Judgment — Spiritual Message of the Day
“The more one judges, the less one loves.” — Honoré de Balzac
There are many reasons why we should avoid judging other people. For one thing, we don’t know what burdens they carry or what wounds they bear. (Consider the saying, “Hurt people hurt people.”) For another, judging others reinforces our illusion of separation, which keeps us from loving people, and buying into this illusion keeps us from Atonement (at-one-ment). Furthermore, contrary to the popular notion, judging impedes our healing because it keeps us attached to the wound about which we hold a grudge. Finally, there is another cost that we don’t usually consider: judging other people brings about the awful sense that we are being judged by everyone else due to the fact that we project onto others the faults that we have but do not want to acknowledge. In other words, if we are judgmental of others people, we will assume that other people are judging us too.
So, considering the high cost of judging, why don’t we forgive? One obvious reason is ignorance; we may not realize the price is so high. There are other reasons too, however. For one, holding on to judgment arises from the ego’s illusory desire to retain a sense of superiority over other people. We also like to believe that we are the arbiters of right and wrong, and we want to believe that we are above the mistakes that other people make. Finally there is the common belief that if we forgive someone an injury, we are condoning their bad behavior. This is not true, however, as explained in a prior blog post.
If you enjoy these words of spiritual advice from the cards, you will love my new Tarot book called The Soul’s Journey: Finding Spiritual Messages in the Tarot.
