Chapter 8: Here Comes the Judge

There are times when you want to reduce the frequency or intensity of certain experiences. You may want release from the nuisance of certain obsessive thoughts or compulsive behaviors, whether you are a worrier, fake, victim, or any of the other types we have discussed. To make these moves, you will need to rise above ”to transcend ”the paradigm of security and insecurity. For example, instead of running with the victim s temptation to hold onto external blame, you can realize that blaming is a manifestation of your own insecurity. Or instead of trying so hard to draw attention to yourself, you can know that you are okay as you are.

To clarify how this could work for you, we have differentiated your understanding of the facts from your opinions of those facts. We labeled those two things ˜ ˜object-level thoughts and ˜ ˜meta-level thoughts, respectively. The behaviors that define the types explored in this book come from meta-level thinking. They are meta-level responses to object-level thoughts. In one way or another, the responses are the result of people s aversion to insecurity. Presumably they are intended to move us toward security, though perversely they usually have the opposite effect.

Do We Need the Meta-Level?

So why not just turn off meta-level thoughts altogether? Surely that would stop the undesirable elements, wouldn t it?

Unfortunately, it wouldn t be sensible to somehow disable the meta-level aspect of our consciousness. The meta-level activities bring us great benefit: meaning, purpose, beauty, goodness, value. No, even if we could do so, turning off meta-level thinking would be undesirable.

Turning off meta-level activity would also deny us our emotions. Even though there are plenty of people ”we call them ˜ ˜cold or ˜ ˜insensitive ”who think emotions serve little purpose, there is ample reason to dispense with that line of thinking. Aside from passion and intensity ” things that in themselves are critical aspects of our humanity ”emotions play a necessary role in our thinking and living. They help us to set goals, establish our values, and intuit what we think is right for us. They inform us about nurturing our young. Rather than dispense with emotionality, the challenge is to manage certain emotional responses so that we are able to use our emotions rather than simply becoming them. Meta-level thinking can be a key rather than a jail. But the key can only be used by each of us, individually.

In this chapter we re going to look at the self and its judging activities: judgments that keep you bound to old habits and behavior and judgments that free you from these habits and behavior. By the end of the chapter, you will begin to see a clear distinction between having a sense of self that is trapped in the meta-world and an experience of self that is grounded in the object-level world.