| 22 January 2010
Thud…Thud… Thud…on go those incessant rumblings.
Like the pounding of fists into soft dough. Like the grinding of grain in some giant mortar. Yet, they do not come from some unknown dungeon or from some pitch dark cellar. These are the very sounds issuing out of the confines of a little chamber stacked up with stacks on stacks of bundles of wires hurdled together. The home of billion odd neurons, coming together, holding hands, dancing and jumping merrily, giving expression to human thought just as I write this. And that little chamber we call the human mind.
Each morning we wake up and stand before the mirror, talking to our selves, making funny faces presuming we are alone. Are we? Actually we fail to notice our two selves. One looking into the mirror and the looking through the mirror at us- the lather on the soap, the paste on the brush- is it too much? Is it too less? Thinking. Deducing. Judging. Mocking. Thud. Thud. Thud.
It is this second self that stays with us the whole day- thinking, deducing, judging and mocking; locked up in the cellar chamber remaining anything but quiet.
Each thing we see, each thing we do necessitates a comment from this being the dark cellar.
And the judgments sure hurt. Thud! Pounds down a mahogany red hammer onto the floor of the little chamber like a free-falling one ton weigh each time this being makes a judgment. Nothing to get paranoid about, though we maybe unaware, this being is just our other self- The Little Judge with the hammer.
Each night we go to bed, we aren’t alone. We take with us into bed this little judge and it in turn brings along its mahogany red hammer like a bed time teddy, only that this one haunts instead of lulling one to sleep. As we close our eyes the day flashes back to haunt us. Maybe I should have reached my office on time. Thud! my secretary is the whole problem Thud! My parents are so mean, they screwed up my whole life Thud!
Thud. Thud. Thud. With incessant Thuds the hammer mercilessly strikes and we are left with a palpitating head, swollen and ready to burst. Thus sweet bedtime is turned into torment of the grave. If you finally do manage to sleep, the hammer shall return to haunt you in dreamland.
In the morning we wake up not to the ringing of our alarm bell but to the same old Thud! Good Morning! the lil judge is back to greet us.
Thud. Thud. Thud. goes the day and the hours fly bye and we are back with our two selves. And interrogation starts. Why didn’t I do that? Thud! Why did I do this? Thud!
What did boss mean he was reconsidering me? Thud! Mum and dad are getting too close to me, are they after my money? Thud!
Merciless thuds pound and deshape our brain matter concocting up shapes of evil thoughts- deceit, fraud, failure, distrust; brewing up our insecurities, our negativities, demoralizing us and dehumanizing us untill we are no longer human, just some new mutated beings- Judgement-o-maniacs.
The world seems to be filled with them. Every person pacing down the road is judging every other person. We are all aliens on our own planet. The hours of our life are ticking away, Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. but we are not living them, just simply existing only to waste away one day taking with us to the grave a heap of judgments and a dead judge with his mahogany red hammer. What good is it?
But we are addicted to the hammer. No sooner have our eyes seen something, no sooner have the receptors in our skin felt a sensation, no sooner have molecules of air struck against our ear drum, Thud! comes down the hammer on our grey matter while another milestone judgment is passed.
How many people have wasted away the years of their life subjecting themselves to harsh judgments and how many more have vilified the best people in their lives by judging their actions inhumanely and cynically.
A plumber who once worked for a contractor decided to retire himself from work as he was getting old. The contractor was attached to him because of the high quality of his work and his honesty. He wanted to repay him in some way. He asked him if he would do one last favour. He requested him to work on one last house before he left.
The plumber agreed but deep within he was anguished. He thought how selfish this man was. How insensitive he was! And he decided to teach the contractor a lesson. He did the plumbing work very clumsily and purposefully left back leaks.
Finally after a few months the contractor called him and accompanies him to the completed house. As he handed the keys to the plumber he said: Thanks for working for me. I present this house to you as a token of appreciation.
The plumber was taken aback. He wanted to bite off his nails. He had worked laboriously all life building peoples homes but had ruined his own home.
The little judge is ever ready to strike the hammer when we observe the people around us. Mother comes in with two cups of tea, taking the full one to herself she passes on the half filled to you. Thud! How selfish! Almost automatically an impulse is transmitted to the upper chamber and a cupboard is flung open; in it lies a library of pictures. A for Apple, B for Ball and so on including everything you have ever seen or experienced with pictures attached for recognition. The C.P.U. begins the search:
COMMAND SEARCH
COMMAND
COMMAND
From now on
This is how it works with other people as well. So it is, that we go through life complaining how people are cruel and selfish and mean; failing to realize that its that little judge who attached those labels to the photos of our memory. There was a time when mother was your best friend and when your child was your most valuable possession. Who vilified them?
