Letting Go of Judgment

The other day I was thinking about a friend’s troubles. I was analyzing her situation, in particular the motivations of a very dark, frightened person at the heart of the mess she is in. I realized that I was getting pleasure from this analysis and I recognized that what I was feeling was relief. I was relieved that I’m not living in such darkness anymore. This niggled at me in a way that tells me I am coming from ego. Upon examination I realized that it wasn’t that I think I am “better than” because I have let go of so many of the illusions of ego but that I was pretending that there are “degrees” of ego identification. My identification is really no different just because it’s not as deep and dark as it was. Letting go of ego is a process but as long as I identify with ego I identify with ego. It won’t be gone until it’s all gone.

I keep finding these little traps of ego, these myriad forms of judgment that are the whole way ego thinks: evaluating, comparing, weighing, measuring, discerning. In God All is One so there is nothing to judge. And in my perception of separation from God all is separation, differences, and chaos so all I can do is judge. And judging is the way that I perpetuate my sense of separation from God because it makes what I am judging real to me.

A Course in Miracles tells us that we must learn to put all judgment aside. Years ago I realized that this means “to not think with the ego” and I thought that would be impossible. But in time I realized that not judging was not about not thinking with ego at all but about letting ego thoughts go so that I can extend God’s Love instead. It’s about letting the ego have its say then going in the other direction. It’s about not being motivated by the ego’s judgments but by the Holy Spirit’s awareness that only God is Real and only God is really here.

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