The deadly thing about comparative moral judgment is that it leads to the rejection of our experience. What’s even more significant is that the rejection of experience is inherently a self-rejection—because our experience is part of us. Remember, all of our experiences are nothing but forms within our own consciousness. They’re all arising out of the same awareness—the same beingness manifesting itself in various forms. Here it appears as a little bubbling; there it could seem like a volcanic eruption. But whether it’s a volcanic eruption, a little bubbling, or a raging sun, it is just our soul manifesting in that possibility. When we say no to it, when we want to throw it away, we are actually saying no to ourselves. We’re saying no to our consciousness, to our awareness. We’re saying, “This consciousness is not doing its thing correctly. Let’s get rid of it.” – The Unfolding Now: Realizing Your True Nature through the Practice of Presence, ch. 8
Working with the judge and discovering the truth is a journey of liberation. As you come to recognize that you are in a prison guarded by the judge, you appreciate the soul’s powerful longing for freedom. Every external form of bondage in human history reflects the psychic confinement of the soul resulting from ignorance and unquestioned beliefs. You are a slave to your own ideas of who you are and how you need to be. – Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Introduction
Positive judgment only superimposes a new belief about yourself on top of an old one. It tries to assert something that is not an expression of what you experience as truth. It can never root out the original conviction of your own lack of worth. This is why you will often find yourself distrusting the praise of others, making inner comments like, “The fact that they say that shows they don’t know me very well!” The fact is, positive judgment is like makeup; it must always be reapplied, and a good hard rain will wash it away.
The only real alternative to self-judgment is knowing the truth about who you are. If you have a deep belief that you are worthless, you must discover where that belief came from and why you believe that it is true. Until you understand that, nothing fundamentally will change. Once you know deep inside you, with a direct and felt sense, that you have inherent value and are fully acceptable to yourself, then you will begin to free yourself from the need for positive judgment and approval, from others or from your own judge. – Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Ch. 2
The judge believes that reality is not safe, is problematic, and will get you into trouble. Many times in your childhood, you endured situations that were painful, scary, overwhelming, and frustrating. Such feelings were hard to tolerate, and their impact on you had to be controlled for you to feel safe. The judge’s job was to protect you from being overwhelmed or threatened by these experiences. It used denial, avoidance, and selective awareness as basic defenses. Now it continues to believe that you must be protected from the reality of your life; in fact, you must be protected from almost any direct experience of reality. The judge defines the way you experience reality by telling you what to pay attention to and what is important. It will constantly steer you away from paying attention to your full experience in the moment. It does not trust that there is any value or benefit in being more real with yourself. – Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Ch. 3
Because you believe there is some truth in a judgment, it generates self-rejection rather than self-defense. The judgment rejects you, but you can’t stop it because, on some level, you believe what it is saying. Then you are not only attacked by the statement itself but further betrayed as the judgment turns you against yourself. Unconsciously, you begin to feel more threatened by the deficient feelings and beliefs waiting to arise in you than by the attacker and thus cannot defend yourself against the actual attack. – Byron Brown, Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, Ch. 4