Its an illusion. Its fake.
I was once told a story about a little boy with an ugly one-eyed mother. He went through life feeling ashamed of her. He couldn’t bare her coming to pick him up after school nor would he tell his friends she was his mother. To get away from her humiliating presence for ever he completed studies and went to live in another town. The years passed by and he soon had a family of his own. One day he came home to find his children terrified. A one-eyed ugly old lady seemed to have paid visit to them. He immediately left in a fit of rage to his hometown to teach her a lesson of never scaring the children again. When he reached there, he saw a funeral procession. It was his mother and she was dead. Good riddance! He thought. Soon an old man recognized him and handed him a letter the lady had written before death. It read:
Dear Son,
I know my time has come so I paid a little visit to your home. But you weren’t there and I’m sorry I scared the children, after all I am an ugly old woman. But that wasn’t always so. I used to be beautiful once. You know son, I’ve never loved anything more than you. When you were little you got hurt and injured your eye. The doctors said you would never see again. I couldn’t bare to see my son go through life with one eye so I gave you mine. I love you and I’m sorry for the humiliation you suffered at having an ugly one-eyed mother.
As the young man read it he broke down and tears streamed down his face. He had spend his life hating the person who loved him the most!
We have paranoid ideas of the world around- that man’s running an NGO probably to embezzle a huge sum and run away and who knows, these guys may be running a medical camp to steal people’s kidneys. True, one has to be on his guard in present times but excess of everything is sad and we end up becoming judgment-o-maniacs.
This reminds me of a desperate young man dreaming of having his own Ferrari. His father was very rich and could easily afford it. He told him of his birthday wish to have a brand new Ferrari. On the morning of the birthday he came down into his father’s room asking him for the gift expecting to get the key to the car. His father smiled and handed him a book. It was a Bible.
The boy was shattered and enraged. His father was so rich and he was the only child, then could he not afford a car for him? He thought how selfish his father was and what a miser he was. He decided to leave home for ever and never to live with someone who didn’t love him. He left… ignoring the repeated pleas of his father to stop and listen.
Years later when he was an old man news of his fathers death reached him. He went back to his home and in his father’s study found the very Bible. He opened it and this time he turned to the back and the bookmark in it opened a page on which some words were highlighted. They said that if you provide your children with all the gifts they ask for they might never learn the value of true hard work.
Within the back cover was embedded a Key and a note which read WITH LOVE, DAD.
His fingers began to fumble but he managed to reach the garage. As he opened the gate and switched on the lights he found before him a Ferrari, still brand new.
How he had lost the best years of his life to a few seconds of rage and hatred. And though he was now ready to sell everything he had, there was nothing he could do to get them back.
And in this messy world-view, we try to make fun of people who refer to others as pleasant or lovely. We caution them lest they are robbed or fleeced or worse murdered. We even make fun of them accusing them of living in an illusionary world taking everyone to be as good as themselves; pitying them and trying to show them how friends could as well be wolves in sheep’s clothing and how people could use them. We want to shout out to them that the world’s a very bad place where you have survival of the fittest and stuff, forgetting that a tortoise has a much longer life span than the Lion.
We see such people as victims; like the little hare destined to be snatched away by an eagle or the punching bag in a gym. The truth is that they see the reality while we live in illusion.
Unbelievable but true. We the smart ones ‘always on the guard’ are the real victims. Living lives of fear and mistrust made to act like puppets subjected to the judgments of a little judge with a hammer while our supposed “simpletons” are actually living life to its fullest. Even if they do get deceived a few times they regard those times as exceptions or testing times and they are not slaves to a mahogany hammer.
Is there a way to get rid of this judge?
Fortunately, Yes. You just have to pull out the power cord to shut down the hammer. This little being acts like a virus. It had nothing of its own and cleverly uses the host’s machinery. The little judge uses our own mind to play tricks on us. It’s mahogany hammer is powered by our thoughts. Once it runs out of this fuel the Thuds stop for ever.
We can defeat it only by controlling our thoughts and channelizing our energy productively. Once we stop giving ear to this reptile brain or monkey brain of ours, we will stop judging ourselves and others and start seeing the world for what it really is.
“ The world is a glorious place for women who can see its glory and men who can act its romance.”
When we really do that, the people around us will seize to be bad and will appear more humane and the world would seize to be our prison. Thus we will have defeated the enemy within and silenced for ever that mocking mahogany hammer Thud!