127. Judgement

Hey there! I offer this podcast freely. Your support really makes a difference. To make a donation,

visit renameccana.com. Welcome to Spiritual Psychology. My name is René Lavalima Canna, and I bring

my 30 plus years as a recovering addict and ex crazy person, turned therapist and shamanic

healer to bring you snackable teachings on spirituality, psychology, and all things personal

growth. And today I want to talk about judgment. And we all have a relationship with judgment,

whether we tend to be the one doing the judging or the one being judged. And most of us are a mix

of both. From my perspective, judgment is actually rooted in fear. And fear is never a good

place to ground ourselves. And so looking at our relationship with judgment really can show us

where we're being called to grow, to evolve, and to mature into more conscious, productive,

constructive ways of relating with ourselves and others. And so the inner judge, whether it's ours

or someone else's, is the part of the self that hands down the verdict if something is good or bad,

right or wrong, permissible or punishable. And certainly having a sense of our own morality,

what we consider to be a virtue or a vice, can really help us make decisions in our life. And

making decisions or choices is how we co create reality, how we express our free will in the world.

Well, at the universe, know what we want. And the more we can take responsibility for our choices,

and make them consciously, then the more aligned our outer world experience will be with our

desires, our inner truth, or what we really want. So as we mature and evolve in our own world view,

what we perceive as desirable or undesirable, we can move from the place of judgment into a place

of discernment. And I see discernment as having a clear perspective or choice making from a place

of compassion and individuation, choice making without judgment, without criticism or condemnation.

And as we grow to become free of judging thoughts of ourselves and others, of situations and

circumstances, it allows us to just be more present with what is, to be more accepting, more peaceful,

more loving, and perhaps even more grateful for any of the circumstances in our life.

I did a piece of work recently with a client who has a lot of inner judgment, and we were

seeking some of the roots of this inner conflict that they have. She's actually quite a gifted

coach and healer, which he has a lot of inner judgment and self sabotage. And so we went all the way

back to her conception and her experience as a tiny fetus in her mother's womb. And as this

little soul was experiencing having a physical form, moving its tiny arms and legs and developing

inner organs and systems, the experience was one of excitement and hopefulness. And she said,

I get to have a life. And soon after that, she could feel her mother's angst in the womb and

hear her parents fighting, beating the crap out of each other. And she no longer felt safe and

was looking for a way out. And that inner conflict between her soul, level, desire to engage

with life, and this opportunity we get to incarnate in a physical form, and that often painful,

fear, producer, and engagement we have with the middle world and the beings in it. That seems

to be the cutting edge of the human experience. And a lot of our self defensive, protective

devices, including judgment and inner criticism, judging reality, is never good enough,

is rooted in that dichotomy between hope and fear, desire and pain. And unfortunately,

whether it's in vitro or later in childhood, that soul level part of the self generally gets

cut off or shut down or put away for safekeeping. I recently watched Tangled the Disney version

of the Myth of Rapunzel. And the story of Rapunzel in case you want familiar is that an evil

witch steals the princess as an infant from the king in queen and locks her away in a tower.

And the girl's hair grows and grows and has magic rejuvenating powers that keep the old

grown alive, like a fountain of youth. The old woman visits the child by climbing the girl's hair

that she lets down out of the tower window. Ultimately, a handsome prince returns for Rapunzel

to her rightful home with the king in queen and the old woman is destroyed. And if we look at

that story as an archetype or a teaching for us, we all have a pure and beautiful part of

ourselves that holds tremendous healing power, vitality, beauty, it's innocent, untouched by the

world. And if we keep it to ourselves, if we only visit it for our own selfish hands, it is

sad, lonely and neglected, underdeveloped. And the work is to bring it into the world. And to grow

in our skills and ability to nourish and support the development of our own authentic self. And that

selfish, fearful part of our self represented by the witch that has abducted Rapunzel and stuck her

up in the tower so that she alone can benefit. That part of our self needs to dissolve or die

so that our soul self can be free. And just like entangled or Rapunzel, the witch is full of lies.

Tells the authentic self, oh, it's too scary out there. Oh, we'll be harmed. You aren't strong enough

to handle being in the world. You need to stay up here for safe keeping. And I believe it is essential

for all of us to take that risk to bring our soul self our most authentic and vulnerable self

into the world so that it can grow and develop. Return to its rightful place in the royal family

ruling our life, growing from reprincess into a queen, our own healthy inner masculine supporting us.

I've been working with inner masculine and feminine a lot lately. And recently, I did podcast

number 124 on inner masculine and feminine and how we can grow in inner wholeness to support

the vulnerable parts of our self rather than judging, suppressing or imprisoning them.

