VI. Judgment and the Authority Problem
1 We have already discussed the Last Judgment, but in insufficient detail. After the Last Judgment there will be no more. Judgment is symbolic because beyond perception there is no judgment. When the Bible says “Judge not that ye be not judged,” it means that if you judge the reality of others you will be unable to avoid judging your own.
Jesus, please help me to understand how it is that we will always judge ourselves if we judge others. I seem to be experiencing some resistance about this. (The resistance appears as not being able to think what to say, feeling tired, thoughts of not feeling good. None of this is true and so I reject each one.)
Jesus: You begin with a thought in your mind, project that thought onto another and so strengthen the thought. You now believe that thought and think it is real, and because you perceive it as in your mind you believe it is you.
Thank you. I understand it now. Resistance is funny. I had to refute each excuse the ego came up with, just refused to accept them. Taking down your words felt like working through molasses, but now that I did it I feel like a heaviness has lifted and I feel light.
I have been practicing being aware of my casual judgments and, through this practice, allowing my mind to be healed. I watch my mind as I shop, as I drive, and as I work. I notice when I think that someone is dressed inappropriately, is behaving badly, shouldn’t have said something or done something. I notice when I think that woman looks better than me or that one should lose some weight, or when I think that man should be kinder to his wife or more patient with his kids.
I often ask the Holy Spirit for a new vision, to help me see them as He does. And as I do all of this I forgive myself for these judgments and let go of the guilt that is my first experience. The ego mind says to judge and when I choose forgiveness instead the ego says I am guilty for having judged in the first place.
You just can’t please the ego mind. The ego doesn’t seem to like itself much and when I feel identified with the ego, I won’t like myself. It starts to become clearer to me how it is that judging others insures I will judge myself. I use judgment to keep myself separate from my brothers and I know that can’t be right even if I am not allowing myself to understand why. I feel guilty and I apply that same belief to myself and now I am judged.
I was thinking of the one sentence I wrote about judging a woman for being fat. That judgment caught my attention because Jesus is helping me to see how I use the body to defend myself against God. One of the ways he is doing this is to help me to experience food differently. Now every time I think that I should not have eaten that piece of cake because it is going to make me fat, I ask the Holy Spirit for the truth.
Usually, I have a thought like, “It is not possible for anything outside my mind to affect me in any way.” Or, “Food cannot make me fat. Only guilt can make me fat.” Or, “I make the body with my projections, not with food.” Or, “Fat is how I punish myself for my imagined sin of eating too much.”
I have used the body to prove I am guilty and those ideas have a strong hold on me because it has been going on for so long. Slowly, very slowly, I am allowing the Holy Spirit to reprogram my mind about this. Because this is not fully accepted by me yet, I still have the belief in my mind that food makes people fat and that they are guilty for having no control. So when I see a fat person I am likely to project that judgment on them.
I get the added ego bonus of distracting from my own guiltiness by pointing the finger at someone else. I am in effect saying that she is guiltier than I am, and at the same time, I am reinforcing the ego program in my mind. So the next time I over indulge, I will believe the thought in my mind that I am guilty for this, it is a sin, and I will be punished for it. I will then project that belief onto the body as excess weight. As I judged, I am judged. It is inevitable, and I but do it to myself.
The solution to this ugly cycle is the same as it is for all other wrong-minded thinking. I just notice, without flinching, when I have these thoughts. I know that I am not guilty for them, just mistaken. I ask the Holy Spirit to heal my mind. I ask for the Atonement. Then, to the best of my ability at this time, I accept the Atonement in this situation. I continue to do this in whatever form the belief exposes itself. I continue to do it until I no longer believe in it.
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