Suspending
Judgment
“[God],
today I leave creation free to be itself. I honor all its parts, in
which I am included. We are one because each part contains Your
memory, and truth must shine in all of us as one.”
A
Course in Miracles-Lesson 243
The
affirmation that goes with this lesson is: “Today I will judge
nothing that happens.” Can you imagine a whole day of judging
nothing—not the weather, not your appearance, not the guy down the
block who runs his leaf-blower at six in the morning, not the lady in
her tennis outfit who cuts you off with her behemoth SUV and grabs
the parking space you're waiting for, not the girl who slaps her two
year old baby in Wal-Mart? I could go on and on and on. There is so
much to judge in this world, and I haven't even touched on politics.
It
almost seems as though the world is set up to drive us crazy
regardless of who we are or where we live or what our circumstances.
From pot-holes in the roads to endless, senseless war, what's not to
judge? It seems also, that our brains are trained to record and
evaluate—to pick apart and analyze and condemn. Yesterday, for
instance, when I went to the Post Office with the eBay shipping, I
saw a person I know and judge getting out of her car in the parking
lot. I actually turned around and drove away rather than encountering
her! We're wired to judge, or at least I am, and all this
irritability causes us suffering.
So
how did this wiring get strung and how do we become free of it? I
hate to say it, but it's laid down in the first five years of life.
Like the places in our body that always tighten up and hurt when
we're stressed out, there are facilitated pathways for temperament,
too. If we were born into families who judged others, and who felt,
for whatever reason, that anyone who did not behave/live in a certain
prescribed way is worthy of condemnation, we are trained to
criticize. Those pathways are not easily erased. They will always be
the first to pop-up when we see something that does not meet our
standards. What is necessary is to build new pathways—ones that
circumvent the old ones. In the words of Caroline Myss, we must “call
our spirits back” from the instantaneous and automatic tapes that
play in our head.
Affirmations
help. Replacing a critical thought with the mantra, “Today, I will
judge nothing that occurs,” is one way to redirect the path. Over
time, and with practice, we are able to call our spirits back from
all sorts of minor and major irritations that trouble us and generate
negative energy. Today, I hope that your spirit, and my spirit, are
free.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
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