Inner Judge Attack! (and what to do about it)
The scary fellow in the image above is one of the guardian figures at a Shinto shrine in Japan, photographed when I visited the shrine in 2016. Entrances to both Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan are usually flanked with guardian figures - ferocious, stylized lions, dogs, or deities. They are meant to be scary. They are meant to stop you before you cross the threshold, to make you think about your intention and to keep out anyone or anything that would cause harm to the sacred place within.
Human beings have protective figures too, inside, that stand at the threshold of change and transformation. Sometimes they are like the well-intentioned parent that reminded us not to be foolish when we dreamed of being an astronaut, or the kindly guidance counselor who told us that we shouldn’t aim too high in doing what we loved, that we might be disappointed if we did, because perhaps (said gently) we didn’t have the talent or the capacity to do what we most loved. Even in kindness, this protectiveness can stunt a human spirit, and stop the flowering of a human life.
Inside some of us (perhaps many of us) this guardian energy has become over-zealous and maybe just plain mean, like a security guard who takes their power too seriously, or a dog that was bred to be protective but was cruelly trained to maim and kill, and these guardians whisper things, in our mind, like, “you can’t do that, you’re not good enough” or sometimes even more ferociously, “you are a failure, you are an idiot, you do nothing right, you will never succeed.”
Here is some of my own writing about the power of the inner judge, and what it did to something precious within me:
When I was a child, all the way into my teen years, the only kind of adult I could imagine becoming – when I could bear the thought of become an adult in this crazy world at all - was a poet or a philosopher. I didn’t know that “spiritual seeker” was an option, or I might have been able to imagine that too, but I knew from my books that poets and philosophers thought and wrote about life’s big questions, and that’s all I wanted to do.
There was only one problem, one that grew more daunting as I grew older, like a great wall of rock in front of me. Whenever I sat down to write, I heard an invidious whisper, and it told me that I had nothing to say, and that even if I did, I couldn’t say it in a way that would matter or be worth reading to anyone else. There was some truth to this - after all, how much does an eighteen-year-old actually have to say? – but there was a dark, mean edge to the whisper that I could feel even at the time. So I didn’t become a poet or a philosopher; I became a scientist, which seemed much safer, and which didn’t seem to involve any encounters with that big gray wall or that evil little whisper.
I now have a name for the whisperer: the inner judge. I spent a few years studying this tricky internal entity, and although it lost its hold on many areas of my life, it retained a strangling power over any kind of genuine expression. It suggested, with twisted logic, that I might die if I wrote in my own voice.
I did find freedom from that “tricky internal entity” eventually. And I found that I was able to write, and not feel shame about my writing, though it took years to reach that freedom. Since my mid-30’s I have written many essays, including the one excerpted above, and they have been published in journals and magazines and anthologies, I have edited two books, I have written innumerable sermons and dharma talks (which my inner philosopher loves doing), and I had an active essay blog for a number of years. Writing flows easily now, most of the time, like milk from a pitcher. Life giving milk. Click here for links to some of my writings.
What changed? Many things, of course, including growing up and growing older, but when I think back, I think perhaps the most significant change was that I found resources to engage with the Inner Judge, and through that intentional engagement, the Judge lost some of its vicious power over me. When I was about 35, I found the work of Byron Brown, and his book Soul Without Shame. Although I had few financial resources at the time, it felt so important to work with Byron Brown that I spent five days at Esalen attending a workshop on the Inner Judge that he led. It was Byron who taught me that as suffocating as the Inner Judge can be, it is a sort of twisted protector, and that all of us who want to grow and change must engage with that protective energy that stands at the threshold. He also gave me clear ways to “meet” the Inner Judge, and not be stopped by it.
Since then, there have been a number of books on this subject. The Zen teacher Cheri Huber has written and taught extensively on how to meet the energy of the Inner Judge with mindfulness, compassion, and self-acceptance, particularly in her book There Is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self Hate. But what I learned from Byron has stayed with me all these years.
If I were to offer just one of the many ways of working with the Inner Judge, I would offer this to you: learn to recognize an Inner Judge attack. It sounds rather ridiculously simple, but as I have often said, it’s 80% of the battle. Often the Inner Judge is speaking so quietly and persuasively in the mind that it flies entirely under your radar. You only know something is wrong when you feel defeated, discouraged, and ready to throw in the towel, without even knowing why.
Signs of an Inner Judge attack:
Sudden loss of energy - you just want to pull the covers over your head
Catching inner sentences like “I can’t do this, I’m not good enough”
Feeling defeated or discouraged
Feeling a heaviness in the heart or belly
If any of these signs appear, check back to what was happening just before. Did someone else say something that triggered you? Were you thinking about doing something that would be challenging or new for you? See if you can recognize the voice - is it the voice of a parent, a teacher, an older sibling, a friend? Then just quietly label it in your own mind: “inner judge” or “inner critic” or you can even make a name for it, like “Alfred”. The Inner Judge hates to be recognized, and just that labelling alone will often send it slinking away.
There is an ancient story about this that shows how long the Inner Judge has been hanging around. This story is 2,500 years old, from the time of the Buddha, collected in my book The Hidden Lamp.
Soma Rebukes Mara
The nun Soma was a disciple of the Buddha. One day she was deep in meditation beneath a tree in a forest grove. Mara, the Lord of Delusion, approached her, cloaked in invisibility. He whispered in her ear, “Because a woman has a naturally limited consciousness, and the realm of wisdom is hard to reach, no woman has the ability to attain it.”
Soma recognized Mara and rebuked him, saying, “How could a woman’s consciousness be a hindrance when her heart is set on liberation? Am I a woman in these matters, or a man? This question has no power over me. Mara, begone!”
And he was gone.
Mara, of course, is another way of thinking about the Inner Judge - that part of us, cloaked in invisibility, who whispers in our ear and tells us, oh so persuasively, that we are not good enough. The nun Soma recognized him. And although she also rebuked him, still, I think the story turns on that recognition. So, like Soma, we can recognize that voice in ourselves as the voice of delusion, trying to keep us smaller and less whole. And like the story, once that power is taken from the Inner Judge, we win our freedom.
On Sunday, June 23rd I will be doing a free webinar on this and other ways of dealing with the Inner Judge. Come join us!
