7 Practices For Realizing Your Highest Possibilities # 3

Practice 3 – Step Down as Judge and Take the Witness Stand

When it comes to dealing with others who have failed to meet our expectations, let us never forget the following: whatever their choices in the past that may have caused us pain, ought never blindly determine how we treat them in the present. After all, if the Divine decided to judge us “once and for all” – for even a small portion of our poorly made, self-centered decisions – surely It would have given up on us a long time ago.

Transcript

Welcome to the third of our special practices for helping us realize our highest spiritual possibilities.

And the third spiritual practice,

Before I get to the title of it,

I want to just bring up this one thought so that it's with you as we go through the rest of these practices,

That they're all connected.

There really isn't one of these practices that doesn't have in some way or another a tie to the others.

Because in the end it's all about revelation.

These are just different ways in which we can bring our wish to grow and transcend ourselves into all of the various relationships that we have with every single moment.

So as we learned in the second of these practices,

Which was learn to let go and welcome every life lesson,

We know there are some lessons,

Some revelations we just don't want.

But we as aspirants must understand the necessity to will the moment we don't want,

To agree,

To see what is needed in that moment as opposed to what's pushing us to satisfy its need.

So when we think about these things,

The fact is there is,

As we just discussed,

A lesson that's never not there with us that proves,

If we're willing to receive it,

That the me,

The you that came into that moment still had some business to do with the moment.

Or said otherwise that we're not complete in the moment we enter,

But we're actually intended to exit the moment complete because we've received the revelation and the lesson it brought with us.

Now,

The third practice is called step down as judge and take the witness stand.

Relationships are mirrors.

Mirrors are the source of self-revelation because we only see ourselves and can only see ourselves even when inwardly oriented through a certain process by which we're able to reflect,

Actually become a part of and enter into some aspect of our consciousness we were formerly unaware of.

So when it comes to this idea of step down as judge and take the witness stand,

We're talking about being able to use each and every one of our relationships at every moment at every turn in order that we might transcend who and what we are as we enter that moment and leave that moment someone or something altogether new.

So here is the key lesson for the third practice.

When it comes to dealing with others who have failed to meet our expectations,

Let us never forget the following.

Whatever their choices in the past that may have caused them,

Caused us that kind of pain,

That ought never blindly determine how we treat them in the present moment.

After all,

If the divine decided to judge us once and for all for even a small portion of our poorly made self-centered decisions,

Surely it would have given up on us a long time ago.

I don't know if you've had this kind of realization just yet.

I trust you will if you work and study,

Especially with these practices,

But it's fairly important that you do come to see the following.

It's very simple really.

It hurts to judge others.

Really,

What could be simpler than that?

How much more explanation do we need than when we sit in judgment of someone or something or ourselves of any moment we don't want?

There is pain in that moment,

Useless suffering.

But our suffering,

This pain,

The way our present consciousness interacts through these relationships,

Is to blame that pain on that person,

That predicament,

That problem.

And because we are distracted,

Really misguided in that way,

We fail to understand the very purpose of that revelation,

Which is to help us understand that any time we sit in judgment of anyone or anything,

The pain begins with us,

Within us,

And remains with us,

Regardless whether that judgment is found to be true or false by the one judged.

I think this is why,

For those of you that know the words Christ said,

Judge not that you be not judged.

See,

The pain that we blame on some person or condition that we've judged as responsible for our negative reaction,

It's misplaced.

And we can prove this finding if we do,

Meaning if we're willing,

To free ourselves up a little bit from the moment in which something steps in and steals from us that revelation.

And what is it that steals the revelation of this kind of self-limitation?

The judge.

Look at it with me.

What happens when we are suddenly full of a certain conviction or certainty that someone that we're with,

Maybe somebody that's not even alive anymore,

Is responsible for this disturbance,

This darkness that rifles through us in the form of a negative reaction?

In those moments,

What we need to understand is that that kind of psychological pain exists and only exists,

Appears as it does in that moment,

Because in our mind's eye,

To the level of consciousness we entered that moment with,

That person,

Or for that matter,

That circumstance,

Has in one way or another failed to satisfy what amounts to a preconceived set of conditioned expectations.

Conditioned expectations that were placed upon them before we entered that moment.

Try and see what I'm saying.

We walk into every relationship with a completely conditioned set of ideas about how that relationship is supposed to unfold.

So when it doesn't unfold the way we want,

We think the limitation is with the person or the circumstance when the limitation is that we walked into it full of expectations and demands that when not met,

Do what?

Awaken the judge.

And once the judge steps in,

The revelation and its possibility is canceled,

Because you see the judge has already come to the conclusion.

You and I know that's true.

We never get negative about someone or something that doesn't come with an incredibly strong conviction as to how right we are and how wrong that is or they were.

There are so many ways that this takes place in us on a daily basis.

The truth is,

And it's perhaps a little deep to go into at this point in our examination of these practices,

That's what thought is always doing.

