Posted by Jill Whalen | Posted in Spiritual Teachings, Spirituality | Posted on 04-29-2014
Tags: Forgiveness
Inevitably when interacting with people, they will say or do things you may not like. Your feelings about the situation are essentially judgments about the people involved. Each judgement you make contributes to the way you think (and therefore feel) about them. For whatever reason, our ego minds have the need to classify and categorize people; however, that doesn’t mean our classifications are true. They’re simply our thoughts about that person at that time.
While most of us can’t stop negative judgments from occurring, because they’re only thoughts, they don’t need to stay with us forever. In fact, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to start each day fresh from the previous day’s judgments.
What if each night you decided to wipe your judgement slate clean?
Simply go back through your day and think about the people who said or did things that brought up negative feelings in you. Make a mental note of the judgement you made, and remind yourself that your thoughts about that person don’t define them. That’s it! When you wake up the next day, you’re starting off with a brand new clean slate.
Doing this provides you with the opportunity to have a whole new relationship with people each time you’re with them. You’ll have no past perceptions tripping you up and causing you to assume things that may or may not be true. While this is probably easier to do with people whom you’ve just met rather than those you have a long history with, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t work with everyone in your life. Of course you may have to go back a lot farther than just 1 day to “erase” your judgment of those you’ve known a long time, after all, you’ve had quite a long time to form specific opinions about them.
To be honest, I’m talking about this from a theoretical perspective rather than something I’ve been working on myself. But in theory it should work because thinking is not reality. It is only OUR reality at the moment. Just because we think a person is a certain way due to something they did or said, i.e., we judged them to be that way, doesn’t mean that they actually are that way. It is no more than our perception of them.
What do you think? Does this even make sense? Have you had similar thoughts? Have you ever tried something like this?
Please let me know in the comments below!
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I was interested in a facebook post I read today; I think offered through you, in regard to forgiveness. It encouraged me with an estranged brother. Unexpectedly I saw him on facebook where I offered a peace offering. I got rebuffed by him. So sad…like a death.
The “wipe the slate clean” idea takes a meditative process and practice. This may be an open door for me to grow through the pain. ….. And keep practicing.
Thanks for your thoughts Jill. The readings of them were very timely and important for me today.
Sheryl, I’ve found that with forgiveness, it’s more of an internal thing. You choose to forgive a person, situation or yourself and that in itself wipes the slate clean, that is, if you really and truly forgive. The interesting thing is when it involves someone else is that you don’t need to tell them. And I think it’s probably a good idea not to tell them. Your own future actions will change due to your having completely forgiven. Which opens the possibilities up for their actions or thinking to change as well. Doesn’t mean they will change, however.
I think with the case of your brother, it could be that just because you were at a place of forgiveness, doesn’t mean that he suddenly was. If you can forgive him now for what you saw as a rebuff and keep your new slate clean about your feelings towards him, it’s possible that some day things could change between you. Or maybe not. Either way, you’ll always have your good feelings about the person and situation.
If I may…
I just went through a similar circumstance with a family member and it’s not the first time with her.
This time I was not crushed when she ate my lunch because I went into the interaction with no expectations. I had already done the forgiveness work and put away the judgment.
I’ve found Ho’oponopono (a Hawaiian healing technique) to be helpful.
Whew!
This article really hit home when I read it yesterday and it’s been on my mind ever since.
Judgement, especially negative judgement, is a major topic in the World of Woo Woo”.
As negative judgement seems to work in tandem with forgiveness, it’s usually a double whammy when either of these subjects are discussed.
I love your idea and think that from a “spiritual teachings” perspective it’s a much bigger concept than you might realize.
See, negative judgement of people/situations robs us of moments in our lives we can never get back as the act of judging steals our awareness away from the present moment.
Judging a person/situation negatively requires that we live in the future and past rather than the ‘now’.
Additionally, if we are experiencing negativity in a given moment, the mental clicking of the Unfriend or Thumbs Down icon puts our attention in a different space than where we really are. So, our ‘judgment’ of that situation/person is not accurate anyway because we couldn’t see it/them holistically.
IMHO, your premise is beautiful because if we train ourselves to ‘wipe the slate clean’ each night, the surely we can work up to wiping the slate clean during our waking hours as well.
Once we’ve mastered both, then we can move to a space where we do not judge at all. Then we can fully, truly experience the people and situations in our lives because we are in that moment and no other.
Thanks for article Jill. It’s a wonderful reminder that judgment is…dang it! See? I was about to pass a judgment!
I gotta get better at this spiritual enlightenment stuff. Guess I’ll have to keep reading your site!
Thanks for your enlightening response, Bernadette! You’ve expressed all the nuances that had caused me to think about this in the first place, extremely well. My thoughts about it came from some passages I was hearing in my audio version of A Course in Miracles, as well as my understanding of the 3 Principles of Thought, Mind and Consciousness. In A Course in Miracles, one of the basic themes throughout is exactly as you expressed with regards to judgment. And that’s what got me thinking about potentially wiping the slate clean. As I said, I haven’t really tried it, but I also find I judge a lot less these days as well. But I’m sure if I really thought about it I could find plenty of instances!
(As an aside, why the heck to we Americans take the ‘e’ out of the spelling of judgment?!)
Oooo A Course in Miracles. That book saved my life.
Are you doing any of the exercises in the workbook?
(sp of judgement/judgment – uh – because Americans love having variety and choices?)
I just recently started doing the workbook exercises. Supposed to be on #5 today, but I forgot what it was. Need to start writing them down!
That’s great.
And what if we can take it one step further and not cast negative judgment in the first place?
That’s certainly the ideal!
Our judgments of ourselves, as well. A friend’s uncle wrote a little book 40 years ago about- “Don’t judge your decisions in the past by your knowledge of today”.
Very true, Jimbo!