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I was feeling judged the other day.
A small little comment did that thing that judgement did.
Made me defensive, my first instinct a pull back, upset.
Of course she wouldn’t have known.
I replied politely and without any charge – Because that’s what polite people do.
My mind told me me she didn’t mean much by it – but that’s not what I felt.
That little comment kept coming to the front and centre of my mind, replaying every few moments, and my instinct to keep pulling back, upset intensified.
I believe the truth of something is in the feel of it. Despite the elaborate constructs our mind might create, our body feels the truth.
She’s the one who stores the charge. Our body doesn’t lie.
Remember the last time you felt a little or lot judged.
Keep that memory front and center as we explore how to complete and release judgement.
See, the trick with judgement is that it’s a double-edge sword. It cuts us two ways:
1. First we find ourselves questioning whether the judgement is true.
Am I really what she’s said about me? The judgement plays into our common wound of ‘not enough’ and ‘less than others’, a wound the ‘farer’ feminine sex knows well. We begin to take the judgement to heart, and it wounds us.
2. But the more covert trick is that the judgement isolates us.
The judgement we’ve perceived subtly puts a separation between you and me, the person passing the judgement and the person receiving it. Judgement it distances us, making us feel alone – alone and hurt. Given we are all made of the same star dust, and are the same pulse of divining embodied in innumerable forms, that sense of division is painful and isolating for our hearts. And this is a deeper and more subtle hurt.
As I was judged, instantly I didn’t buy into the wound of not enough – because I am enough and my body knows it deeply. But I still ached. I ached at the separation I felt, the defensiveness that came and hardened my heart and moved me away from love.
This is the pain of judgement.
But the judger isn’t exempt either. The woman who passes her own judgement is also impaled on that same sword of separation.
Our judgements reveal the standards we are holding within.
The judgements we apply to another women, are the same standards we hold ourselves to as well.
She’s too much of this…
Not enough of that…
She’s too fat here…
Or doesn’t have it together enough there…
She says this or want that, and that’s not okay in some way…
We know we ‘shouldn’t judge,’ but it’s human.
We all have pre-programed internal standards from our culture, our society, our upbringing. And through judging others we become aware of what those standards are.
How we choose to weld that sword of judgement is our choice.
It’s an opportunity for us to redefine our own standards, to reflect and take accountability, or to cut another and project what we hold onto someone else.
My experience with judgement has been that it’s much safer to assume with generosity.
You don’t know what’s going on in another person’s life, in their body. You are seeing them through your eyes and world view – and that’s not the world they are living in, it’s your world.
They are existing in a totally different world view, and it’s not any better, or worse than yours. But it is different.
The same divine spark that lives in you has embodied in them in a totally different way. And you don’t know what’s going on for them – because you are not all knowing.
Use your judgement to become aware of the standard you are holding.
Try assuming something more generous about the person you are judging
Similarly, when you are receiving the judgement, real or perceived, well it’s in your body.
Your body is the temple that that experience is being felt and metabolised within.
So it’s your responsibility to work with what’s inside you. That doesn’t mean you have to agree or disagree with the judgement. That’s actually irrelevant. What’s real is what you feel.
You might be feeling that judgement tap into a wound that already exists, a fear that you already quietly held. Use this as an opportunity to be kind with yourself.
When you feel judged realise, more often than not, the pain is MORE about your heart being separated than the fact there is something wrong with you. The solution to separation from love, is love.
After my own little judgement dagger was thrown (or at least perceived to be thrown) I had to sit and simmer in the feelings it brought up.
The experiences that my body revealed. And those feelings and experiences had nothing to do with whether the judgement was true or not. No one else is the authority on me. No one else has the right to pass judgement on me. That is my job, my responsibility. I am the only one who is accountable to and an authority on me.
I’m not available for other people’s judgements.
But I am willing to sit with what their sword of judgement reveals, because if my body brings something up well – the body never lies.
Now it’s your turn…
• Are you sitting with judgement right now?
• What’s your experience?
Let me know in the comments section below…
