Reward and punishment
13 October 2004

Why would you ever want to punish anyone? What is the motivation behind wanting to punish someone? Why would we ever want to punish anyone if we are aware that everyone and everything is perfect, as it should be, where it needs to be? What would you expect to gain from, be a consequence of, punishment?

If we don't live up to our own expectations of ourselves, based on our own personal value judgement system, it may be more comfortable to see someone else falling down on one of our values, so that we can then either feel that it's not so bad that we don't quite meet up to our expectations as we are doing better than someone else, or so that we can 'pass the buck'. We can criticise them for falling down on this value, punish them for it, and thus feel that we have not done so bad. We may feel we have absolved ourselves, even though whilst we still believe in a solid, separate world, we may not recognise this. We may feel pious. What we need to remember is that if we are seeing bad behaviour, this is a direct consequence of our beliefs. If we pass the buck, all we are doing is delaying our understanding of ourselves.

Your reality is a direct consequence of your beliefs. Full stop. If someone 'wrongs' you, it is a pure consequence of your own personal beliefs. You could not be 'wronged' if it weren't for the unique set of beliefs that have got you into such a situation. You have to take personal responsibility for whatever situation you find yourself in. This does not make it ok for other people to 'wrong' you. They must also take responsibility for their actions, which they will do once your beliefs allow you to see them doing so.

Any 'wrong' action comes about because of misunderstanding. If people totally understood who they are, there would never be any 'wrong' action.

Of course, there is no 'wrong' action. There are just situations, experiences that we experience and learn from. It is only value judgement that tells us whether we think it is 'right' or 'wrong'. However, if our own personal value judgement system tells us that something is 'wrong', then it would serve us well to listen, and work out why we are placing such a value on ourselves. Value judgements are there to help us.

In punishing someone, you will only be punishing yourself.

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Value Judgement

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