What to do When You Find Yourself Judging

"I judge you not.

I extend forgiveness to myself for what I have created.

I embrace you, and I love you.  I free you to be yourself.

I bless you with the blessing of Christ." 

--Way of Mastery p. 34

These are words we can say when we find ourselves judging.  And as we say them we can visualize the image of the event or person we've judged gently dissolving into white light until there is no trace left of it.  

Then we can turn all thoughts and memories of the event or person over to Spirit.  Our work is now done. If, at some point in the future, there is anything more we need to do or say or think about, Spirit will let us know.  Until then, we are free to enjoy the peace that forgiveness brings.

Why is this Bugging Me?

"Therefore, in truth, understand well.  Forgiveness is essential.  What has not been forgiven in others, has not been forgiven in you.  But not by a God who sits outside of you, for He never judges.  What you have not forgiven in another or in the world is but a reflection of what you carry within as a burden that you cannot forgive of yourself."  --The Way of Mastery p.26

The next time you find yourself irritated with someone, ask yourself "Why is this bugging me?"  We are almost always most activated by those aspects we dislike in our own character.   Examining our irritations with others is a great way to learn what we need to forgive about ourselves.

For example, I hate a bossy know-it-all.  This is because these are repressed characteristics of my own personality.  I am always struggling to keep them at bay in my self and when I see someone who has let them loose, it just really irritates me!

Forgiveness is a chance to take a good long look in the mirror.  As Colin Tipping likes to say, "If you spot it, you got it!"

Sometimes it's hard to recognize yourself in another's abhorrent behavior.  Keep looking and you'll find yourself there.  It's not always obvious. You might say, "I am upset at a man who murdered his wife, but I'm not a murderer".  Yes, but do you ever have murderous thoughts?  Do you ever wish that someone who annoys you would just be gone?

I am learning to bring these "unattractive" elements of myself to the light of forgiveness.  I can only love others when I am capable of truly loving myself and loving myself means that I love and accept all parts of me.

In The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, Debbie Ford recommends that we not only forgive our most unattractive characteristics but that we actually learn to accept and even celebrate them.  They can become our strengths.

For example,  my tendency towards bossy know-it-all-ness is the same characteristic which enables me to be a good teacher.  Yes, I have to reign it in and keep it under control, but if I wasn't such a bossy know-it-all, I would never have the courage and confidence to teach.  It's when I enfold my bossy know-it-all-ness in love that I am at my very best.

The universe serves us up the lessons we need the most on a platter.  It seems that everywhere I look there is another bossy know-it-all.  This is because this is a lesson I need to repeat often.  Importantly, as I forgive the bossy know-it-alls in my world, I forgive this same characteristic in myself.  And the more I forgive myself, the more I come to peace.  

How to Reduce The Guilt in Our Lives

"For to forgive means to choose to release another from the perceptions you have been projecting upon them.  It is therefore, an act of forgiving one's self of one's projections".  --The Way of Mastery p. 25

All things are neutral.  All people, all events, all experiences, all words ... all of it is, simply, neutral.

We are the ones that put our own personal spin on everything.  We are the perceivers and we project our own opinions onto all we encounter.

We decide whether what we see in the world around us is "good" or "bad".  We decide whether what we see is "beautiful" or "ugly", "interesting" or "uninteresting", "right" or "wrong".

And yet, everything in our worlds, simply is.

When we see something and decide it is "bad", we are creating a judgment about it.  This judgment will, ultimately, have to be forgiven.  But before we forgive it, it will cause us much pain.  What we give out comes back to us.  When we judge others harshly, we will suffer.  Judging always leads to feelings of guilt.  Sometimes we are acutely aware of the guilt and sometimes we repress it.  But judging always creates guilt, even if it is only in our sub-consciousness.  And guilt, especially sub-conscious guilt, causes us to feel restless, unhappy, empty and deeply dis-satisfied.

"Each time that you judge anything or anyone, you have literally elicited guilt within yourself.  Because there is a place within you, yet still, that knows the perfect purity of your brother and sister, and sees quite clearly that all things within the human realm are either the extension of love or a cry for help and healing."  --Way of Master p. 25

Why not skip all the pain and upset and just learn to accept everything as it is?  If we don't judge it, we won't need to forgive it, and more importantly we won't need to forgive ourselves.  Acceptance of everything in our world is the only way to create inner peace.

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Forgiveness is an Expression of the Soul's Deep Desire to BE Forgiven

"When you judge, you have moved out of alignment with what is true.  You have decreed that the innocent are not innocent.  And if you would judge another as being without innocence, you have already declared that this is true about you!  Therefore, to practice forgiveness actually cultivates the quality of consciousness in which you finally come to forgive yourself.  And it is indeed the forgiven who remember their God."  --Way of Mastery  p. 26

It is only when we come to a point that we are able to understand that everyone is forgivable, and that we are indeed putting this universal forgiveness into practice, that we begin to believe that we ourselves are worthy of forgiveness.

