently meet what comes through when there is nothing to distinguish.
Clarity does not come from prolonged and repetitive judgment, but from one’s empty attention. We need not judge so harshly. “What is alive is right”, says Rilke. We’d do best to keep our blood in our head and our head in our hearts.
a card pulled
This entire deck4 is devoted to the journey of becoming acquainted with the Unrecognized Self: the part of us that feels ever elusive, slipping in and out of the shadows, difficult to pin down and ever have a real conversation with. However, if the Shadow Person happens to pop up in your pull, you have the fleeting luck of doing just that.
Your Unrecognized Self has arrived to have an honest conversation with you. Whatever inner work you’ve been doing has thrust a level of self-awareness upon you, and your Shadow is ready for your integration. It can be difficult to know the next steps when we reach this point in our journey; sometimes just knowing these qualities exist can be enough. And maybe it is.
Take this opportunity to ask this side of yourself what it wants, what it needs, where it would like to live now. How can you rectify the resistance and make peace with its demands? Remember that this is a real part of your essence. Show yourself compassion and understanding instead of shame and guilt. We all have pieces of ourselves that struggle to fit.
Further Reflection:
Read up on Jung’s twelve archetypes. They exist both in light and shadow, but all twelve live within us. Which one resonates most profoundly within you right now? Have a conversation with that side of yourself.
a poem
Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.
Be forever dead in Eurydice—more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.
Be—and yet know the great void where all things begin, the infinite source of your own most intense vibrations, so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.
To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb creatures in the world’s full reserve, the unsayable sums, joyfully add yourself, and cancel the count.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
the unconscious
I do not believe this world will be more perfect than it is now, and it is not perfect anyway because it is manifest. What moves from nothingness into the manifest is never perfect because it instead becomes real. Real is dimensional, hungry and alive. Real bleeds. Real loves. Real feels. I do not need this world to be more ideal than it is, although it is something I’m often toying with. I need only stay workable, teachable and friendly to what it presents me, and to what I present it. If I must show my fangs then I must. But my focus is to stay courageous enough to enjoy it. To play. To change and be changed. And to keep my heart from losing touch with mine and others humanity, and thus our divinity, with fickle, inaccurate judgements. What if we are already free? I do not mean this in some idiotic sense that there is no injustice on this planet that demands our attention and action. No, I mean what if what is being expressed right now is the exact expression of the unmanifest made manifest? What if all around us (and further) is the dream of god beyond god—down to every birdsong, pink and violet lined cloud, wave crashing shore and violent hunger? What if this is what pure, untapped freedom, that could express as anything, is expressing as? And we are part of it-not the point of it—but allowed and whole and fleeting—invited! nonetheless? What if? How would you look at the world? How would you treat yourself? What does that make of you?
♡♡♡,♡♡♡
I do not believe utopia will be attained. Utopia means literally “no place” and that is right. However, we are able to shape this messy bloom of existence in creative and compassionate ways, and while I do not associate this with pure goodness or purity, I think it gives us a shot at creating more compassionate systems if we keep trying.
A term I learned from studying Meister Eckhart, a medieval Christian mystic (and bad ass).
I just don’t think the source of all that is inherently good, nor is it inherently bad. It includes everything and eats/destroys everything and renews everything, and I don’t know what word there is for that!
Im grateful for the algorithm for bringing me here. My heart’s singing. Thank you. I screenshotted so many parts of this, and will keep returning to them.