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Invitation: Letting Go of Judgment
My friend, this month we will continue on our journey toward the relinquishment of judgment. We will uncover peace by simply reversing the thinking of the world. Condemnation will be changed into compassion, and regret will be replaced with contentment. Where we once experienced our brothers and sisters with judgment, we will now find gratitude for their participation in helping us to remember our true selves. Whenever we used the past to cover over the present, we will now simply see the present as the gift it truly is. We will divide this Invitation into four parts:
We invite you to connect with like minded people through the following:
This month,
let us free ourselves and our brothers and sisters from the past, and experience
the eternal gift of the present moment. Here, there exists a place where
strangers become brothers, where condemnation changes into compassion, and where
all blocks become blessings. This place is our true home, and is only a choice
away.
Your
brother,
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Mailing@ChosenToRemember.com
to your address book so that the monthly Invitations arrive in your Inbox. Compassion vs. Condemnation
Formerly
"Reacting to an Immature Action" My friend Mike has a four-month-old daughter with a woman from Costa Rica. They are not married and he's had trouble seeing his daughter. Mike was upset about the situation. Some time ago, we went to Costa Rica after visiting Cuba, and Mike found out that his sister had called both the mother of his child and the child's grandmother to tell them how badly they had been treating Mike with regard to the baby. Apparently, Mike's sister had angrily expressed the way she felt about them and the situation. Obviously, this action did not make the situation better. Both women told Mike how his sister acted which made Mike mad at his sister. He was so upset that he was planning to cancel his visit with his sister once he got to Miami for his birthday. In handling the incident, Mike had two choices. One, he could allow the ego-self to dictate the situation, and react with anger, judgment and condemnation, thus separating himself from his sister. Two, he could recognize that his ego-self would try to answer first, and pause. Mike could then bypass this effort by his ego and go to his Godself for guidance. If Mike makes the latter choice, he would see that the Godself would always ask him to act with compassion. In return, he would receive peace. People who have not yet remembered their perfection will, from time to time, act and react in an immature manner. Mike's sister's feelings were hurt by her brother's situation and she reacted immaturely and with anger. The ego-self will always answer first because it has made itself our instinctive response. In truth, it is not our instinctive response, but we have been trained by it and thus we react as we were trained. Speaking with anger and condemnation is a natural response of the ego-self; it makes us right for doing so. Anything that differs from our point of view of how the world and those in it should behave and react is taken by the ego-self as an attack upon us. And the ego-self continually tells us that it is right and honorable to defend ourselves against an attack. When we are angry our actions are not constructive. We become angered by others' actions, which because of their immature nature, they had little control over. Our anger now becomes an immature reaction to their immature action. So we need to ask ourselves, where does this leave us? Definitely not in a peaceful place! A peaceful place is found by reacting with compassion and love towards our brother or sister. This peaceful place can be our goal in every situation. This peaceful place is our natural state, and our natural state is not temporal in nature. Reacting with anger and condemnation might bring us a false and very temporary state of peace from the simple misperception that we are right and the other person is wrong, and that the wrong deserve to be punished. Remember our ego always answers first, and its primary goal is to separate us from our brother or sister. We need to ask ourselves: Would I rather be right or happy? Would I rather express false power or experience everlasting peace? If we listen to our egos, we will react with condemnation and judgment, for they are among the ego's favorite tools in its effort to separate us from our brothers and sisters. As surely as the sun rises in the east, so does reacting with the ego bring us a lack of peace. You and I know this very well, for we both have experienced situations like this when we've reacted with anger to another person's action, and later felt badly and saddened by the way we reacted and dealt with the situation. We feel badly because we've lost our peace of mind, which is our natural inheritance. We feel badly because we have tried to attack and separate ourselves from our brother or sister who is a part of God. But we cannot attack and separate ourselves from our brother or God and still feel whole. Trying to do something that is impossible creates frustration. Frustration leads to confusion and confusion to chaos. Because we, our brother and God are one, what we do to our brother we do not only to him but also to God and ourselves. If we attack ourselves without knowing it, we create confusion. At first, it may be difficult to see that this confusion is self-inflicted. If you are not currently aware of this confusion you will soon be, for the number of times that you unknowingly attack yourself may be high but it will not be without limit.
