How To Stop Judging Yourself and Others

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The option to judge and condemn exists in all of us. We even do it to ourselves. I think a better approach may be discernment. We can discern when we are being treated well, what we like, what we do not, without necessarily blaming and shaming others. Although, blame can play a part in our healing as we come to learn wha is “ours” and what is “theirs”. Below is a poem I wrote when I thought what it would be like to be in heaven and to realize it had all been “right”. Not that I had not suffered, not that I had not made my mistakes, but simply because every step ended up resulting in me.

“When You Die…”

At the end of life,
when heaven slits open,
and you stand

travel-weary and bone-naked
at those gates -

please, turn and look.

As your vision roams
admist the stars,
you will witness slight
indentations upon the
dark fabric of space-

Well-paced and well-intentioned.

You will come to realize-
with discerning gaze-
the marked depressions are but your
footprints upon existence.

In that occipitally-charged moment
of awareness, you will present
as the gape-jawed tourist with glottal
sounds passing for speech.

And you will come to understand,
“This was all of me.”

Every step,
Every stride,
Every tread-
Infallible

For the one simple
fact- they led to you.

At this juncture,
as you turn to the passage gate,
you will hesitate and drop
the knife you had been wielding.

The one most frequently held to
your own throat- the knife
of judgment with the cool, double-
edged blade. The one you noticed when it
bounced with your pulse.

Blame,
Shame,
Regret

Oh, those damn regrets,
the darlings of darkness
forever stalking time-

Frivolous matters, you now learn.

As you gaze upon the beauty and
peace of it all, from the perch
of transition-

You now understand-
Every step you tread upon
Existence, the ones you so
callously judged,
all led to you –

And that was Heaven’s one request.