Judgment

The broader idea of Judgment can remain in place here, particularly if it simply means making better choices, based on better information, especially if these are hard choices that alter our direction in life. The fundamental idea of apocalypse, ἀποκάλυψις can also stay in place: this simply means the dis-closure or dis-covery of something hidden. Associations between these and the end times, or eschatology, are separate, and much of this can be dismissed here, unless specifically speaking of a discontinuous transformation in our development or evolution, the ending of a way of life, the replacement of a central paradigm, starting a new chapter, a major plot twist, or a rebirth that abandons old ways. Here we might find Nietzsche’s idea the ‘man is something to be surpassed.’ Resurrection simply means to rise again, and so also applies to the phoenix image. Even the symbolism of a wake-up call being sounded still fits, although it need not be a clarion call, fanfare, or reveille. And the calling can be our own inner voice, conscience, or higher purpose, the drumming that we hear, which can be a heartbeat. If we want to be real about salvation, however, we can abandon the whole Western idea of this as a quick and easy fix, already purchased by a human sacrifice and drinking magic blood. It makes a lot more sense to shift towards Buddha’s opinion that salvation means a lifetime, or more, of heedfulness and diligence. The old question remains about what ends in death and what might go on. Here we are probably safest, if not most comforted, by reexamining what we are in terms of processes and the propagation of the consequences that arise from our judgments and decisions, the real meaning of karma. Not all of our crossroads or choice points will lead to large-scale transformations, but the whole of our pasts converge in every moment, and the big ones, in hindsight, didn’t always look like much. The best we can do is live and learn, and play the probabilities we’ve learned, being heedful, paying attention, and using our best judgment. We can also aprender en cabeza ajena, or learn in another’s head, or pick some wisdom up from third parties and cultures. This may require ignoring some vapid platitudes about not being judgmental or how we are already perfect. We have to make decisions and choices, weigh things and discern, discriminate and evaluate, or else live among the sleepwalkers and simply move with an indeterminate crowd. Judgment is assertiveness, which can also work against us when asserting inferior judgment. If the way our lives are going suggests a new direction, a radical change or departure, or moving on from past behavior, we might seek out paths that go in different directions. Sometimes the path we ought to be on crosses ours at right angles, in which case we are often knocked sideways by life and kept off our balance. This might be the case for most of us. We move at cross-purposes to the paths of our real power. We live our lives out of balance. The association made here between this card and astrology’s Uranus, with its surprising and radical transformations, discontinuities and broken causal chains, refers to this common need to get back on track, and then to our common failure to do so. Sometimes, too, we are better attuned to the powers at play in our lives, and we get to see a shining path that shows us which way to turn to live to our best advantage. This is the best of blessings when it shows us the best and the worst at once. Such a moment is called samvega in Pali. It makes choices easier. Just desserts, the consequences of good and bad judgment, reaping the sown, or coming into one’s due, don’t need to be the judgment of another, or of society as a whole. We can hold ourselves accountable, pay our own debts, make reparations and amends, forgive, redeem, and even save ourselves, with some difficulty, of course. We need not be ethical cowards in this, whether passing this off to some savior or waiting for the next lifetime. These failures, too, go onto our permanent records, even though few ever look into these. To repent is to really change, after truly sensing what harm we have done, what pain we may have caused, and atonement is repairing the world, tikkun, and paying our rent for the privilege of living here in this world. Forgiveness is what we must do for ourselves, since we can’t turn ourselves around with the whole past as baggage. In the end we come down to two decent choices. We have a chance to emerge into a better life for ourselves, to blow ballast and surface into the light and fresh air, to be twice born, having passed through our fires and trials, to shed our cocoons, trans- formed, and ready for some of those higher dimensions, to create and fulfill our personal purposes in life, to actualize ourselves. Or we can take a still higher and sometimes more dangerous path and serve a higher purpose, something beyond our own selves, lives, and lifetimes, sometimes so transpersonal, so far beyond ourselves, that we cease to matter at all. This of course requires better judgment than most folks can manage, as many will mistake this for following flags into war, and other senseless acts. Good judgment here is more akin to satyagraha, holding true to some higher order of being, obedient first to higher laws and our own conscience. Our highest and best higher purpose is still the Great Work, the transformation of mankind, because, once again, man is something to be surpassed. For all that we owe the world, we still have a valid potential above and beyond earth and nature, and possibly even in space. This assumes, of course, that the consequences of our various judgments will ever allow us to transition into such states before we destroy ourselves with bad judgment.