May 4th, 2016
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned when it comes to releasing judgment of others is this: We are all born into different life circumstances, with different societal and cultural conditioning. We have all faced and are facing different challenges on various levels of our being, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. Let’s face it, we can stereotype but in truth we have absolutely no idea what the person sitting in front of us has faced and gone through in their lives, even if we think we ‘know’ them.
We can only look at others from our lens, a lens created by our unique life circumstances and experiences. It is impossible to look at someone from their unique perspective, from their suffering, from their joys, but we often assume that we can, we often assume that we know what is best for others. We can only know what is best for them based on what we think is best for us, through our unique lens. What I have come to realize time and time again is that the only person that knows what is best for you is YOU and the only person that knows what is best for me is Me.
Each step we take forward is supporting our unique path of growth and personal evolution. If we make ‘mistakes’ on our path it is because we needed to make those mistakes to know what it is we wish not to experience again. A person on the sidelines telling us not to step into the fire will not provide us with the multi-layered experience of doing it for ourselves. They will not be able to provide us with the tools necessary to digest that ‘mistake’ and in turn teach us the multitude of lessons that bloom from it. So can we even call it a Mistake? Living according to our deepest desires is what allows us to transform weaknesses into strengths and to grow more into the person we wish to share with the world.
Often we argue with the people we have build relationships with when our needs differ from theirs. We might say why are you being so independent, I just want to spend some time with you and we judge them for it because we don’t feel the need for such independence. Over a period of a time we feel it is necessary to bring them down and to build up a case around how their behavior is wrong and unnecessary but only to help sooth our unyielding desire to feel self justified in our own feelings of abandonment or loneliness. What we are really doing is trying to justify our unique needs that are no longer being met. We are so conditioned to look at things from a right or wrong perspective that we don’t allow two opposing thoughts or feelings to exist simultaneously. We rush to find the ‘real truth’ so we feel justified in our needs and don’t have to look elsewhere to fulfill them.
In my opinion, this is where society falls victim to emotions such as hate, rage, resentment, jealously, ignorance and self-righteousness. We either say this person must be right or I must be right. Which one is it? And when we find out who the wrong doer is, whether it’s me or you, an apology must be made, one should feel guilty, suffering of the ‘wrong’ person should ensue and feelings of shame be experienced by them.
Over the last year the universe has been skillfully fine tuning this important lesson and serving it to me on a silver platter. As most people do, I have a natural reflex to judge myself and others for choices made that I deem wrong; choices that appear to affect another in a negative way.
I always felt a strong moral obligation to strive to do the right thing, which often led to white and black thinking. The searching for all-knowing answers and the knowledge that leads to the best way of doing things. It felt necessary in a world that is desperately messed up and in need of more good deeds and right choices. So anything that did not feel like ‘love’ I deemed as wrongbehavior. The big problem with this is that acts of Self-Love are completely subjective and different for everyone. And we all know that in order to love others we must first learn to love ourselves.
How can I possibly know what is self-loving for you, right now in this moment? I can’t really. Maybe what is self-loving to you right now is to isolate yourself so as to give yourself time to re-connect with yourself. Maybe it means being carefree without too much worry of consequences because you have been a perfectionist your whole life and that compromised your sense of self worth. Maybe self-loving to you right now is eating a whole tub of ice cream and watching reality tv shows because you never allowed yourself to step off your diet or moral high horse. Maybe what is self-loving is leaving a relationship which appears to the world to be the best thing that has ever happened to you but on the inside is making you feel compromised. Maybe self-loving to you is changing careers from a super well-paid and prominent position because on the inside you feel dead.
The more the self-loving act affects another, the more the other is likely to judge, because the new status quo no longer meets expectations or needs. But instead of looking at these new behaviors with expanded minds and hearts we look at how they affect us personally, bringing us back to the uncomfortable feeling of change. Not many of us enjoy change imposed by others and we take these self-loving actions as a personal strike against who we are, at a very fundamental level especially when they no longer match our own personal needs. Knowing that we alone are the best judges of our needs relieves us from having to choose whether the other person is making a good or bad decision for himself or herself. We are only responsible for respecting each other’s choices and personal boundaries.
This can sometimes be a hard pill to swallow but on so many other levels this realization is a true gift. It allows us to expand our minds to encompass much more than our conditioning and subjective view of the world, it begs of understanding, compassion, true unconditional love for each other and a deep respect for each other’s unique path. It allows us to support others EXACTLY where they feel they need to be in order for them to take the next necessary step towards their happiness and wellbeing.
Some of the most difficult decisions we will make for ourselves will create huge discrepancies between our needs and the needs of those closest to us. The closer we are to each others the more our actions will affect others, thus the more we tend to judge and the more we tend to want to control their behaviors. We often do this out of good intentions, we fear that the other person is not growing or blind sighted or simply stagnant but this is only seen from our subjective lens. We need to honor people where they are at, without self righteously trying to justify our opinion that their actions are anything less than exactly what they need. What formed their needs is a necessary path to honor for their personal evolution and sometimes our needs and their needs will not be a fit, so honoring each other’s is a gift beyond measure. Most importantly, even if those choices appear to be ‘wrong’ to us we must acknowledge that it is a subjective ‘wrong’ at best.
The universe has a tricky way of teaching us lessons. Often in the moment we can only see a fraction of the movement happening deep within and we don’t see the intricate play of scenes leading up to the grand finale, which becomes a major turning point in their life for their personal growth and betterment.
This loving understanding and reverence is the single most important thing we can do to honor each other and ourselves. So the next time a friend, lover or family member is not meeting your needs, don’t deem their newly acknowledged needs as wrong or right, remind yourself of their unique path and how different life looks from their perspective. Honor their individual growth as they strive to find inner peace. Remind yourself how fundamental it is that we respect each other’s various rites of passage and initiations into life teachings, empowerment and self-love.
Most importantly we must remind ourselves that when someone is undergoing a major upgrade in assuming personal power in their lives, they will likely appear to be selfish, self-centered, self-righteous or contradicting to another. Ask yourself, what needs are they trying to fulfill by making these choices and wait for the answer to come instead of judging. Then ask yourself what needs are they no longer fulfilling for me and how can I begin to fulfill these needs for myself.
We are not here to judge, we are here to love what arises, as Matt Kahn so eloquently puts it.
Thanks, great article.