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.

The Judger Always Feels Judged

"The Judger Always Feels Judged."

I've had this statement taped to the inside of my medicine cabinet door for the past four years at least.  I'm not sure where I found it, perhaps it's from A Course in Miracles.

Regardless, it is an important reminder each day that what we give out is returned to us.  If I mentally criticize others on a regular basis, I know that I will feel like the world around me is watching me with disapproving eyes.

On the other hand, if I go about my day looking for the best aspects of everyone I meet, seeing them through eyes of love and overlooking shortcomings, I will be supported, valued and cherished by the world around me.

I once attended a seminar with Stuart Mooney, a self acclaimed American Buddha, who says he is enlightened.  I love what he had to say about the people in his world, "I just love everyone I see.  To me they are just so lovable, even the unpleasant ones."  Isn't this is a perfect way to put it?

Of course, not everyone out there is making the best choices.  When I say overlooking shortcomings, it's not that we don't always see another's "unpleasantness", but that we do learn to accept it as what is.  It's our job to respect everyone's right to their own adventures in this world.  If they choose to be difficult or misled, we have to just chalk it up to the fact that they simply don't know better and they're doing whatever it is they think they need to do to make the best of this life.  As Course students, we often say that we all either living love or crying out for love.

A Course in Miracles says that "we don't know what anything is for."  Therefore it's important not to judge what we see around us.  Since we are all here to get our forgiveness lessons so that we can grow and purify ourselves--until we eventually awaken, it is quite necessary that we have forgiveness opportunities.  That means someone has to play the bad guy so that there will be something to forgive. The person that you love to hate just may be a soul who has come here in this lifetime with an agreement to be annoying so that you can have the opportunity to forgive him and grow.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that we allow murders and child molesters to roam freely harming others at will.  When people behave in a manner that is dangerous to others, we need to protect the innocents.  However, even criminals are deserving of our loving forgiveness.

 Healing one's mind of the habit of judging is not something that happens over-night, at least in my experience.  I've been working on it for some years now and although I've made a lot of progress, I still find my mind thinking critical thoughts occasionally.  It really is only a habit though and if you stop and notice it, over time it will lessen.

I think it's very important that we carefully watch television, listen to the radio, read the papers or browse the internet.  We need to making sure that we are not judging people that we don't actually know (or even judging characters in TV shows or movies).  Just because we don't know someone does not give us the license to judge them.  Remember that all minds are linked and on some level, you are attacking these people.  Also, this habitual indulgence of judging people and characters that "aren't real" will make it all the more difficult to stop the habit of judging the people that you actually know or meet up with.

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Another Ego Trick--Attachment

I've been writing lately about ego tricks.  These tricks are ways the egos uses to create separation between our spiritual selves and our earthly selves.

One trick the ego likes to use is attachment.  Here's how it works.  You get offered a choice.  Perhaps, "Do you want the red or the blue?"  You think about it a bit.  Actually, you could go either way, But finally, you choose blue.  "Oh," the ego says, "that's a fine choice.  A very fine choice.  In fact, you have excellent taste.  The fact that you knew to choose the blue makes you special. I'm glad you want the blue.  In fact, you should want the blue very badly, because wanting the blue makes you very special.  Now let me tell you a little bit about the blue.  It is a little harder to get the blue.  You have to work a lot harder to get the blue.  You have to do certain things.  The blue is a little illusive.  It might not come to you easily.  In fact, it might not come to you often or at all.  But that's okay.  Just wanting the blue makes you so very special.  And maybe if you try this....or that... or this other thing...you can have the blue."  And so it begins.

We spend our lives in pursuit of the "blues".  And we get more and more attached to having blue.  We work harder and harder for blue and we believe that when we finally get blue we will have happiness.  But ultimately one of two things happens.  Either we get the blue only to discover that it doesn't make us happy, or we never really get the blue and so we never feel satisfied because our goal of having blue is thwarted.

Here's where forgiveness comes in.  We can be happy without blue in our lives.  In fact, blue actually has nothing to do with our happiness.  But we do need to release our belief in blue.  We need to forgive blue for all the damage, disappointment, fear and upset it has brought into our lives.  We need to see that the only possible source of happiness comes from love and that love is acceptance.  And that includes acceptance of what is--whether our lives include blue or not.

