2024-10-31-Amanson on Judgement

Session

Lesson

'Judgement' is where we get off and you get on. We can bring light! light! light! to the situation, the equation, the circumstance, your point of view; flood your thinking with the Holy Essence of Light which is Love, but when judgement enters your thinking it is for naught, all bets are off.

Judgement is the wall between you and your fellows, erected from the wrong assumptions, presumptions, the flawed prescriptions of your limited (very limited) personal assessment of any of your fellows and the situations they find themselves in. You simply don't know. You may gather all the data - the facts of the matter - and set them in a row, ponder, decide and make your pronouncement (who hasn't done this?) but the truth of the matter is data and facts are not the truth of the matter. Again, how would you know? You simply don't. So on what basis do you judge? "I wouldn't have done that"? How do you know? You are not they and it is their situation. You are assessing these things from the ground level - eye level - and there is so much you neither see nor comprehend from this limited viewpoint, that to judge one of your fellows, in whatever circumstance, would be the height of presumption.

But now let us discuss the difference, the very great difference, between judgement and discernment. A life cannot be successfully lived without the essential ingredient of discernment. There is too much territory to be covered in the expanse of a life to do without the navigating compass of discernment.

"This is the correct direction". "This would be a mistake, a wrong, even potentially dangerous, decision." "This can wait. It would not be wise to attempt this now". "These people seem to have a hidden agenda. I will steer clear of them."

This is the very necessary divining rod of discernment.

But discernment is not judgement. There is nothing of the 'judgemental' about it. No one will be shamed or looked on as guilty in the simple eyes of discernment. Not so with judgement.

Judgement is a shadow thrown, a shadow condemning another human being or circumstance involving other human beings (who are hard-put enough, whether they realize it now or not), but who might be spared - along with yourself, the judge - the superfluous mental fatigue, the needless complication that goes along with judgement, for both the judged and those judging.

The goal is to free ourselves from the false narratives that hem in a life, that confuse and obscure and hide that Light that is the only solution to the egoic machinations that drive a person into those oh-so-human entanglements, entanglements inspiring shame, anxiety and guilt in one party, and the haughty, false, unjustified illusion of judgement in another.

Love should be extended: a life raft, not judgement. For who can't use the life raft of understanding in this difficult and stormy world?