In the world today there are many different ways people live; whether it be their financial, educational, religious or health choices that differ, for each individual how they choose to live their life can vary greatly.
Yet no matter how different that livingness may look, and regardless of colour, sex or race, within we are all the same. So how is it, what is it in us that makes us judge, compare ourselves to, or criticise another?
Do we even notice that we are doing this, even in the slightest way, at a level that can be so insidious that we do not even recognise or we are not even aware that we are in any form of comparison or judgement? It can be a simple glance, a split second where that thought of being greater than another creeps in.
We are living in a world that seems to be less tolerant and more judgemental of others and the choices they make for their own lives. Each individual is judged for the colour of their skin, the way they dress, or do not dress, the religion they choose and the way they live within and from those choices. We have many different religions, all praying to the one God, yet each religion is judged and compared to another – all thinking our way is the way, that our God is a greater God – when at the end of the day, there is only one Heaven and one God.
I was recently made aware of acid attacks in the UK – people being disfigured because of the country they were born into. Bomb attacks, stabbings and shootings have been occurring more and more regularly – at times so often it barely gets a mention in the news, becoming a way of life, accepted, if I may say so. I was not aware that we ‘owned’ our country, nor that we had a right to deliberately disfigure, maim or kill another in such terrible, shocking and painful ways.
These are, of course, all extreme forms of judgement, but for me, what I am now feeling is, is it any different from the way I judge others? That if I look at another, thinking even in the slightest of ways that I am greater, then really am I any better than anyone else committing such atrocious and heinous crimes?
What gives me the right to think I am greater because I have made different choices? I may appear more ‘well-off,’ have a ‘better’ lifestyle or health and vitality, but who am I to separate myself from, or see myself as greater than another? Yet at times I have found myself doing just this. I was shocked when I felt the severity of this in my body, the arrogance I have held over another. It feels insidious and unsettling as I try to ignore and avoid the awareness that I am judging and placing myself above another. Then came the realisation that by doing this, seeing myself as greater than, better than or in a greater/luckier situation than another, I was actually contributing to the atrocities of the world – the same atrocities that I so despised.
We are all individuals, offering and reflecting our uniqueness to the world, a uniqueness that gives us all an opportunity to grow, develop and expand our own awareness, as well as others.
What if we began to love and accept ourselves in full, dropped our own walls of protection that we have built and let people see our own vulnerabilities and imperfections? Are we willing to learn from and see others as an inspiration, rather than a threat to our own way of being?
For myself, I am only now seeing how deeply seeded these thoughts are and how we allow them to run us and just how much they keep us in the separation of life and the love we ultimately can have for each other.
When I stop, let myself be seen, allow myself to truly see another for who they are, with no judgement or comparison, I learn so much. I can feel how I expand; there is a joy I feel in my body as opposed to a hardening. And those I judge and compare myself to the most, more often than not are the ones I am able to learn the most from.
The atrocities of the world begin with us. It is a choice we need to make to be accepting of all others without judgement, to be loving, appreciating and gaining a greater understanding of what it is we are all here to do; to love unconditionally, not making life exclusively about us, but about everyone as a whole, equally so.
By Nicole Serafin, 45yrs, Tintenbar, NSW
Further Reading:
Freedom of religion – a token gesture?
Judgment, The Way of The Livingness and the Power of Letting Go
God doesn’t take sides
369 Comments
I’m convinced that there are so many different religions all insisting they have the ear of God to befuddle us. The deception being that in some religions there is a grain of truth in them but a grain of truth is not the absolute truth. We are from God so therefore we can if we chose have a one to one relationship with him or not the choice has always been ours.
What gives us the right to think that we can impose our ideals, beliefs, pictures of how life should be on to another. And this may seem to be controversial but what gives a male Politian the right to decide whether a female is allowed an abortion or not? Or a religious leader the right to declare Holy War on innocent people to me this is barbaric and the fact that we stand by and allow it is even worse. The fact that many woman have little rights or say over their own bodies shows me how lost we are as a society.
Living with Love as our foundation, that is True-love, a Love that does not impose upon another, sets a Livingness that reflects the Joy that you have shared Nicole, So there would be no acid tongue or acid in your face when we are Loving in Truth.
Everything is becoming more extreme, due to us resisting our own love and the love of God that pours though all of us.
Decency and respect as a minimum, along with our starting to connect to our innate essences so we can feel the true Joy of who we are and can remember from our youth then we can connect to appreciation, which is the deeper understanding that all is divine or coming from God in everything in life.
Comparison and jealousy in thought is a potent poison for our own body and feeds a collective energy of poison that separates one from another and one group from another.
Great ending Nicole, as we all have to understand how to let go and undo those things we live with that have been our choices to be un-loving and finding True-Love and the relationship we have with our divine essences and God, so that all we do will deepen our appreciate-ive-ness of who we are, so we can evolve.
“The atrocities of the world begin with us.” a very strong statement and one I reckon most rather not admit, let alone feel. If there’s any part of me that wants to be an individual then I help fuel all those behaviors and beliefs that say it’s ok to treat others as different and separate to me.