That "immature" person, in truth, has offered us the gift of remembering our perfection, that we can choose peace in any situation. What else but gratitude would we offer someone who is teaching and reminding us that peace is available in every situation? Would gratitude not be the sane response to such a wonderful gift and blessing? There is a place in your heart that understands what it is I am sharing. I know this of you, because I now know this of myself, and you and I are one and the same. After remembering all this, how will you now react to your brother or sister's next immature action? Will you react with condemnation, anger and an anxious mind or with compassion, gratitude and a peaceful mind? Will you choose to be right, or will you choose to be happy? As it turns out, after the initial anger that Mike experienced, we talked about it, and he was able to deal with his sister with compassion. He understood that people sometimes act in an immature manner, and in order for him to keep his peace of mind he had to forgive her action, and understand where she was coming from. He had to understand that his sister simply made an error in judgment. He remembered that the sister he loved was not represented by that immature action, but was a spiritual being on her journey to remembering her true self. He understood that her action deserved understanding and his sister deserved compassion. On our journey towards achieving peace of mind, it is very important to understand that there is a difference between an action and the person performing the action. An action happens at a moment in time and regardless of how we have been taught to see it, it is an opportunity. The opportunity shows us where we are within our minds. It teaches us who we truly believe ourselves to be. We can choose to react with peace now, or we can choose to react with peace later. Sooner or later we will find peace. Because of free will, we can choose when we want to experience peace. Also understand that the belief that peace is not immediately available to us does not in any way interfere with the fact that peace is always available. The time it takes us to react with peace is up to us, and will be measured not only in time, but in pain. For if we do not have peace about a situation then we are experiencing some level of pain about it. When we choose to act with compassion and forgive a brother or sister immediately after an immature action, we receive peace as our gift. We can also choose not to forgive a brother or sister for an immature action for a lifetime, and our gift will be a lifetime of carrying in our hearts and minds a lack of forgiveness for that action. This lack of forgiveness will weigh on us, for it is unnatural not to forgive. We can forgive a brother or sister and in doing so release ourselves from that action, or we can choose not to forgive and carry that painful action with us until the end of time. In the end, it is we who have the power to resolve the issue. We have the power to react to every situation with or without peace. We have the power to carry it with us as long as we want. We have the power to release it as quickly as we want. It is our choice to be weighed down or released, to be right or to be happy, to live in pain or in peace, to react with condemnation or compassion. Being in the Now p. 184 - You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros. My friend, if we’re not in the now, we are lost. We bring judgments of the past into the present and question why we don’t understand what is really going on. We look at a brother or sister, call him or her a stranger instead of a friend and speculate as to why we live in fear. My friend, we live in fear because we bring all of our past judgments into the present moment.
We extend
our past into the present, creating a future like our past, and thus we never
really experience the present. Living this way, we will never experience the
perfection of the present moment. The present is God’s eternal gift to us. It is
when we look at a brother or sister without past judgments and see a friend.
When we see our brother or sister as God’s perfect creation, we are experiencing
the present moment. It happens when we look into our brothers and sisters’ eyes
and see ourselves reflected in them. You need only do this once and you will
want no other way. If you see your brother or sister as something other than
God’s perfect creation, know that you are exchanging your past judgments for the
present moment.
1 - Having
faith that the moment is perfect. The present moment is perfect and our simple recognition is all that is asked of us in order for us to experience its perfection. It is in allowing the present moment to be what it is that we find peace. And as we recognize the present as God’s gift, we replace our judgment of it with gratitude. If we do not experience peace in the present moment, it is because we have substituted the ego’s illusions for the present moment. The ego will invite us to believe in a thousand different ways in which we can lose our peace of mind. The ego will also offer us a thousand different solutions. Yet, if one of the ego’s illusions or solutions is unreal, then all the ego’s illusions and solutions are unreal. For the ego’s illusions and solutions in and of themselves are nothing. And regardless of how many times we multiply nothing, we will still get nothing. You might ask for an example to clarify this point. The manifestation of that example might clarify a small number of similar illusions. This is exactly what the ego would offer, because it gives more than enough wiggle room to offer us a thousand different illusions and a thousand solutions to those illusions. And as long as we have use for the ego, it can remain alive, well and in control of our perceptions. And so I offer no specific examples to cloud your thoughts. I do offer that all illusions, regardless of their manifestations, will result in a loss of peace. There is really only one illusion, one problem, which is that we are experiencing the illusion as real. Call it your spouse’s impatience, your boss’ ruthlessness, traffic or your job. Call it what you will. If it takes away your peace, it is because you have seen the illusion as real. In their essence, all illusions are the same because all illusions are not real. React as you will to illusions. Defend yourself against illusions if that rocks your boat. Hate, fear and punish that figment of your imagination that does not exist if you wish to. Anytime that we relate to the present moment with anything but peace and gratitude, we have had a misperception brought on by a past judgment we thought had once served our purpose.
