Every single year for the last four years I have vowed to drop more and more judgement. December rolls around and I start considering my resolutions and intentions - how I'm going to harness that big changeover energy.. The goals come into focus but that one about judgement isn't even up for consideration or debate anymore - it's just something I know I'm striving for every day. Of course this goal has its ups and downs as new challenges come into view. For me there is no one final abandonment of judgement, and I wouldn't be naive enough to even try and attain that. I am not in the business of trying to carve myself into a statue of spiritual perfection. I'm just about being conscious, moment to moment, for the greater good of everyone.
January hits each year and I feel so aligned with my desire to approach even the most conflict-ridden personality clashes with neutrality at least and compassion at most. I have always noticed that I drop hard and fast negative judgements much easier when I open up a doorway of compassion for the other person. In fact I remember years ago when I first tried to feel sorry for someone who had wronged me. I think at the time it was more of a mental experiment than anything else. As a kid, my mother was always big on reminding me that bullies aren't really happy and that they are suffering far more than anyone else in the playground.. One day I closed my eyes and thought about a girl who always made a target of me. I pictured her angry little face and the nasty way she'd pushed me in the playground, and then I thought to myself, 'She has a mother who loves her very much.' This shift came spontaneously. No one had instructed me to think the thought or consider the words. At that young age, it seemed the most obvious way to put myself into a place of compassion and love for my tormentor. It worked. So many little things like this can take you out of your specific place of feeling affronted, attacked, saddened.. So many miracles of the mind come from such subtle shifts in perception, and this example is just one of thousands.
Lately I've been chanting for those towards whom I feel resentment, anger, disappointment and judgement. I really extend the breath and sink into each note. I elongate the sounds and invest the tones with my sincere desire to approach unity in a bigger and more cosmic way than I did yesterday or the day before. I am looking towards compassion as that form of progress which heightens the planet as it heightens me.
Some people don't think it's all that important to feel compassion for those who have pissed you off or attacked you or rejected you. And maybe they're right. Maybe it's just about ensuring that you don't do anything to harm them. Maybe it's about being 'the bigger person' and refusing to treat them as they've treated you.
But so much has become about energy and vibration for me, especially over the past four years. I know that I don't want to direct towards them the level of vibration that I feel they have directed towards me. I know that, for me, neutral isn't good enough. I want to raise that shit right up to the highest level. I want to send out love where there is a deficit of love, and that's a genuine desire from the core of my heart, not just something I've told myself I have to do to reach the next stage of my own journey. I know that I want to take things less personally. I know that I want to fully acknowledge the fact that people are just trying to avoid suffering and sometimes their ways of doing that seem pretty fucked up. I want to recall the solid gold fact that everyone is fighting a hard battle.
Try it. Try chanting for your enemies. I dare you, in the most loving way possible.
(You might also like: Forgiveness, Acceptance and Reconciliation)
Card from Vintage Wisdom Oracle