And judgment generally does imprison aspects of our own life force. I have another client I

worked with recently, big, burly construction guy owns a roofing company and I'm doing couples

counseling with him in his wife because after a long period of sobriety he relapsed and he was

secretly taking oxy contents. She caught him and he lied about it and she caught him again and it

really disrupted the relationship broke trust and they really love each other. They have a

wonderful bond. And from my perspective, this is actually a call for them both to grow to the next

level individually and together. And they're doing that work. It's really inspiring to be with them.

But the wife had tremendous judgment. How could you go back to using drugs? Why didn't you tell

me? She was furious at him. And from my perspective, addiction is almost always a trauma response.

It's an attempt to medicate inner suffering that's rooted in a place of hopelessness.

And as we looked deeper on what was actually happening, he had been having panic attacks.

He didn't tell anyone about it because it didn't fit with his ego identity of who he is as a person.

It's a big, strong, hardworking man runs a couple of crews of other big, strong, hardworking men.

He pushes those guys and he pushes himself in this fearful, vulnerable part of himself.

It's been locked away since childhood, starting kicking the door down with these panic attacks.

And he has judgment about vulnerability and fear as weakness doesn't fit with his ideas of who he is as a

person. He feels threatening to his position socially and in the company and even with his wife.

He takes his role as a safety provider and caregiver very seriously. He deeply loves her.

And he didn't want to share this perceived weakness with her, both because he had shame about it.

But also because he felt like he was less of a provider and that his fear might create fear in

her that she couldn't depend on him. And he's deeply committed to providing a wonderful life

for this woman that he loves. And that inner judgment locked this part of him away.

It's kept it locked up for over 50 years. And is that inner wound started to weep and howl?

Yeah, medicate that motherfucker. Put it away. Like Rapunzel in the tower.

Lock that baby down. We'll lie about it. No one should see this.

But the truth will set us free. And when we try to avoid medicate and prison the truth,

it can become monstrous, destructive. And all parts of our self hold vital life energy

as he's growing in the skills and ability to make room for this vulnerable part of himself

to give it a place that's safe so that it doesn't need to be frightened anymore.

I know there's superpowers in the other that he hasn't tapped into yet. They're going to make him

actually more whole, more complete, more wise and balanced, even more empowered than he is already.

But they're still a gap. They have filled with judgment. Judgment rooted in the fear

that that part of us is unacceptable, unlovable. And even deeper than that we know on some level

the power that our authentic self holds to change and often level our life. The good news is

when we open to really connect with our authentic self, it generally levels our life up.

And the soul is the driver of our individual life. One of my favorite books,

Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin, he talks about the three layers of being spirit, ego or personality,

and the soul level. And our relationship with those three parts is the creative dynamic that moves

our life force. Spirit is source. God, the larger consciousness system of which we're all apart,

our soul is our individuated unit of consciousness, the little piece of God that each of us is.

We all carry the life force within us as a divine spark that's unique to each of us, just like

every flower in a garden, even if they are the same species, they are different. Every tree in

the forest, every golden retriever is a little bit unique. There's 8 billion of us or however many

there are on the planet and similar as we are, we are each, an individual with a unique perspective

and experience. The complexity of creation is unfathomable, but our personality self, our ego self

is our interface between spirit, between soul, and this material realm that we move around him.

Our personality self is like the car we get to drive through this lifetime, the particular body,

the race we are, religion, culture, gender, our preferences, our skills, our deficits.

The problem is is that the personality self often thinks it's the whole thing, which is why I love

that system because growing to understand and feel the existential connection that we have

with the larger system, the eternity and infinity of the life force that moves through us,

our own unique soul directives in this incarnation, in the impermanence of this personality body

mind, spirit, self that we get. It's very confusing. Gotta go to therapy.

I'm still trying to make sense of it. I still go to therapy. I go a lot to places actually,

but I still need a lot of help and thank goodness it's available. So many brilliant wise and

wonderful teachers and people in the world. So I hope you won't try to figure this thing out

all by yourself, but the soul doesn't give a shit about the personality. Its role is to serve

spirit. And the more we can align our ego of personality self with the soul and with source,

the more and the flow of the life force we are. And when we resist our authentic self or a soul,

or the connection with spirit, we generally get dysfunction and suffering. And that is one

perspective on personal evolution we can go backwards through that system and look at where we're

afraid or suffering. And we can trace that back to where we need to grow in alignment,

either with our own deeper truth or with the larger system. And when I say the larger system,

I'm actually not talking about the culture or community or even family that we live in,

aligning with the larger system from my perspective is about surrendering to divine will,

which always has the highest good development and evolution of everyone involved as its purpose.