After all, it's only good logic.  If every one of God's Children is innocent, then I myself, being also a Child of God, must be an innocent, too.

The problem is that down deep in our sub-consciousness, we struggle to believe this.  We have mountains of guilt.  We believe we're not worthy.  We believe we're unlovable.  We believe that we are "bad", that we have sinned and that we should be punished.  Removing the guilt from our sub-conscious minds can only be accomplished through our own acts of forgiveness toward others.

This is a process that takes some time.  We can begin by forgiving any trespasses we experience today. Once we create a habit of forgiving all of each day's hurts, we can begin to go into our pasts and release old grievances.  This stage requires much intense soul searching and quietude as we look deep into our minds to discover the wounds that lurk therein. Finally, in the third stage of forgiveness we can begin to forgive the conditions we see in the world around us.  We begin to forgive the war, famine, cruelty and selfishness that plays out on a world-wide scale.

As we move forward in our forgiveness, we will see a pattern emerging.  What we are most offended by in others is actually something that we find reflected in our own consciousness.  We fear the murderer, however, we come to know that there is so much anger deep within our own sub-consciousness that we are actually, ourselves, capable of murder.  We fear the dictator, but ultimately come to see the bossiness that resides within our own personality.  We fear the greedy ones, but we ourselves often take what we want.

"Therefore, in truth, understand well.  Forgiveness is essential.  What has not been forgiven in others, has not been forgiven in you.  But not by a God who sits outside of you, for He never judges.  What you have not forgiven in another or in the world is but a reflection of what you carry within as a burden that you cannot forgive of yourself."  --Way of Master p.26

As we forgive the world around us, our consciousness begins to purify.  Our own thoughts of fear, anger, greed, rejection and envy begin to release.  Our minds are cleansed.

This is where our happiness begins.  As we are freed of the tormenting thoughts and beliefs that our minds contain, we come to experience inner peace.

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Self Forgiveness is a Choice for Happiness

In any moment we are making a choice between one of two things.  We are choosing to be happy or not to be happy.  We are siding with either fear or love.  Every moment in life, every perspective we choose to peer from, every action we take or don't take are all a version of this simple choice.

Guilt is a man-made creation.  God did not create it, nor did he create sin.  In fact God always chooses love and happiness.  He created us in love.  We are designed to be happy.

But, for better or worse, we have been given free-will.  We can use our free will to choose happiness, as God wishes for us.  Or, we can choose fear over love.  When we buy into the concept of fear, we choose to believe that we can be "bad".  And, of course, if we are "bad", then we are sinners.  And if we are sinners, then we need to feel guilt.  This is our system of fear.  It's man-made.  It's not God's.  God is always love.

I say, scrap it.  Let's just toss out this painful, miserable, system of fear from our minds.  It doesn't serve our best interests.  After all, it is in our best interest to be happy.

Release the fear.  Release the belief that you are bad. Release the feelings of guilt.  In the short term this is always a very simple thing to do.  Just think about what makes you happy and keep your mind focused on that.  This is a habit you can develop.  It's a choice you make.  This is step one to becoming happy.

Step two is to go deep into your mind and uncover all the dark hidden unconscious feelings of shame and inadequacy.  The belief that you are a worthless, undeserving, selfish and ridiculous creature is stashed away in the farthest reaches of your mind. You'll have to do some serious forgiveness work to uncover these beliefs and eradicate them.  But you can do this  Anyone can do this.

It's actually very easy to do this work.  It does take thinking time and a development of self-awareness, but there are processes that make it simple work to do.  It all has to do with your intentions for your life.  What do you intend?  What do you choose?  Is it your choice to learn to be happy...to live the life that you were created for?

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Forgive Yourself Through the Act of Forgiving Others

Forgiveness is the means by which I learn I have done nothing to forgive.

When we forgive others we acknowledge that everyone's true nature is God's nature. Of course, living on Earth, many of us lose sight of our true nature.  We forget who we really are and we slip into attack behaviors.  It happens to all of us on occasion and some more frequently.

We attack others because we feel guilty.  We all have huge stores of sub-conscious guilt that we're not really aware of .  We project our own guilt onto other folks because it helps us feel better about ourselves.

If you don't believe me about the guilt, just try this experiment.  Sometime when you're alone, ask to be shown your pain and anger.  Just give yourself permission to scream.  You'll be amazed at what comes out of your throat.

We are all hurting and angry under the surface.  We live in fear but we suppress it in order to function in our daily lives.  However, when we begin to forgive others, this fear and guilt begins to dissipate.  This is because as we learn to see and know the higher truth about the other people in our world, we slowly begin to be convinced about our own higher truth.

Not only that, but what we give out comes back to us.  When we give out attack, we are attacked.  When we give out forgiveness, we are forgiven.  When we give love and acceptance.  We are loved and accepted.

Give forgiveness a chance to heal your world.  Try it.  You'll like it!

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