How do we have those black judgmental thoughts that we address ourselves? All these “I am worthless”, “I will never achieve anything”, “I have nothing to love for”?
My friend, the Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, likes to remember one episode. One day in Dharamsala, the Indian residence of the Dalai Lama, at a seminar on the meeting of East and West, an American psychologist spoke of “feelings of self-loathing.” The Dalai Lama at first thought he had misheard and asked the interpreter several times.
Then he asked to be explained to him what, in fact, it was about. It was incomprehensible to him – how can a person hate himself?! When he finally realized that this was a fairly common phenomenon in the West, he was very sad. He was sad to think that there are so many people who are so alienated from themselves that they are able to hate themselves …
How do we have those black judgmental thoughts that we address ourselves? All these “I am worthless”, “I will never achieve anything”, “I have nothing to love for”? I once hosted a seminar with Cambodian and African psychologists on how to recognize negative thoughts about yourself, which is central to EMDR* and cognitive therapy for depression and trauma.
It turned out that it was also difficult for them to understand what I was talking about. Finally, a colleague from Senegal exclaimed: “Ah, clearly: you are talking about the fear of what others will think of us!” And I suddenly realized that our negative thoughts about ourselves, which we consider our own, actually arise when we appropriate the real or imagined judgments of others about us.
The woman who never got over her long-term failure in her final exams and who keeps repeating to herself, “I’m a jerk,” has accepted the judgment of those who thought that of her twenty years ago. Their voices still resound in her head and pollute the interior space, violating her spiritual ecology. This is not her own voice.
It is very important to be able to stop the flow of negative thoughts that arise in us and in relation to other people. If we are categorical about a colleague or relative (“he is stupid”, “she makes everything too complicated”), we, of course, can experience a small bout of self-satisfaction, comparing ourselves with the object of our criticism and coming to conclusions that are pleasant for ourselves.
But this satisfaction does not last long. In addition, by criticizing others, we strengthen the idea that the world works this way: in it every person is a victim or an aggressor. And it remains only to wait for our turn to become a target for criticism. As we free ourselves from harsh judgments of others, we learn not to judge ourselves. I think a necessary step towards a more sustainable soul life and relationships with other people is described in one simple and moving Buddhist prayer. It consists in recognizing in ourselves and in each of us the most natural and most legitimate of desires.
This inner prayer is addressed to the Universe: “Let me be kept; may I be well; let me be happy.” But what if inside ourselves we hear more often precisely such words and precisely this voice?
* EMDR is a method of desensitization and treatment of injuries with eye movement.