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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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Who Are You Forgiving Today?

We are

                     all one.

We are simply only forgiving......

                                                                                      .....Ourselves

"How lovely does the world become in just that single instant when you see the truth about yourself reflected there.  Now you are sinless and behold your sinlessness.  Now you are holy and perceive it so.  And now the mind returns to its creator, the joining of the Father and the Son, the Unity of unities that stands behind all joining but beyond them all.  God is not seen but only understood.  His Son is not attacked but recognized."

A Course in Miracles, Manual for Teachers p 84 

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Sometimes We Dread Forgiving Certain People

Forgiveness is actually very easy, once you get the hang of it.  However, forgiveness does take getting past one hurdle and that is letting go of the pleasure we feel in our victim-hood.  Does that idea surprise you?  Well, it's true that we enjoy being victims and the evidence of that is simply that we choose to be victims.  We stubbornly hang on to our victim-hood.  We love to savor our anger and outrage.  We love to get into our pain and we love to feel put upon and abused.  Our hurt feeds the fire of our indignation.

It can sometimes be a big step to let all that go.

But like any big step, if you want to make progress, you just have to do it.

Remember what it was like, learning to put your head underwater for the first time?  You just held your nose and dunked.  You just did it, even though you may not have known what it would be like.  You just trusted that it would be good.

Sometimes, when we are thinking about forgiving someone that we believe is particularly heinous, the idea of forgiving feels very distasteful.  Now that I am in the habit of forgiving everything, I don't feel that way anymore, but I do clearly remember how unpleasant it once was to offer forgiveness to the few people in my life that I believed were villainous.  I don't know why we sometimes resist forgiving so strongly.  Maybe we just want to hang onto our feelings of superiority.  "He's a horrible person and that makes me a good person."  Perhaps that kind of thinking just makes us feel better.  It's hard to give it up.

My best advice, if you're feeling that way, is to just do it.  Just hold your nose and dive into the forgiveness.  It will be over before you know it and you'll feel totally different about it afterward. You just will.  Forgiveness makes everything better.

In my meditation class today, we did a simple meditation from the book "Aging as a Spiritual Practice" by Lewis Richmond.  I'd like to share it with you, because I think it might be a good little exercise to ease into forgiveness, especially if you have some unpleasant people that you're feeling reluctant to forgive.  Here it is:

Find a quiet place and spend a few minutes calming your mind and listening to your breath.  When you are ready, imagine a small intense orb of white light in your heart center.  "On each in-breath feel the breath coming in from the world and refreshing the sphere of light.  On each out-breath, feel the breath going back out into the world with that light's generous energy."  Continue with this for a minute or two, feeling the flow of white light out into the world around you, healing, cleansing, offering love. 

Now, imagine that there is a mirror image of yourself sitting opposite you.  Let the cleansed out-breaths of white light surround and permeate the image of yourself.  Then as you breathe in, imagine that all the troubles, problems, pains and emotional hurts float out from the image of yourself and into your real self, down into the white light in your heart center where they can be cleansed and consumed in the light.  You are purifying and healing all the troubles away. Then breath pure white loving light out and into the image of yourself.  Let your breath circle generosity to and from yourself.  Continue on with this for a short time until you feel that all the problems and pains have been transformed. 

Next, imagine that there is someone you love sitting opposite you and continue the healing and loving breathing with them until they are cleansed (this should happen in five or six breaths or so).  Then switch to another person you love. Do this for three or four people. 

Now...here comes the good part, and it should be fairly easy to do because you are now in a very loving place.  Switch the person sitting opposite you into someone you need to forgive.  Continue to breathe out the loving white light, flooding their image with kindness and healing.  Then breathe in all their pain and difficulties to your heart center where the white light can transform them into pure loving energy.  Do this until you feel you have cleansed and healed them.   

