Perfection and Judgment

A passage in an article I was reading this morning caught my attention:

"I was to learn how to see the world as perfect and lacking for nothing, even for all that it might not seem to be so.  In order to do this, I needed to apply the Brillo pad of nonjudgment to all my accustomed habits and perceptions.  I needed to act, to work, to think, and to observe, and I needed to do so without ever asking things to be other than just as they were.  If I did this long enough -- and perhaps even if I did it for just a short while -- the world, or my perception of it, would eventually change." 1

 Hmm.  I believe this is a version of "fake it till you make it."  And I wonder how many people have found this actually works.  The fact is, I don't see how it can work because there's an inherent contradiction here.  After all, it is the self who is making all of this effort, is it not?  And it is also the self that does all the judging.  It is only when we fall out of the self and into the larger reality that we discover perfection and non-judgment.  And the poor "I" who tries so hard just can't get there through effort.  But something in us wants this so badly.  Maybe that is where the attention should go:  what is it that desires this perfection? 


1 Ptolemy Tompkins, "What Kind of Errand?" reprinted in Best Spiritual Writing 2002, originally published in  Parabola.