Today is an awesome mental challenge but also a very very practical one. What would be the meaning of the statement: Whatever we judge we breed, attract, or become? Why would this be a universal law?

I read a great book once with the title sources of the self. It was written by Charles Taylor and considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the last quarter of a century. The topic was the making of a modern identity. In this very very lengthy book of over 600 pages the author attempts to describe the inheritance of an ego. In that inheritance he comes to a conclusion that children emulate their grandparents. Egos skip a generation. In other words children try to be different than their parents and in doing so become the same as their grandparents.

If you think this through it’s rather ironic that parents try very hard to capture the ego of their children and reshape it into a form that they like. In other words, parents pass on their own judgements to the children and their children reject those judgements.

In rejecting the judgements of the parent the children align with the grandparent whose judgements were rejected by their own children, the parents.

It almost feels farcical.

But it works more like a universal principle then we, or the author of sources of the self, Charles Taylor, comprehend. It comes down to why do people have egos.

The psychologist will say because this protects and Projects and identity of the individual onto the world to make it safe. The philosopher will say that it is an innate part of the human condition. However, if we are looking at universal law, rising way above the viewpoint of a philosopher or a psychologist, we will have a very different view.

To take a small side track here might be beneficial for the story. For about 15 years I ran retreats at the Ritz Carlton in Bali. These 10 day events were spectacular and I would hiring staff such as: yoga teachers, mindbody specialists and all sorts of guests to create as broad spectrum of learning as possible. One day in these events was dedicated to understanding why judgement exists in the universe. What students were asked to do was to design a world. In this world people were unaware of something and the structure of the world was designed, was to be designed, so that they eventually became aware of something unknown. 100% of the time people were frustrated in their groups because they could not come up with a full proof process.

At this point I would describe the universal principle of judgement. We, human beings begin our life on this planet in the form of a single cell. Some religious fanatics might suggest that Adam and Eve were the first humans on the planet but this is been proven to be rather a mythological ideal not a real one. Somehow through a process called evolution that single cell has arrived as us. We have bio science, we have space exploration, we have medical breakthroughs where we are growing human organs through pigs. We have come a very long way through the process of evolution. So one might begin to think that the process of judgement might just be strongly connected to the process of evolution.

There are many ways to describe what evolution is. Some might say it is the creation of scientific knowledge. Some others might say it is the ability to run 100 m in five seconds. There are many forms in which evolution might express itself, but none of these explain what evolution really means.

Normally at this point I would dance around the topic in giving the answer so that all people could consume the answer at their level of language but that is going to take too long in this blog. So I’m going to get to the point. Evolution is to love. When you love something you become detached from it. For example if you love anger then anger no longer disturbs you when you see it, have it, feel it witness it or experience it. Anger becomes neutral. That’s the definition of love we use when we talk about evolution. As you evolve we are meant to be less and less disturbed by what goes on around us and therefore leadership can be described as a highly evolved science. I know this is taking you off to a place you probably don’t feel like you need to go but please stick with me.

What is evidence of unevolved? Well the answer leads right back to where we started. Every judgement we have is evidence of something we are not evolved about. So maybe it can be said that our children are born to teach us love because whatever we judge we breed and our children, attracting a partner or become. Why? Because in one of those three aspects of life we are going to learn to love something with judge, and therefore evolve.

Let’s just say my grandparents were aggressive. My parents grow up being anti-aggressive, they judge aggression and try to be peaceful open-minded kindhearted people. When I’m born I get parents who qualify me as, in some form or another, lovable when I am like their ego suggests, peaceful, open-minded, kindhearted. And maybe I do my best to be compliant and behave as they demand, or would prefer. But the other part of me, the one that is aggressive, assertive, fights back is therefore going to stand in their face as a challenge to love. They will probably do everything in their power to eliminate that. They will get schools that are peaceful, they will build music in the house that is peaceful, they will do everything in their power to cause me, their child, to be as their ego would prefer.

If my parents are dominant enough to restrict me in the home to conform with their behaviour demands, then it could be that I play out what I repress at home, because it feels unlovable at home, express it at school or elsewhere. In one way or another the parent will be staring at what they judge in someone they love. Now if the parents are clever enough to put me into boarding school so they don’t have to experience the thing they judge, the next step in the evolution hierarchy kicks in.

