Where to use the wand of control I: Faculty of Judgement

By watedroplet

In my last post, I talked about understanding where to execute the wand of control and where to let go of this wand of control. Now the question arises: how to understand what to let go of or what to hold on to. This introduced me to the understanding of Epictetus, where he says that for well-being, we need to execute our wand of control in these three faculties of mind. 

1) The faculty of Judgement

Our judgments are based on our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. They help us to judge what is right or wrong, true or false, and good or bad. This is the first faculty that we should use to develop accurate and rational beliefs and thoughts about the world we live in. When we were children, we had the tendency to see only one side of the situation, but as we grow, we should develop an attitude to explore various perspectives before reaching a conclusion. We all come across situations when our emotions are loud, and we just want to go with it. That is not good. We need to stop here and understand the cause and origin of the emotion rather than responding based on our emotions. Further, none of us are free from biases. At times, we all want to favor someone because they did good to us. This is not good since we are depriving the rightful person of his/her victory. There have been times when we made prejudiced judgments because all said so. Here, we failed to see what is beyond the veil. All these situations are in our control. We can check our emotions and regulate them rather than being in their control. We all can evaluate the biases and prejudices we get trapped in. 

Having understood what judgement does to us and how we can wisely control and use it for our benefit, we need to understand one more concept on the path to letting go, i.e., having nonjudgemental thinking.

Nonjudgemental thinking is an act of observing and acknowledging our thoughts and feelings without labelling them as good or bad. In other words, we give freedom to our mind to think whatever is coming into our mind at that moment without saying it is right or wrong, good or bad. For example, I was cheated by my friend, and I feel very bad and want to say harsh words to vent out. Let the mind say all those things in front of a mirror. This venting out lightens you, and you don't bind yourself to societal criteria. In this way, you are not labelling yourself as some saint; rather, consider yourself human and are compassionate to yourself over your hurt and loss. 

In essence, nonjudgemental thinking helps us to be more compassionate and acceptable towards oneself and others which is very important in the process of letting go. 


This post is a part of Write a Page a Day at www.theblogchatter.com 

Comments

Post a Comment

Posts most loved

Pedantic Perfectionism

By watedroplet
Image
When I wrote this topic today, everything talked about imperfection. This mental battle between perfectionism and imperfectionism made me understand that we are at the wrong end. Let me clarify what I really mean by this. When you go to school, does your teacher expect you to master everything on day one? The answer is no. For this reason only, assessments are towards the end of the term. I remember my brother and sister joining the drawing class. They are good artists because they have worked on it for ages, and I never did, so I am still imperfect in it.  I still remember the days when I went to do machine embroidery. My teacher first said to make straight, concentric circles without stopping. The first day was, oh! Nothing was going well. Not even one line was straight. This is where we all are. We begin with imperfection. We were three people there, learning. All were my senior madams, and I was the junior most. We all practiced every alternate day. After a few days, my circl...
Read more

Mesmerizing Materialism

By watedroplet
When I thought of writing about the game of materialism that plays in our lives, I was immediately drawn to one of the English stories I read, ' The umbrella man ' by Roald Dhal. For all who have forgotten this story, I will give a quick recap. This story talks about a girl and her mother who visited a dentist. While they were returning, it was raining, and they were waiting for a cab when they were approached by an old man. This man asked for a favor by requesting $20 as a taxi fare in lieu of the silk umbrella he had. The mother was usually suspicious of strangers. So she used her first golden rule: "The nicer the man seems to be, the more suspicious you must become." This old man was really nice because he was polite, well-spoken, and well-dressed. He was really a gentle man. She knew this because her mother used her second golden rule to access it: "You can always spot a gentleman by the shoes he wears." (This is the reason I picked this story.) The stor...
Read more

Zest O! Zest! Why do you fade in discovering your inner self?

By watedroplet
 Ladies, put on your shoes; it's time to face the rows. Once I went to a marriage reception party, and I saw a very beautiful, fair, glowing bride. My heart fell for her glow. In the course of time, I moved out of the city for my studies. On one of my leaves, I happened to meet this bride again. I asked my mom, "Who is she?" and she replied, 'Wife of Mr. X?' Stunned, I stood there. The bride I saw was beautiful, fair, and glowing. This lady had a dark complexion that was no match for the beauty I saw on the day of reception. Practically speaking, I met two people, though both of them reside in the same body. This is the power of makeup, which transforms our outer selves exclusively.  We all do these make-ups almost every day in order to hide our  inner selves.   We all love to live in this fallacy because we fear facing the truth about ourselves. Humanistic therapist Carl Roger describes this situation in his book "On Becoming a Person" as a threateni...
Read more