Because on the deepest levels, we are all connected. And so my early client with the panic attacks

is being called out of his personality, limited to ego idea of who he is into a larger version of his

more authentic self. And I see the panic attacks as that part of himself trying to get back in and

he won't make room for it. It's like a wild animal locked in a cage, or a human child locked outside

in the cold, starving, and alone. And so our work is to open the door, let them out, let them in.

But the inner judge will say, oh, you can't do that. Terrible things will happen.

Because the judge always projects from fear rather than courage, hope, creativity,

the excitement that we get to have a life. And the inner judge projects itself on to other people,

look at her, look at him, stupid, disgusting, terrible, generally designed to inflate our own ego

by deflating others. It's actually power stealing when we elevate our self by devaluing others.

And we can do it internally in our own secret little judge, thinks it's better than everybody else,

justifies keeping anything at Dean's as unacceptable locked. Very tightly inside,

and projects it onto other people. Ooh, usually the things we judge and others are those things

that are locked away within our self. My father was a complete homophob. He thought gay men were

perverts, and after my parents divorced, I had kind of known this, but my mother revealed to me

that they had no sex life at all, and I actually believed that my father was a closeted gay man.

And his hatred of anything queer was a deep rejection of his own authentic sexuality that never

cut to express its off, tragic. So looking at where we judge others is really interesting

information about ourselves. There's a little saying that when my index finger is pointing at

someone else, I have three fingers pointing back at me. It's very powerful inrode to look at

our own judgments of others, and where they may point to our own shadow self, our inner repunzel

locked in a tower somewhere. And it can take tremendous courage to let them out, but they will be

no peace on a soul level until we do. And it's my experience that we may even repeat the dynamic

over and over again across lifetimes until we grow in the courage and hope to be able to live

in deeper truth. And many, many people are completely oppressed by the judgments of others,

or the perceived judgments of others, the way that they dress, the way that they act, maybe even

the job or lifestyle that they have is based on trying to meet external expectations of family

of friends, of some cultural personality idea of who they think they should be, rather than who they

really are. And when we're run by or make our decisions based on the perceived judgments of others,

then we're two layers separated from who we really are. I know, in my life, I have been overrun by

shoulds. Should is almost always an externalized expectation. It's a good flag to pay attention.

Do you think you should do or be a certain way? And it can take a lot of time, effort, energy,

and help to actually get in touch with what's authentically true for us. And I do believe that that

is a soul purpose here, is to be a self here. And the separation from our soul self is a gap of

suffering. It was for me. It's actually almost comical. My birth circumstances and my personality

self early in my life growing up with what I like to call guntoting Tea Party Republicans. I had so

much judgment about spirituality, about what I have had to grow to actually become. Feelings

were called emotionalism in my house like they were a disease. When my first move to California and

learned about shamanism, I couldn't do in the journeys with the drum. It was just to weird,

beating a drum. What's wrong with you people? Neddy, crunchy California, weirdos.

And now I lead drum circles. And here we are, to a long time, to get my authentic self out of

the tower, and get her healthy and strong enough to actually function in the world. And now she

is my leading edge. And that in her judgment has turned into discernment. And I care less and less

and less would other people think. And more and more, I care about aligning with my soul and the

source from which it comes. And my greatest hope is to lead you to do the same. So pay attention to your

judgment, follow it to its source. What is it afraid of? And what is the part of your own authentic

self that it is holding under lock and key? Thank you so much for listening. If you like this podcast,

consider giving five stars on Spotify or a good review on iTunes. If you want to free download

of my book, allies and demons working with spirit for power and healing is a link in the show notes

and I'm doing live events every week on insight timer, offering the deep and transformative work

from that book, doing events on healing trauma most Wednesdays at 1230 Pacific, 330 Eastern,

and other offerings of powerful inner growth work other days of the week. So check me out on

insight timer. If you have any topics you'd like to hear about, I'd love feedback.

Can DM me on Instagram at Renee Lavale McKenna. And if you want to find out how spiritual psychology

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Renee McKenna.com. Deeply grateful to my supporters on Patreon and through PayPal,

blessings on your path until we meet again. This is Renee Lavale McKenna, the spiritual psychology.

And the story of her puzzle in case you want familiar is that an evil witch steals the princess

as an infant from the king in queen and locks her away in a tower. And the girl's hair grows

and grows and has magic rejuvenating powers to keep the old, crone alive, like a fountain of

youth. The old woman visits the child by climbing the girl's hair that she lets down out of the

tower window. Ultimately, a handsome prince returns her puzzle to her rightful home with the king in

queen and the old woman is destroyed.