Do you ever find yourself judging a person or group based on a stereotype? Or because of a certain trait, characteristic or difference?
On the path toward higher consciousness, there comes a time when you have to be willing to look deeply at yourself, no matter how painful it might be.
After my initial awakening where I had experienced a taste of heaven, there was a point where I was willing to do whatever it took to get back there again. The thing about heaven is that it is an energetic state – an internal state of Being – that includes the qualities of peace, unity and innocence. As long as I was still holding onto prejudice, I wasn’t able to experience unity, let alone peace or innocence.
Now I’m not going to lie and tell you this step is easy. It isn’t. I can still recall how uncomfortable it was for me to get real with myself. I had always prided myself on being non-judgmental and inclusive, so to start this process I had to let go of false pride and become open to considering the possibility that I might have some unconscious prejudices. Once I set the intention to see, heal and resolve any and all prejudices toward others… wow. All I can say is that I had no idea I had been holding onto so much againstness.
Shining my inner flashlight brightly, I discovered I’d held judgment toward: people with double names like ‘Billy-Bob’ and ‘Bobby-Sue’; Middle Eastern men who need their wives covered head-to-toe; tall, leggy blonds with southern accents; right-wing Republicans; polygamists and anyone who was blatantly prejudiced (KKK, Nazis, fundamentalist Christians… you get the idea).
Letting go of the judgment toward people with double-names and leggy blonds was pretty easy – people can’t help what they are named and I had no reason to hold onto junior-high jealousy. Coming to terms with the rest was a little more challenging. What finally did the trick was remembering that people are not their behavior. In other words, you don’t have to like someone’s actions in order to view them with Love and compassion. All people are divine, Loving Beings, regardless of how they sometimes act. Everyone is innocent, no matter what course they are enrolled in here on Earth School.
In what ways are you holding againstness towards others? Do you judge any groups as bad, unacceptable, incompetent, greedy, stupid, mean, unconscious or anything else? Be willing to look deeply at how you view people who are different from you.
The truth, from the soul-level perspective, is that everyone is worthy of compassion. Forgiveness – Love and compassion – is our birthright. Each of us is born loved and will die loved from our soul’s perspective, no matter what occurs for us in human life. There is no such thing as an irredeemable person, or a permanently lost soul. If you picture your Loving source like the sun you can see that all rays come from the source and are connected to the source; it is not possible to ‘break off’ a ray of light from its compassionate source of Loving. The sun and the sunlight are all one complete entity. We are all one – even though it may feel like we are disconnected at times. The disconnect is not real; it is merely a feeling or an illusion.
I recently heard a heartwarming story of a group of Christians with signs at a Gay Pride parade that read, “We are so sorry for having judged you in the past”, “Jesus Loves All”, “Judge Not”, and other inclusive phrases. The people from that church are absolutely heading in the right direction!
Any time you find yourself judging based on a prejudice or stereotype, you can remember we are all connected in Loving, and simply apply compassion inside yourself for your temporary feeling of separation. Say, “I now view all people as innocent – everyone is just learning and growing.”
Action Step ~ Let go of prejudice and stereotyping and cultivate the qualities of peace, unity and innocence. Declaration: “I now view all people as innocent and deserving of my Love and compassion. I know we are all one, unified at the source. I am at peace with all humankind.”
“The human being is part of the whole, called by us the ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” — Albert Einstein
Additional Support: Listen to this 9-minute closed-eye process on letting go of againstness towards others and viewing everyone with peace, unity & innocence; please refrain from driving while listening.