Judgement is a strange beast. It may often come clothed in self righteousness, feeling hard done by, feeling we are right and the other is “wrong”. It may come in the guise of self defence or even of being the spiritual warrior. It may come under the pretext of outing something we deem to be hypocritical.

The thing with judgement is, any time we feel we know better, any time we feel we have the answers, any time we feel that we are the blameless party, then we may well be coming from a space of the ego. The simple truth is until we are so squeaky clean, until we have so looked at our inner world and exposed all in us that may have been lying festering for a while. Until we have come to know ALL of who we are, we cannot even begin to wonder at the actions of another. How can we say we know better than another? How can we say that we would act differently to another, or that if we were in another’s shoes we would behave differently?

It is easy enough to judge when sitting on the sidelines but when in the pit of the experience we cannot know what we would do or how.

So how do we counter- act judgement? I believe the simplest way is compassion. To have compassion for those we may be tempted to judge. To accept that in all likelihood they are doing the best they can in the best way they can. To have compassion for our own very human self that wishes to compare and win! To have compassion for all us souls on this planet who are all doing the best we can. And if we recognised this more we may well find a lot more harmony and unity in our lives.

So the next time you find yourself looking at another and wanting to ridicule or reprimand, ask, would I act differently were I living out that person’s life? Would I behave differently if I was that person with everything that makes them them, every DNA strand, every emotion and experience, would you act differently? And then ask yourself can you truly say you know everything in this Universe? Or are there some things that are yet to be discovered? In which case judgement can only go out of the window! And good riddance too!