This morning I opened my inbox to find crossfire between two friends of mine. One did something in her business that the other found unethical, whereupon the other removed the one from her tribe. I felt sad. They are both good, loving people.
I won’t go into details on the incident, but I want to share what it taught me. It was like a mirror for me, showing me how judgemental I can be sometimes. In fact, right after I was done with that email, I had to deal with my accountant, with whom I’ve had some issues in the past. (And I’m not talking about Debbie, my new accountant, who is awesome.)
The issues have not gone away yet. Not my accountant’s issues, and not my issues. I sat there on the phone judging my accountant for all the short-comings, both past and present. And I realized at the same time that I was doing the same thing that my friends had done over the email – judging someone for being prone to human error. And now – get this – I’m judging myself as well.
What saddens me about all this – with me and with my two friends – is that we are all “lightworkers” – that funny moniker given to us “new age” (or whatever) folks who do spiritual healing work. (Obviously I’m uncomfortable with these labels but I don’t know what else to use.)
Here we are, trained in the finer arts of divine love and forgiveness, and we’re fighting with each other. But just so it doesn’t seem so bad, we clothe it in spiritual-sounding language, like, “My prayers are with him, and I hope this disagreement does not affect the community, and I wish only the best for him…” My Ego likes to use language like that, because then it looks like it’s all coming from Spirit, as if Ego has nothing to do with it. But just because I’m judging my brother with “loving” language does not make it love. The unspoken undercurrent comes out as “you’re guilty and I’m not.”
And yes, now I am judging my friends. Gaa!! We are all so insane here! Why can’t we all just get along?
We all make mistakes. We all defend ourselves for those mistakes. We all judge others for their mistakes. And even if we’re defending ourselves for our mistakes, we usually judge ourselves anyway, and also judge others for judging others.
It’s called being human. We’re all doing the best we can. And my two friends are doing the best they can, by trying to stand up for what’s right, by trying to soften the words, by trying to hold the community together despite disagreements, by trying to love each other even when we judge each other. Yes, I’m annoyed by what’s going on, but part of me – some spark of light deep down – wants to drop all the b.s. and just love both of my friends no matter what, and to acknowledge their struggle to be the best they can be under the circumstances. They’re trying. It’s just that they’re human.
A Course in Miracles tells us that we are all children of God, all brothers and sisters, and all still perfect in the sight of God. God does not judge us – we judge ourselves. We are insane, because we believe that the children of God are guilty, and that God’s creation is imperfect. This is illusion. A very convincing illusion that starts wars and other needless suffering.
When I was really young, I discovered I could manipulate my little sister by threatening “I won’t be your brother any more!” This only worked a couple times at most, before my sister realized that no disagreement could ever break the family bond. No guilt, no injury, no argument, no insanity of any kind could ever make me not be her brother any more.
It’s kind of crazy that us grown-ups are still talking that way.
A Course In Miracles also tells us that we do not have to heal ourselves from this suffering. We only have to allow Spirit to heal us. The Spirit of God promises to take away the insanity and give us love in return.
Here’s hoping.
Still Waking Up 
“Smile on your brother, everybody get together” š
lol @ “I won’t be your brother anymore”. I think I might have tried that a few times myself in the past.
Thanks for dropping by! I think the post was up for all of 10 seconds when I saw your comment. Ah yes, the interwebs are astoundingly quick.
I’ve been the recipient of that kind of floral print tissue wrapping of a bag of shit of judgment. To be honest, I find it frankly more offensive than the more honest brown sac delivered unadorned. I’d rather hear, “I’m angry at you. I don’t want to be your friend anymore because I don’t agree with what you did … picking out all the blue M&Ms is a deal breaker to me. Goodbye,” than a sugar coated, “I consider myself morally superior here, and to prove it, I’m going to bless light showers upon you while I reject your humanity. Fuck off. Love and light.”
This penchant for using spiritual vernacular while behaving in judgemental, unkind ways is, I’m honestly sorry to say, an all too common ugly by-product of the ‘light worker movement’. In my personal development network, I see this occur frequently, and it sickens me. I’ll admit, I’m probably making the error right now, (at least, energetically, in my own mind) of throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water, as my time and attention for certain self proclaimed light worker types is on extremely limited supply. It is not without a certain amount of contempt that I even think about some people I once called friend, and it is with, (again, to be immodestly transparent here) a certain excess of contempt that I view the entire personal development light worker healer blah blah blah genre.
I’m enjoying walking alongside you for this spell Craig. For my own personal reasons, I’m, dare I say it, informed, by your process in this season. Not to exaggerate the significance of one human being second guessing the integrity of the entire realm of energy work, and not to deign to put too fine a point on what is obviously an entirely personal journey privately your own … but, in some sense, I appreciate the shirt sleeves rolled up way you’re digging in to find your own truth here.
Anyway.
Thanks, Cindy! We all have a unique path, but it’s sometimes nice to share the path with another for a while, so we can learn from each other’s experiences. It seems to me that my most interesting work on this blog is the transparent personal experiences, while the lectures come off as blah-blah-blah, like so many other lessons out there. Being raised in a good Canadian, Christian family, the temptation has always been to try and reduce spiritual truth to a set of theories that work for everyone, everywhere. But theories don’t love. Theories don’t rock a child to sleep, and theories don’t make the pain go away. We need to do that for each other, and if it gets messy, we have to deal with that.
Duality is a complicated realm to live in. The unconditional love of the Divine does not live in the realm of duality and it is much easier to love all in unity without duality. But we chose to grow within the confines of duality to create a personal reality. Duality shows us the other side of life, the thorns with the rose. We see the beauty of all life in the petals of the rose, it’s fragrance and everything else about it. But then we also grab at the thorns and then we suffer, wondering why something so beautiful can hurt so much. In that hurt though we grow and that is the beauty of the thorn, of duality of life. It’s challenges we face through human interaction and the interaction of life allow us to grow as souls. Sometimes we grow a little lop sided and that’s when the Divine sends us another wind or challenge to straighten us up back into full view of the Divine light of love.
It’s still confusing in the small bodies we call human. All we can do is try our best to be true to ourselves and serve within the boundaries of Love. Now if anyone has figured that out let me know… I would love to know how to do it myself. LOL
Ya, Soulfire, you’re right about that. Never any end of duality around here! As long as we have human minds and bodies, we will have some kind of struggle with pain, and the people we perceive as causing that pain. Us so-called enlightened ones are not immune to the struggle. We might as well just accept that and forgive ourselves, and each other.
Remember the verse: Judge not that ye be not judged”? (Sorry, I still recall a lot of verses like this in the old King James; I guess I’m pretty old!) It’s a pretty hard order to follow, but it sounds like what you are trying to get at. And it’s something I’ve always found extremely hard (not to say impossible) to live up to. I’m still working on it!
Love,
Nora
Me too!