Tennis is played on a tennis court. Basketball is played on a basketball court. Each court lends itself to a specific game, and each game belongs to its own playground.

This is true for many things. Scuba diving belongs to the ocean. Hang gliding belongs to the air. Mango trees grow in tropical climates, and saguaro cacti grow in the Sonoran Desert. Each activity belongs to the terrain that allows it to thrive.

Judgment, if you consider it an activity, is no different. It’s played on a specific kind of internal playground. Without that playground, it cannot be played

Like seeds in soil, some things enter us and grow. For some children, music takes—whether it’s piano, violin, drumming, or producing beats on a computer. The music doesn’t just stay external; it moves inward. It becomes a source of joy and expression. It becomes part of who they are.

That is internalization.

Something comes from the outside, finds fertile ground, and begins to grow. Over time, there is no longer a distinction between the Self and the thing that was once external. The line dissolves. The music is no longer something they do—it’s something they are.

Several years ago, a good friend brought up the idea of evil. This idea was foreign to me and counter to my way of thinking at the time, which was more in line with the Buddhist understanding of causes and conditions.

Being part of a healing community, the idea of evil—or of a person being evil—is usually frowned upon. The general tendency is to understand that there is really no good or evil, but rather people mistreating others, usually due to the fact that they themselves were mistreated.

This is, of course, the famous “hurt people hurt people,” which is mostly true. I believe that usually what we call “bad” is the result of being treated badly by others. So instead of labeling someone as “bad,” we say they are confused, traumatized, or hurt. This creates space for compassion, and allows either ourselves or the other person to move toward healing.

In this day and age, it’s hard not to judge. There is so much disagreement in the air, and so many people are doing awful things to others, that escaping the art of pointing fingers and blaming seems almost impossible.

The problem with judgment, however, is that it doesn’t help—not on the street, not in politics, and not in our personal lives. Yes, we can point a finger at something, label it as bad or wrong or inappropriate, and then feel good about ourselves for a bit. But beyond that, nothing else really happens. Nothing truly changes. We like to feel righteous, and we enjoy the justification of our opinions, but the good feeling is short-lived. And then—like any good addiction—that high doesn’t last long, so we have to keep judging to get another hit.

When you look through a telescope, you look through a series of one or more lenses, and these lenses magnify the night sky. Whatever you see in the night sky, the one thing you don’t see is the lens itself—because a good lens is invisible. A good lens allows for an unobstructed pass-through. You see right through it, which means that the lens itself cannot be seen, because it does not reflect back.