Do you ever find yourself really judging someone or something, and you just want to share your criticism with the world?
You will see this happening almost everywhere you go. Friends getting together to gossip over lunch, ‘You wouldn’t believe what she was wearing… blah, blah, blah (fill in the judgments).’ People posting things on facebook, ‘People who _____ (fill in the blank) are blah, blah, blah (fill in the judgments)’ Or spouses getting together at the end of day, ‘I had to deal with my co-worker today. He’s so blah, blah, blah (fill in the judgments)’.
Judgment is a huge part of the natural human condition. For people still asleep, it is literally all they know how to do.
Once you begin to awaken, however, you have the opportunity to begin to behave differently in regards to your judgmental thinking. I am a big advocate of encouraging people who are awake to juice their judgment.
What does it mean to juice your judgment? This means that you get in there and squeeze whatever triggered your upset until you get every single drop of judgment from it. Get interested in your judgments. Get into the process of it and go for it, listing your judgments freely. If you feel upset, annoyed, irritated by someone, go ahead and judge ‘em up!
Now, a word of caution: When I say ‘judge ‘em up’, I do not advise sharing your list of judgments as gossip or directing your judgment outwardly in any way. I especially do not recommend you share your judgment with the person who has upset your peace – in person, on a phone message, through email, on facebook or on any type of social media.
Sharing your judgments directly or as gossip is like spewing verbal vomit – it just makes a big mess for you to clean up. Although venting your judgment at someone may make you feel better in-the-moment, the feeling of relief will be very temporary; you will probably feel badly later about your own behavior, likely accrue more self-judgment and possibly need to make amends to the people you spewed upon.
When I suggest you juice your judgment and ‘judge ‘em up’, this is just for your own private, inner process. I am encouraging you to identify your projections of judgment, then own them fully, saying something like, ‘These judgments are mine. This other person is just acting as a mirror.’ You would do this internally, inside of your own head if you do it in-the-moment. Or, you could write about your upset later when you have some personal space. If you do put your upset onto paper, be sure to burn or shred the evidence to avoid causing someone else suffering down the line.
If your feelings of upset are very strong and you really need to verbalize them, you can share with a trusted confident. Before you begin, I suggest prefacing your vent with a disclaimer like, ‘Can you keep this confidential? I just need to vent. I know it is my stuff. Can you just listen so I can hear myself?’ In this way, your listener can drop into neutrality and just hold in compassion for you while you unload. If you do this responsibly, you’ll hear a list of judgments and then be able to claim them as your own.
The part I really want to emphasize here is to choose your listening partner wisely. A trusted confident is someone who has the ability to be detached from your feelings, has a proven track record of integrity and can keep a confidentiality for you.
I just recently relearned this lesson the hard way myself. A few months ago I became upset over an interaction with a client about a financial matter. I felt so angry I could practically see the steam coming out of my ears. I judged my client as ‘uncaring’ and ‘inconsiderate’, among other things.
A few days later, I happened to be having lunch with a mutual friend and my upset just spilled out. I heard myself mid-story and did my best to mitigate the damage by taking full responsibility, saying, ‘I know this is mine. I’ve been uncaring and inconsiderate towards myself’ and ‘I’m so grateful to my client because I really needed to look at this mirror’, etc.
But my ownership did not make the news. The report on fb only shared that, ‘Cynthia told me that you did such-and-such and she thinks you are uncaring, inconsiderate and blah, blah, blah’.
Let’s face it, personal responsibility isn’t very dramatic. It is anticlimactic, boring even, for someone who is still engaged in the suffering of the fear-based reality. The fact that I had let my judgment spill out in that way cost me a valuable client. Trust me here, no one wants to receive a laundry list of your projections of judgment.
You could imagine that, while your judgment is absolutely normal and Ok, it still needs to be handled with extreme care; it is basically a toxic substance until you transmute it into gold inside of your consciousness. Sharing your judgment directly or as gossip is like spreading poison. Asking someone to listen in confidence and neutrality while you vent your judgment is like putting a special container around the poison that prevents it from spilling out and harming anyone.
Whether you work your process on your own or seek the support of a trusted confident, the ultimate goal with juicing your judgment is to clear up as much of the toxic waste as you can in any given sitting. To the degree that you can juice your trigger of judgment, you can transmute that amount of unhealthy energy into Loving, using it as fuel on your journey towards freedom. Say, “I am now freely juicing my judgment with integrity and care.
Many Blessings of Joy and Vibrant Freedom
Action Step ~ Resist the urge to gossip and instead mindfully juice your judgment, creating a safe container of neutrality and compassion.
Declaration: “I am now mindfully juicing my judgment. I am now treating my judgment with care, containing it properly, ensuring that it harms none as I use it in service to my evolutionary process.”