In this year of the Horse we may feel encouraged or challenged to experience the difference between meaning and judgement. This magnificent brain of ours is constantly sifting and sorting through all the information our senses bring to us and making meaning out of them. Plus there are all the emotions as well as all the pure thought forms and concepts we have created such as morality and political correctness and LLAP. We have a lot going on in there and with all of that computing power, we sometimes get sucked into making judgements on things based on our thoughts and emotions, personal history and opinions rather than on the facts of the situation.
This isn’t to say that we should ignore reason or learning or common sense about things, but judgement is the negative side of these things. Having a judgement about something layers your input on top of what’s going on and then causes you to act as if that layer actually belongs to the event or the person or the object. So the actions don’t necessarily have anything to do with the situation and in many cases have negative ramifications. They separate us from others and from the situation. In many cases they remove us from or dissolve community and attachment rather than fostering it.
Horse can help us avoid judgement while still participating in the world around us. Because we don’t need judgement to navigate in this life. Learning and growing and becoming don’t require judgements on others. We can still make meaning out of what we experience and that’s what Horse does. Horse is completely present in the moment, is able to discern friend from foe, harm from help, and yet doesn’t hold grudges, doesn’t worry about tomorrow, and is ever ready to be a support and advocate for the members of its herd which easily expands to include non-horse members. In fact, letting go of judgement helps us to see things more clearly, experience them more directly, and therefore get a better sense of the actual meaning in the moment.
What would it feel like if you released at least one judgement today?
