The secret of harmonious living lies in the ability to withdraw all our estimates and judgments of situations and people.
– Joel Goldsmith, The Thunder of Silence
One of the interesting things about our mind is that everything we see, hear, or feel during our lifetime we have an opinion about. While some are observations, most of the time we make an immediate judgment about that thing or idea, rather than an observation.. More often than not, that. Judgment is not always even based on personal data collection or experience. It’s usually based on something we’ve heard and, more often than not, it’s based on something we’ve only heard in conversation and never personally verified. When we do this we diminish ourselves. When we do that we’re not speaking our truth. Instead, we’re giving our power to know the truth to someone else.
When we do make a call on our belief of something or someone, do we do so from the aspect of Love? Do we know what has driven that person to say what they said? Do we share from the perspective of having walked “a mile in their moccasins?” Are the words we use kind? Are they incite-filled or full of insight?
Today, the world seems to be in general state of laziness. The professional people we used to be able to trust for truth, in general, can no longer be trusted to share the truth.
People are speaking before they think about what they are saying. They react to something, rather than responding. By that I mean they speak from their emotions (ego), rather than responding in a way that might invite greater inquiry and discussion, which might find some more common ground, or a common position of compromise. It’s become a “My way, or the highway” kind of world. We would have to be robotic drones to all believe or do the same thing. How boring would that be?
What we can do though, is to begin being more kind to each other, being more understanding of people’s religious and cultural mores, and not prejudging people by the color of their skin, ethnicity, their sex or sexual orientation. When we condemn someone for any of these qualities, we condemn ourselves by our own ignorance. We would do better to get to know someone rather than misjudge them out of the door.
“In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.” ― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation 