This is how we live -- trying to manipulate the outer world so that our inner world can be at peace. But this struggle is a hopeless task; it is not what will bring us to a state of contentment… We don't know how to leave ourselves alone. Every internal action involves some kind of rejection of our present state, our actual reality. And there is a deeper consequence to this attitude of rejection: By rejecting what is so for us in the present moment, we are rejecting ourselves. We are out of touch with our Being. Aiming toward the future, we sacrifice the present. By looking outside ourselves for what is missing, we subject ourselves, our souls, to the pain of abandonment.

The deadly thing about comparative moral judgment is that it leads to the rejection of our experience. What’s even more significant is that the rejection of experience is inherently a self-rejection—because our experience is part of us. Remember, all of our experiences are nothing but forms within our own consciousness. They’re all arising out of the same awareness—the same beingness manifesting itself in various forms. Here it appears as a little bubbling; there it could seem like a volcanic eruption. But whether it’s a volcanic eruption, a little bubbling, or a raging sun, it is just our soul manifesting in that possibility. When we say no to it, when we want to throw it away, we are actually saying no to ourselves. We’re saying no to our consciousness, to our awareness. We’re saying, “This consciousness is not doing its thing correctly. Let’s get rid of it.” So, the rejection of anything that is arising in our consciousness automatically becomes a self-rejection. How are we going to be ourselves if we’re rejecting ourselves?

When we reject something in our experience, that’s what we’re doing—we’re trying to throw out part of ourselves. We’re not just getting rid of it by taking it out and throwing it away; we are trying to throw it away with an emotionally violent action similar to vomiting it out. You want to vomit up yourself, or part of yourself. It’s that devastating. So, that’s really what’s deadly about comparative moral judgment. It becomes the ground upon which we want to divest ourselves of something, and the way we do that damages our soul. Rejection, or disapproval, or looking down on something that we think doesn’t measure up are not just detached positions we take about our experience; they are violent, destructive behaviors we use to harm ourselves.