Everyone is in relationship with self and others. Do you find even one of these relationships to be truly fulfilling? Do these relationships allow you to live the life you wish to share with that other? If not, let’s look at one way you can begin to create positive change in your relationships.
In this life, “we judge others in the way we are fearful of being judged”. In our closest relationships our challenges are continually illuminated. What that means is that if you are not comfortable, or aware of those challenges it can be a setup to judge your partner, friend, and/or family member as not good enough in some way. Does judgment of another help you reach the type of relationship you are looking to have? Does judgement bring you fulfillment and love? Is the judgment of the other teaching them what you need and/or who you are? Would you like to be judged rather than understood?
Judgment fragments relationships. It feeds the fear. Fear is suffering. Fear is the absence of love. If we have judgments within us, we can become aware of that which we are afraid of having judged by others.
Okay, let’s move to the relationship. If you judge the other without awareness to what your own fears are, that fear within you is being fed in the relationship. If that fear is there, no matter how the relationship grows or goes, the fear remains. Therefore, you cannot perceive change in the relationship or change in the other. The very fear that causes the judgments have been fed within you and continue to thrive. Therefore, they will continue to force judgment. Not pretty. Certainly not fulfilling. So, how do we turn this around?
The absence of fear is love. We must be willing to love our Self. It is in that love of self that we begin to heal the very fears that propagate the judgment. While doing that, there is something else you can do. Begin each day with love and compassion for the other. Shift your view of them from not good enough to a human with challenges and approach the relationship with a warmth, caring and compassion that allows you to explore the other. What is happening in the other when they do the things they do? More importantly, why do those things have an affect on you? From where do those reactions come? What did you buy into that allows those behaviors, thoughts, experiences to trigger fear-based emotion and judgment within you?
Start today, right now! Feel love and compassion for at least an aspect of your partner or a person in your life who can frustrate you. Now, think about them only with thoughts of caring, love. See them through eyes of acceptance, speak to them with words of compassion. If you do this for one hour you will see a difference. Then build upon what you learn in that hour!
Compassion breeds compassion. Judgment breeds judgment. Love breeds love. Fear breeds fear.
Love is the absence of fear and fear is the absence of love. Go forth into your relationships with the qualities that you wish to experience. Plant the seeds of compassion, fertilize them with your heart.
