Letting Go of Judgment and World Peace: What Do They Have in Common?
Grief shook my foundation. It left me feeling foggy. My days felt like they were moving in slow motion. My energy seemed to be sapped out of me. Even my physical self felt less solid. It was like my joints were more loosely connected. I felt less held together in all ways. One of the blessings of this disruption was becoming more of a witness to my habitual thoughts. I didn’t realize how much I thought about Bella through out the day and how much of a place she held in my life. I know the loss of a dog is minor compared to the suffering others are experiencing. I am not meaning to be histrionic, but I wanted to share some reflections from this experience so I am setting the context.
In my experience of grief, I had to find a way to accept something that was unacceptable to me. I had to go beyond the concepts I was living in order to integrate what happened. This threw me into a state of not knowing. I did not know how to come to terms with the loss, even though I knew I would. I trusted my capacity to learn and to have new thought take care of me during this experience. I was forced to have an open mind and go beyond what I already knew.
With my fresh thinking, I not only found greater peace with the intensity of my emotional experience, but I also started to see my relationship to suffering differently. I saw how I judged suffering as wrong. Not just my suffering, but I saw how I judged all suffering as wrong — the suffering of war, terrorism, rape, murder, poverty, genocide. I became aware of my position against suffering in all its forms. But from my new perspective, my righteousness looked like bondage. This sent me on a bit of an existential spin. Who am I to let go of my judgment about these things? If I move into greater peace and acceptance within myself does that make me complicit? How can I have peace when this exists? It is a little bit like how I felt as a child being told to eat my dinner because there are children starving in Bangladesh. How can me being replete help others who aren’t? How can me having greater inner peace be of benefit while others suffer?
I thought I was just seeking peace from losing my dog, but what I was seeing is that peace is the result of letting go of judgment — all judgment. Not just the judgment that my dog should not be dead, but about letting go of any position of judgment against what is. I didn’t realized I had signed up for this.
I had a conversation with Barb Patterson as I was in the middle of trying to make sense of what I was seeing. She helped me to see the difference between changing my experience by stopping suffering and my experience spontaneously changing by waking up from suffering. The latter is about waking up to a greater truth that includes my experience exactly as it is. I could already see this on the inner emotional level, but was seeing more how this also relates to all suffering in general.
Do I judge an animal for lashing out when it is backed into a corner and scared? No, I feel compassion. I am not condoning any harm the animal does, but I am also not in judgment. I am not adding more suffering to that situation. In my lack of understanding, I had taken a position against suffering. All this did was reinforce suffering by judging the form of what was created rather than seeing it as a by-product.
As Sydney Banks wrote in The Missing Link, “Cut off from innate wisdom, a lost thinker experiences isolation, fear and confusion. This is why there are so many horrible atrocities throughout the world.” In this state of being cut off, we are no different than the cornered animal other than, depending on the power we have we as human beings, we can do a lot more damage from this fearful state. I see my judgment as part of the same capacity for me to be cut off from my wisdom and compassion. Whether it be toward my husband for being irritable, toward the perpetrators of violence on a grander scale, or the circumstance of suffering in general. My judgment is my own misled thinking that adds to the sum total of suffering on the planet. When I see this, I can see all of the atrocities occurring on the planet more from a place of compassion. This does not result in apathy. It actually opens my heart more and has me feel more hopeful for change and open to doing my part.
Sydney Banks was clear in pointing to the solution for us all: “The consciousness of humankind must be elevated. Only then, when the spiritual and physical realities are united, will we find the power and intelligence to guide us through life” and he says, “You must find it for yourself.”
Freedom comes from waking up to what is true, not fighting against what is not true, but simply a by-product of misunderstanding. Awakening is an individual journey that benefits the entire planet and all of the universes. Awakening is the result of waking up to what is already there.
My thoughts can bind me or they can set me free. I can loosen my habitual way of seeing things and recognize how the end of suffering begins with the end of the judging what is. Any judgment is bondage to the struggle and cuts us off from the wisdom of our spiritual nature. As we each wake up to our innate connection with our true nature, we change, and the collective dream changes.
When I judge what is, I cut myself off from my connection to my spiritual nature, and really the only solution to the challenges of this world come from each one of us being connected with the wisdom beyond our intellect. There is peace in letting go of the judgment, and there is also greater connection with love and wisdom. This place is alive inside of each one of us.
I do not profess to live there all of the time, but I do feel that grief softened my edges and allowed me to let go of a layer of righteousness. It helped me to line up more with the innate wisdom of my heart. From here my projected subjective reality changes, and I behave differently within it. I am more generous, kind, and understanding. The ripple effect from this is not to be underestimated. If in Chaos Theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro can change the weather in Chicago, the gradual awakening of individuals on this planet can lead to global peace. This is being demonstrated by One Solution and their work in Chicago and the Middle East.
They are having a fundraiser on Giving Tuesday. Beginning at 8am Eastern Time Tuesday Nov 28, log on to Facebook and DONATE whatever amount you can to One Solution. They are in a race to raise 50k as quickly as possible because Bill and Melinda Gates are matching funds up to 50k for non profits who do a Giving Tuesday campaign on Facebook. They will cut off their matching funds once they have gifted $2 million.
Rohini Ross is passionate about helping people wake up to their true nature. She is a psychotherapist, a transformative coach, and author of Marriage (The Soul-Centered Series Book 1). She has an international coaching practice helping individuals, couples, and professionals embrace all of who they are so they can experience greater levels of wellbeing, resiliency, and success. You can follow Rohini on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, watch her Vlogs with her husband, Angus Ross, and subscribe to her weekly blog on her website, rohiniross.com. She has an upcoming program The Solopreneur Leap co-facilitated with Barb Patterson starting January 15th, 2018.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
Barbara Patterson
Scott Kelly
Barbara Patterson
Clare Dimond
Michael Neill
Rohini Ross
Elsie Spittle – The Soul of the Principles
Spiritual Facts 
Chip Chipman – The Simplicity of Syd’s Teachings
Dicken Bettinger – The Spiritual Nature of the teachings of Sydney Banks
Gretchen Blais
27.11.2017 at 17:07I was struggling with my partner’s lung cancer. It wasn’t fair, I didn’t like fixing dinner every night, I resented doing all the laundry and grocery shopping, etc. I read “A Thousand Names for Joy” by Byron Katie and in the introduction she said, “Suffering is from confusion and confusion is from arguing with what is.” I read that over about five times and sat in my chair. All of a sudden all the resentment melted away and I was so humbled and grateful that I got to walk this journey with George. That was abut two months ago and since then I fix the meals with joy, I do his laundry with love and I run the errands. We are easier with each ohter, we laugh a lot, he now feels safe to ask me for what he needs or wants, like, “I would like some Kentuck Fried Chicken,” something I don’t care for. Off I go with Joy and laugher. We talk abut what he needs, I can share my concerns with gentleness, can encourage him from a place of loving kindness. He still has lung cancer and the prognoses is not good. But, it is much better for us to be in a loving state than for me to harbor resentments. It is difficult to convey how grateful I am for this shift within myself. I seem less resentful overall so I am aware that this release of resemtment extends beyond George’s lung cancer. Thanks for reminding me of this shift.
Rohini
27.11.2017 at 18:42Dear Gretchen, Thank you so much for sharing your experience. You are so inspiring. What a powerful insight you had. I am so moved by what you share, and the shift you experienced. Sending both you and George love!