(Sorry for the long delay in posting this!)
This class was not so much about judgment itself, but about letting go of judgment. I defined judgment in the previous class as measuring something against a standard and then selecting or rejecting accordingly.
In this class I emphasized that there are two kinds of nonjudgment in the Course. Both are important, but they are very different from each other.
Type 1. Letting the Holy Spirit do the necessary measuring/selecting within the illusion.
We cannot avoid judgment within the dream. We simply have to measure and select in order to operate at all in this world. According to the Course, we need to:
• Evaluate our perceptual field
• Decide what goes in our lives
• Decide which course of action to take
• Decide which brothers to be physically be with
• Decide whether someone is giving us love or calling for love
The problem with carrying out these judgments on our own is that we do a very bad job of it. Section 10 in the Manual explains why. It says that we don’t have all the information needed to make a good judgment. We don’t know how our judgments will affect those who are involved, now and in the future. And we can’t strip out all bias against certain others, with the result being that our judgments will not be fair to them.
The appropriate response, then, is to constantly be aware that we just don’t have what it takes, and therefore constantly keep our minds open to the real story, and constantly be looking in the Holy Spirit’s direction for what He thinks. This is the rule of thumb for all those cases in which a judgment must be made within the dream.
Type 2. No longer judging the reality of other people
Whereas the first type of nonjudgment meant handing judgment over to the Holy Spirit, the second kind means realizing that in this case, no judgment is appropriate. This case is the reality of other people.
While judgment is necessary within the illusion, another person’s reality is not part of the illusion. It is part of reality, and reality is perfection. How can you measure perfection itself against a standard? It is already at the standard. It is the standard. Judgment is designed to filter out the imperfect. When you already have the perfect, there is no need for a filter.
I then read various selections from “Judgment and the Authority Problem” (T-3.VI):
In the end it does not matter whether your judgment is right or wrong. Either way you are placing your belief in the unreal. This cannot be avoided in any type of judgment, because it implies the belief that reality is yours to select from.
You have no idea of the tremendous release and deep peace that comes from meeting yourself and your brothers totally without judgment. When you recognize what you are and what your brothers are, you will realize that judging them in any way is without meaning. In fact, their meaning is lost to you precisely because you are judging them.
The strain of constant judgment is virtually intolerable. It is curious that an ability so debilitating would be so deeply cherished. Yet if you wish to be the author of reality, you will insist on holding on to judgment.
Judgment always imprisons because it separates segments of reality by the unstable scales of desire.
These quotes say that in judgment we are acting like the author of reality. We are taking God’s perfect creation—the reality of our brothers—measuring it against our egoic standards, and then partly or wholly rejecting it. We are playing God. So in judging the reality of others, we believe that reality is ours to select from. Because we want to be the author of reality.
This is what’s going on when we love some more than others. When we regard some as more important to us than others. When we emotionally select some and emotionally reject some.
You can even picture this in terms of a physical landscape. Imagine yourself on the narrow top of a small hill. From that top, the ground slopes away, down the hill, on all sides. Then when it reaches the base of the hill, the ground isn’t level. It keeps sloping away, just more gently. So the result is that the higher someone is, the closer that person is to you. This represents how much we have emotionally selected them. How important they are to us, how loved they are by us, how valued they are. Conversely, the lower they are, the farther they are from us. This represents how emotionally rejected they are. And this includes neutrality—regarding someone as neutral is one of the most sweeping ways to reject a person.
Call individuals to mind and see if you can place where they are on your landscape.
The result is that most are emotionally rejected. No one is all the way up, all the way in. That leaves you alone. In a pretty depressing world. It leaves your world full of unimportant and undesirable people. And it leaves you guilty, as the rejector.
It seems like a natural gravity has pulled people down to the place they are. It’s not so much you rejecting them, it’s just a natural gravity that has drawn them to their appropriate level. It’s their questionable character, their lack of kindness toward you, the fact that you haven’t had a chance to get to know them. They have just naturally rolled to the place they belong on the landscape.
Now switch the view. Imagine that you’re all underwater. You’re occupying the same places on the landscape, but now the landscape is at the bottom of a body of water. Yet everyone naturally floats—that’s their nature. So their natural place is actually above your head, that’s how much value and importance they have. Therefore, it’s not gravity that has caused them to roll down. It’s your judgment that has pushed them down and held them down. So now look out over your whole landscape, and release your judgment from one person after another. Watch them each become a radiant light, and then watch them float up.
Now see yourself become a light yourself and float up to that same surface. Now you are on the same level as everyone else—the maximal level. And they are all on the same level as each other. Everyone is maximally valued and loved and held as important by you. And now watch all the lights come closer and closer to you. Until they reach you and all join in one light. Now everyone is not only equally valued by you; they are all equally close to you.
Is this a world that you would prefer? Would you rather live in a world like this or like the one you live in now?
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
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