The mind literally brings up some thought,

Well I should go do this,

And you can't have a thought about what you should do,

Especially if it entails something that you think you need to become in order to be happy or free.

That doesn't include an instantaneous judgment.

You can't think about someone negatively or positively.

In fact,

Really when you look at it,

Why do I have any negative reaction to anyone,

Especially if I'm not with them,

Other than in that moment the nature that brings up the thought of that person has prejudged them before it brought up the image.

So what we don't see is that our present level of consciousness is ceaselessly sitting in a form of judgment,

Not just of others,

Again,

But of virtually every moment of our life where someone or something just does not live up to our expectations.

Because can you blame someone without having first judged them?

Can I resist or resent someone,

Living or dead,

That doesn't come from the bench of the judge,

Who has found that person or that moment guilty?

Try to see all of this with me,

Because it's the revelation of this consciousness that changes the way in which we begin to see the way that consciousness acts.

A new awareness has to be born in us,

And the beauty of it is that the seed of that awareness already lives and awaits the nourishment it takes,

And the nourishment that it takes to awaken that awareness is all in the moment that we receive and accept the revelation that has been given to us.

If you think about it with me,

And I hope you will,

Nothing makes us more common,

More like everyone else that we judge,

By the way,

Than identifying with that unconscious feeling that rises up in us in the form of a reaction,

Telling us that somehow we are better or different than all we see.

And the following may have never dawned on us,

At least not before,

But may it do so now,

And that its light helps us reveal and ultimately heal all that it's intended to.

One of the major reasons we judge others as being selfish,

Or whatever it is that we have found them guilty of being,

Has more to do with our own unflagging demands upon them than with what we judge them for as being unwilling to give.

How quickly we become irritated with our partner,

Our friends,

Our family.

Isn't the very act of impatience,

Which by the way is something we're going to talk about in a lesson coming up,

Isn't the very act of impatience the proof that our judgment of that person has found them guilty,

And now they must pay the sentence?

And it begins with our impatience with them and then trying to get them to do or be or whatever is necessary so that we lose the pain that didn't exist without that expectation we had on them.

We're never judged,

You and I,

For what we may not be able yet to see in our present spiritual blindness.

Try to connect this with the first couple of practices where we talked about welcoming revelation and surrendering to the lesson that it brings.

We are by our very nature of being a human being in a physical body,

Bound as we are to this physicality and the world that gives it its life.

We are bound by that to be blind.

We think we see but we don't,

And the revelation is always not so much the sudden,

Oh I get it,

It's rather,

Oh I see what I couldn't see before,

Which in that moment opens the door to a completely different order of revelation where we recognize,

You know what?

I don't know how I didn't see that before,

But at least now I can see I was blind and that my resistance released nothing but rather made me a captive of the very revelation I didn't want.

So if we start to understand that it's only when we turn a blind eye to some truth about ourselves that life has asked us to see that it is the actually turning of that blind eye that puts us in a place where there's no possibility of doing anything other than meeting that same kind of moment again.

Because in the refusal to see,

The refusal of the revelation is the same as rejecting the realization that we are bound as we are to a level of consciousness that not only can't see itself yet but that doesn't want to.

So until we see that our negative reaction to those we judge for what?

For their mechanical or unthinking action is actually no different,

It's equally automated,

Equally predictable to our own actions,

Then we remain a little more ourselves than a kind of machine that lives by believing it's different from some other machine.

And why do we have that judgment of ourselves or others?

Because of the keen eye by which we believe we see the truth of things.

So it brings me to this practice.

Take a nice deep breath.

We all know what it feels like.

We can just walk down the street,

Look over and see someone not dressed the way they should be dressed,

Listen to somebody laughing in a restaurant with the wrong tone to their laughter.

Because any one of those conditions is the place of practice for us.

Where instead of acting as a judge and jury when it comes to all of the familiar conditions in which we find ourselves playing that role,

We make a new agreement beginning now.

We agree to a new relationship with the moment that begins with,

And by the way you'll see how this applies to the first of our two exercises again,

That begins with choosing where instead of being the judge of that moment of ourselves,

We choose to be the witness of those parts of us that want to find something or someone to blame for our pain.

That want to find someone or anything that is summarily judged as being guilty for denying us what we brought into that moment as a demand upon them.

So that is stepping down as judge and taking the stand as witness means that we enter into that space,

That time and place,

That awareness,

That revelation that allows us to see that it really does hurt to judge others.

And it really does hurt to judge ourselves and in the awareness of that we will find a new way to be in relationship with everyone and everything regardless what it reveals to us about ourselves.

Because we'll understand that we are in that same moment being offered a completely different understanding of ourselves that allows us,

If you will,

To enter the moment as the judge but to leave it innocently because we've witnessed something about ourselves that has changed us.

Reviews

Thanks Master

Profound stuff! What will it take to have my husband give up the judge’s seat?

Thank you 🙏

Thank You 🙏💜

That was beautiful and touching. Thank you for all the wisdom.

Brilliant