This is another good example of the action of "flipping the switch" in our minds from fear to love.  At first it can seems almost inconceivable that we could look on someone that we loathe with love.  However, once we teach our minds how to do it, it becomes very easy.  In some ways the mind is very trainable.

So if you're feeling fear, reluctance or righteousness about forgiving someone unpleasant in your life, take the plunge.  Have a forgiveness baptism.  The water's fine!

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Two Ways to Get Happy Quick

1.  Scan your mind for whomever is annoying, hurting, upsetting or victimizing you today and forgive them.  (Need help forgiving?  Download this quickie forgiveness process for $2.99, here)

2.  Click play:

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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Express Yourself as the Magnificent Force You Were Meant To Be

I am just absolutely loving Anita Moorjani's book "Dying to be Me".  Over the years I've read a handful of books about near death experiences and after reading each, I've set it aside and thought to myself, "That's nice."

Moorjani's book is different, however.  She is a beautifully expressive writer, but more importantly, the expanded view she came away from her experience with is very real in her mind and clearly expressed in her book. There is a section about recognizing our magnificence that I am reading over and over again.  Here are several important paragraphs from that section:

"While I was in that state of clarity in the other realm, I instinctively understood that I was dying because of all of my fears.  I wasn't expressing my true self because my worries were preventing me from doing so.  I understood that the cancer wasn't a punishment or anything like that.  It was just my own energy, manifesting as cancer because my fears weren't allowing me to express myself as the magnificent force I was meant to be.

In that expansive state, I realized how harshly I'd treated myself and judged myself throughout my life.  There was nobody punishing me.  I finally understood that it was me I hadn't forgiven, not other people.  I was the one who was judging me, whom I'd forsaken and whom I didn't love enough.  It had nothing to do with anyone else.  I saw myself as a beautiful child of the universe.  Just the fact that I existed made me deserving of unconditional love.  I realized that I didn't need to do anything to deserve this--not pray, nor beg, nor anything else.  I saw that  I'd never loved myself, valued myself, or seen the beauty of my own soul.  Although the unconditional magnificence was always there for me, it felt as though physical life had somehow filtered it out or even eroded it away.

This understanding made me realize that I no longer had anything to fear.  I saw what I--what all of us--have access to.  

My magnificent, infinite self had decided to continue to live and express though this body.  

I want to clarify that my healing wasn't so much born from a shift in my state of mind or beliefs as it was from finally allowing my true spirit to shine through.  Many have asked me if something like positive thinking caused my recovery, and the answer is no. The state I was in during my NDE was way beyond the mind, and I healed because my damaging thoughts were simply out of the way completely.  I was not in a state of thinking, but a state of being.  It was pure consciousess--what I call magnificence!  This state of Oneness transcends duality.  I was able to get in touch with who I truly am, the part of me that's eternal, infinite, and encompasses the Whole.  This definitely wasn't a case of mind over matter."

This is what true forgiveness is all about.  It's about knowing the real "higher truth" about ourselves and the people in our world.  It's about recognizing not only our own individual magnificence, but the magnificence of each and every person in existence.  

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Made by God.

I am made by God.  He made me exactly in his own image.  Therefore I am holy.  I am beloved by God.  I am perfect in every way. 

"My holiness is my salvation."

"Since my holiness saves me from all guilt, recognizing my holiness is recognizing my salvation.  It is also recognizing the salvation of the world.  Once I have accepted my holiness, nothing can make me afraid.  And because I am unafraid, everyone must share in my understanding, which is the gift of God to me and to the world." --A Course in Miracles  From the review materials for Workbook lesson 39 (see page 97). 

When I forgive myself all I need to do is know that I am made by God.  I am cherished and precious to him and I am only love.  There is nothing at all evil, sinful or wrong about me.  I am perfect in every way.  I am part of God.

Guilt is self attack and it is always insane. --Living A Course in Miracles, Jon Mundy

When I am struggling with forgiving myself I find it helpful to create an altar to God in my mind.  This altar is shining white marble, huge and very beautiful.  I simply lay anything that I feel guilty, angry, hurt, or pained by on this altar and give it over to the Holy Spirit.  He will handle it for me.  He will wash me clean and remove my fear. 

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