Judgy McJudgerson

or “Spiritual Arrogance”

Through some inventory work I’ve been doing lately, digging out the past-prime labeled items in my psyche, and assessing what I’ve been holding on to long past its due date, I’ve been getting to see that I am spiritually arrogant.

Now, no one likes to admit this, certainly not me, but it’s been coming up more lately, much more front and center, and I thought I’d try to parse it out a little bit as I (hope to) come to a place of letting this character defect go.

It takes one of two courses: I happen to know you’re not doing the same arduous work that I’m doing, and therefore when you complain and bemoan your troubles and your life, I get to sit in moral superiority, knowing that if you were only doing what I was doing, you’d get better.

Yummy, isn’t it … More like sour, I tell you.

Or, it looks like well, no, basically, that’s it. It just takes several more devious forms from that.

For example, you have success in your field, but I happen to know that you’re not tending your spiritual garden with regularity. I feel affronted. And self-pitying. Why do YOU get the goods without the work??

Or, Why do YOU get to go on vacation to Barbados when you’re still so messed up in all these other areas that you don't even see how messed up you are??

Basically, it’s another form of jealousy. And laziness. I want what you’re getting without doing the work. But when I don’t do the work, I get all kinds of cuckoo from it. When I rest on my laurels, or feel, hey, you know what, I’ll keep my internal stockroom filled with rotting fruit, I’ve got a good job now – well, it usually turns out badly. The fruit turns nuclear.

The other side of this spiritual arrogance toward others is the idea that I have any idea what the path is for other people. When I sit in my head and judge others by their continuous and bile-vomiting cycle of pain, it’s not doing them, or me, any good. It’s none of my business if someone is attached to their pain cycle.

It’s my business that I am.

It’s been said that anything negative we think or say or act toward others, we are 10 times as harsh to ourselves. What we say or feel toward others is just a reflection of the internal dialogue we have.

So, when I’m sitting in judgment of others, I do know that I use the same sword to bludgeon myself. Why aren’t you doing better in your field? Why aren’t you going to Barbados? What is so wrong with you that you have to do this continuous daily work?

Sounds pretty shitty, doesn’t it?

It’s not always that vocal. It rarely is. Moreso, it’s the undercurrent – the underground stream that runs with poison, and I drink from that well.

Spiritual arrogance – the belief that I’m somehow better because I do the work, but at the same time, must be worse because I need to do the work.

Perhaps … as I read yesterday: Humility makes us whole. Perhaps, I am no greater or less than anyone around me. Perhaps I don’t have to mark my situation against someone else’s like the height marks on a doorframe. Perhaps I can simply keep my eyes on my own road, and let other people’s paths be their paths. If I’m jealous, go do something about attaining what they have. If I’m judgy, remember the times when I’ve been a screaming sobbing pile of self-pity. If I’m arrogant, remember that, truly, we are all fucking equal, and the lessons that I would have someone learn in this lifetime are not necessarily the lessons they’re here to learn.

So, for today, instead of wielding this double-edged sword, perhaps I can have compassion for others, and a bit of action toward my own lessons and goals.