Thursday, December 18, 2014
Lesson 352: “Judgement and love are opposites. From one come all the sorrows of the world. But from the other comes the peace of God Himself.”
Judgement is what makes our hearts ache. Judgement is the basis for our insanity because when we judge its because we think God is wrong. When we think we have a different and in fact more correct view of what we see, this is the basis for our misery. The sense of conflict within that the judgement creates is what makes us question our road. When we believe that we have the right idea of how things are and what we see isn’t it, then we are in odds or at battle with our lives. This is why judgement is the root of our suffering.
We evaluate what we see. We assess our situation without feeling upset about thinking it is a wrong path. We don’t have the capacity as emotional judge of judgement when we evaluate without this aspect of perception. When we are attached to the judgements we are constantly making then we contribute to making that reality real. Therefore, our suffering results inevitably.
And when we judge, we need to forgive this. Our ego is invariably in the position of control sometimes and from it, judgement is a natural response. We are asked to keep making forgiveness the way we cope with our judgement. Forgiveness means to stop the judging and be gentle with ourselves for making this misstep.
Sometimes we think forgiveness is a sense of not taking responsibility for our own insane judgement. The Course is asking us to practice and discover our own balance between being kind and easy and having a healthy discipline which prevents us from continuing the judging thoughts with reckless abandon.
Our job is to keep meeting judgement with a heart of lovingness and a willingness to make the effort to get out of the way. Then, we stop allowing judgement to be present in our minds. Sometimes this takes some trial and error to figure out what feels the healthiest as an approach to facing and relieving judgement. If this takes time, forgive this too.