Remembering, what we judge we breed, attract or become. So if my parents are clever enough to avoid having to love me in spite of the fact that I am in contradiction to the ego values, and they are able to put me at arm’s-length through either boarding school or alcohol or whatever, then the second phase becomes attract. Now this is really serious step. Now my parents attract either each other, or a boss at work, or a neighbour, or some random individual to display the quality that they judge in their ego and consider it to be an unlovable human tra

If the purpose of existence is evolution, not going to the pub or earning $50 from the next days work, then this resistance to love what is considered unlovable just raises the bar on the level of intervention nature will have, read here the universe, to the next step which is to become. Whether we judge we breed, or attract, or become.

Over and over again we see people who are obsessed with peacefulness in their expressed personalities in the outside world, being absolutely violent and nasty and mean and cruel inside the secrecy of the four walls of the home. But those four walls are not so secret. Firstly they are observed by the family and so there is a sense of shame experienced by the individual, secondly they observe themselves. This self observation breeds and obsessive compulsive appetite to escape their own identity and build a mask through success and facade to cover up their own self loathing for expressing the qualities that they obsess with repressing.

The law gets involved, psychologists get involved, children leave home early, medications and addictions get involved, coaching gets involved until such time as the individual has been hammered and punched from all different directions except the one that aligns with the universe. A fight with nature cannot be won. When an individual refuses to change their ego or their identity, and hold onto their judgements they attract the full wrath of the universe and it ends up being a life-threatening illness. I’m not making this stuff up, it is really really well known to those of us who have studied and explored the arts of healing and human development. However, few people have the courage to put it out there in a blog of this nature because it is so controversial especially to those who are holding onto their judgements and don’t want to change them.

A collective of people called a community or a tribe is actually a group of people who have exactly the same judgements and therefore the same values who gather together to reinforce each other’s lack of evolution. In such a tribe there is the demand for collaboration and collusion. Institutions such as organised religions, and charities are often built out of this very structure. If you worked for Greenpeace and suddenly said I see the benefit of chopping down the Amazon rainforest you would not be employed for very long. Tribes collaborate on an resolved judgements and therefore sustain blocked evolution. They begin a fight with nature that cannot be one and it’s very very expensive.

To close with a story. Take a person who wants to make the world a safer place. They judge, for some reason or another, bullying and brutality against human rights. This individual marries someone who presents themselves as a socially conscious individual and they breed a family. While the sex is hot and fun is easy, the relationship thrives as they both spend significant time outside of the relationship experiencing the challenges of human rights and fighting against it. Both socially conscious experiencing the challenges to their beliefs in their work. But as the children grow up the children start to kick back on the parents as it’s meant to happen and to challenge what the parents think and judge. Remember children are born to teach the parents love. Suddenly each parent realises that the other is not so peaceful. Suddenly they realise, each of them that the other person is not completely innocent and they start to see both in themselves, and each other the very thing that opposes the very reason they were attracted to each other in the first place. They see the shadow.

Now what is the remedy? Do we bully each other until there is compliance in the household to one or the other’s belief system? And if so how do we deal with the challenges that will come outside the marriage through the kids that will confront the belief that brutality against human rights has its place in the world? Yes this confronts Memes in society and makes an individual break out of the tribe of convention and we worry about tha

We worry that if an individual suddenly sees the balance and the benefit of the meme in society that human rights is essential and recognises the benefit of the opposite we worry that we have just validated a criminal to go out and hurt, steal or even violate people. But actually it’s the opposite because somebody who represses a quality expresses it when nobody is watching or in the dark or with passion without control. But if we love a quality we control that quality it doesn’t control us.

So many addictions are the result of repressed feelings of shame and guilt about qualities that people have that are counter the tribe. Those qualities become obvious to the person who has them and conspicuous to someone else that they love. The solution of course is not alcohol or drugs but to learn to love the quality that they judge. Once this is achieved they get a control over that quality without becoming self critical and self judgemental.

In closing, you may remember me talking about viewpoint in earlier blogs and podcasts. Judgement, viewed from many different angles has such a different role to play in the world that it’s almost impossible to create an overview effect without making people feel bad about how they treat judgements. The Bible, the Buddhist Dharma, and many other great texts are full of judgements that are validated to cause a tribe. The mission of those books is not specifically evolutionary, the mission of those books is to solve human problems, and resolve fear. And they do that very well. That is not natures intent in introducing judgement as a human quality. Nature, the universe intent, is to evolve you.

With Spirit

Chris