My journey isn’t your journey. I haven’t been through what you’ve been through. Even if we’ve shared some of the same experiences, my perspective on them, and the way I react to them, won’t be the same as the way you experienced them, the way you felt about them and the way you reacted to them.
No matter what we think we share on this Earth, each one of our hearts and brains interprets them differently based on millions of data. Depending on what’s come before, we judge each new moment clouded by the moments of the past.
We judge.
We judge ever new experience based on the past. We do it unconsciously. We do it without even realising it.
A Course in Miracles teaches us that one of the biggest things we need to learn to do is live in the present and stop allowing the past to judge the present. In day to day terms this means treating each moment and each person who comes in to our lives with a clean slate. So someone was mean to you yesterday, or an hour ago, that was then. It’s gone. In THIS moment, send them love. Send that situation love. The past only exists in your memories.
I know this is so much easier said than done. I know when someone hurts you the last thing you want to do is send them love. Don’t do it for them, do it for you. You know that phrase, ‘holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die’? This is like that. Bad feelings are your poison. Don’t let them kill you. Love with all your heart, expecting nothing in return, and you will be very pleasantly surprised at the results.
I don’t say this with no evidence – since I started on this path, it’s been a hard journey and my lack of love in many situations has done nothing to help me. The moment I gave in, the moment I said, ‘OK – I have nothing left to give but love’, horrible situations disappeared, seemingly overnight, people who were sending me hatred every day just stopped, and instead were replaced by new friends and a support system that has been nothing short of amazing.
Give it a go, when that bad feeling and judgement comes in, immediately say, ‘I forgive myself and I choose to see this differently.’ That’s it. It doesn’t even matter if you don’t mean it right now – fake it until you make it and, in this instance, you WILL make it. That is my promise to you.