We/ all of us have set this world up to be individual as this is a far away from the truth of who we are as you can get. We are all the same there is no doubt about it but we have taken this truth and completely manipulated it by introducing, race, colour, countries, borders, language, religion, politics actually the list is endless and we use all of these man made inventions to keep us in the separation. Take them all away and we are left with the fact that we are indeed all the same we come in the same way and we leave the same way.
It is when we get caught up in our differences rather than embracing the Love that we all come from that the judgement creeps in and poisons our relationships.
Any level of judgement exposes our lack of love for ourselves and others and is part of a continuum that leads to atrocities like acid attacks. This means that we all have the power to change the way we interact with others and reflect that there is a loving way to live in harmony which is all inclusive.
True energetic appreciation, is what cuts being judge-mental and also comparison in its tracks, so feeling the Joy life can bring is a precursor to living in a Deep-humble-appreciate-ive-ness.
This is key, accepting ourselves in full, loving ourselves, and not judging ourselves, ‘What if we began to love and accept ourselves in full, dropped our own walls of protection that we have built and let people see our own vulnerabilities and imperfections? Are we willing to learn from and see others as an inspiration, rather than a threat to our own way of being?’
Yes, judgement is very harmful in many ways, and often we are not fully aware of the extent to which we judge, ‘We are living in a world that seems to be less tolerant and more judgemental of others and the choices they make for their own lives.’
This individualism is very insidious and the need we have to express it runs very deep. I have found that it can surface in a whole myriad of ways and it takes real awareness and a willingness to be deeply honest about it to catch it.
“When I stop, let myself be seen, allow myself to truly see another for who they are, with no judgement or comparison, I learn so much. I can feel how I expand; there is a joy I feel in my body as opposed to a hardening. And those I judge and compare myself to the most, more often than not are the ones I am able to learn the most from.” This is beautiful to read. Wouldn’t it be deeply empowering to adopt this awareness in our daily lives & a blessing to bring up our children with such an understanding?
Agreed. I found myself going into judgment yesterday and there were consequences from this. Whilst I am not happy that I went into judgment I am pleased that I was shown that I had. Whilst potentially this could have felt really awkward I accepted responsibility immediately and so the sting of the situation was resolved very quickly.
More often than not when I find myself reacting to someone it is because that whatever it is is also in me and I don’t like it or they are showing up something in me that I have not mastered and I don’t like that they have made it when I haven’t…such silliness and what’s more harmful silliness- I can feel the harm – it feels quite alien and yucky to me in my body in that moment.
It’s true we do think we are better than others because we have made different choices or have been born into privilege. The thing is we look at others in despair and have learnt to look away because we feel helpless as to what we can do to alleviate their suffering. This looking away is contributing to the suffering because it hurts us deeply to see others in such despair.
I watched a clip on social media recently. Some social scientists were conducting an experiment. They placed a little girl of about 6 or 7 years old on the street but she was dressed in well made clothes and looked like she came from a wealthy background with lovely styled hair. They wanted to see if passers by would stop and help her. Many did and many caressed her and wanted to take care of her. The next day they dressed her up in dirty clothes and ragged hair. She was routinely ignored. She went into a restaurant and approached some tables, many people told her to go away. The organisers stopped the experiment as the little girl was getting very upset. My feeling was that in the cafe and on the street people didn’t want to stop to engage because they didn’t want their comfort rocked. This felt especially true in the restaurant with everyone eating their nice meals they didn’t want to consider the potential hunger that this child may have been facing.
Finding how Love is the part of our life or essence that we had as a child and learning that we can slowly return to that same child-like-ness by making different choices. So we can all reconnect to the Love we once were, it is never lost just buried under a plethora of addictive-beliefs.
‘The atrocities of the world begin with us. It is a choice we need to make to be accepting of all others without judgement, to be loving, appreciating and gaining a greater understanding of what it is we are all here to do; to love unconditionally, not making life exclusively about us, but about everyone as a whole, equally so.’ I so feel this to be true and it’s a wonderful settlement in my body as I appreciate I do know what love is and can come back to it and know this supports the world. I feel how I used to fight the world in righteous energy and how forceful that judgement was that seared through me into existence. What made it worse was that I knew this energy and how I was was so far from the loving understanding that we all do know within if we looked.
Separation runs deep within our societies and cultures… It is so extraordinarily important that we are, as children, taught to connect with that which is innate and true within us… It is only then that the falseness of the structures and paradigms in place will be revealed
What I am scratching the surface of at the moment is that any judgement stems from a hurt we are feeling but not expressing.
Wow – what really hit home for me in your blog is that many, if not most of us can say acid attacks and racist attacks are absolutely unacceptable and evil and we’d never ever do anything like that, but as you point out it’s just an extreme form of judgement against someone’s colour or religion – and a more extreme version of something that most of us do everything day: judge people. We don’t think much of a thought but that thought is contributing to people getting grossly hurt in the world.
It is amazing when we have this awareness about ourselves, as even though it is uncomfortable and not pleasant to feel, with this awareness we can then and only then start to truly heal.
An inspiring blog Nicole. Every person and situation offers the opportunity for evolution and joy or contraction and adding to the ill-state of the world.
“Then came the realisation that by doing this, seeing myself as greater than, better than or in a greater/luckier situation than another, I was actually contributing to the atrocities of the world – the same atrocities that I so despised”.