In order to
live in the present moment, let go of past patterns that are inconsistent with
the truth within you. Offer God the judgment of your brother or sister, the
judgment that has brought you nothing but sadness, pain and regret, and in turn
He will offer you eternal peace of mind and joy. Offer Him all your past
perceptions and He will offer you the eternal present moment. If you put aside
the unfruitfulness of judgment, you could easily lift the many veils you use to
cover the present moment. Beneath the veils, you would rediscover the simplicity
of faith, faith that the present moment is perfect. This rediscovery, that you
need not add nor subtract or judge the present moment, will offer you total
freedom and peace. And gratitude will become your only sane response to the
offering of total freedom and peace. Turning Blocks into Blessings p. 225 - You Have Chosen to Remember: A Journey from Perception to Knowledge, Peace of Mind and Joy by James Blanchard Cisneros. You might currently believe that there are times where you can achieve a peaceful state and times when you can't. You might have already taught yourself that you can remain peaceful if "x" happens, but not if "y" happens. My friend, the only difference in these circumstances lies not in their physical manifestation, but simply in our beliefs. It is because the work lies within, in modifying our beliefs, that only a simple reinterpretation is needed to obtain peace in any situation. When we lack peace in any situation, it is not because peace is not available, but because we have somehow blocked the awareness of the presence of peace. Once the blocks are dismantled, all that is left is the state of peace. My friend, the universe is kind. It will offer countless opportunities to obtain peace in areas which we previously perceived peace to be unobtainable. Our Godselves also know that we can achieve peace in any situation. This knowledge is currently within us and it is only our willingness to consider it that is necessary. Currently, you may have blocks to this awareness and they manifest themselves as situations in which you believe that peace is unobtainable. Again, my friend, the universe is kind. It, along with your Godself, will assist you in bringing about situations where you block the awareness of the state of peace. This is done to allow us the opportunity and understanding that peace in such situations is indeed available and attainable. It is only by bringing these blocks up to our awareness that we will have the opportunity to choose once again. In every situation, regardless of its physical manifestation or your perception of it, you have the opportunity to choose peace. You might not recognize this, yet the awareness of this possibility is available within your mind. My friend, if you look into your past, you will recall situations that once brought you thoughts and emotions of stress and pain that you now deal with in a more peaceful manner. The same situation may occur today, but your reaction to it is more positive. You simply realized that there was a better way of dealing with it. A better and more mature way of dealing with a situation brought you feelings of understanding and peace. Looking back, you see that the ability to choose peace in such situations had always been available. By dealing with the block, you were able to find peace in a situation where you once did not even consider peace as a possibility. In doing so, you dismantled another block to your awareness of the presence of the state of peace. As you continue to dismantle different blocks, you will find that the state of peace is always available to you in every situation, in every moment. It lies there waiting for your recognition of it. Once recognized, it is all you will desire. You will desire peace in every situation, and because you desire peace, you will obtain and experience it. Now and then, blocks may come up again, but you will quickly remember what it is you truly desire, and when you do, you will have it. When such blocks appear in your life, you will no longer curse their appearance or feel unlucky because of their manifestation in your life. In fact, once you see them, you will now thank and bless them, for you now have the knowledge that these blocks are really just offering you an opportunity to understand where the awareness to the presence of peace and love is blocked in your life. Once you understand and acknowledge this gift, these blocks will turn into blessings, and love will replace all that you once found unlovable. As your sense of inner peace develops, you will become more and more confident that it has nothing to do with your outside environment. You will depend less and less on circumstances turning out a certain way, or on other people responding a certain way. As your inner peace develops, your outside world will also begin to change. Slowly, you will begin to realize that the world you experience outside of yourself is directly related to how you feel within. To assist you in realizing the importance of attitude, consider the following statement on attitude from renowned author and pastor Charles R. Swindoll:
When properly perceived, all moments are opportunities to remember the presence of love. When things seem to be going against us, they are occurring in order to allow us to see and experience our personal blocks to the awareness of love's presence. The presence of love is available to us in every moment. Gratitude and joy are the only sane responses to the presence of love. If gratitude and joy are not our immediate responses to the moment, we are misperceiving reality. The unconscious misperception of reality produces confusion and stress. Any confusion and stress that we are experiencing are in and of themselves gifts because they make us aware of our personal blocks to the awareness of love. The moments when we experience stress and confusion can actually be used as opportunities to find and define those unconscious blocks. In finding and defining these blocks, we begin the undoing process. In the undoing process, we will question why it is that we are choosing to act and or react in a manner that is causing us stress and confusion. Sooner or later, we acknowledge to ourselves that we do not want to act or react in a manner that causes us stress and confusion. By acknowledging behaviors we don't want to experience, we come to understand and recognize that there is another way, a more sane and loving way to experience the moment. We begin acting and reacting in this more loving manner and we experience more love and joy in our lives. We experience greater peace in our lives. There will be moments when we may forget and react and act with confusion and stress, but these occasions will slowly diminish and become a smaller part of our days. As they become a smaller part of our days, they also become a smaller part of our lives. The moments when awareness of the presence of love is experienced increases, filling a larger part of our days. Gratitude and joy become natural responses to having such daily awarenesses. The same moments in which we experienced stress and confusion, we will now experience the presence of love, and we can simply smile at our past misperceptions. Not only will we smile, but we can also experience gratitude for them. We will know that it was only because we got tired of what they offered that we ever questioned their existence in our lives. And again, we can look back into our past and this time see every misperception as the true gift that it was. Once more, we can smile and be thankful in acknowledging the perfection of each moment in our lives. In this, we can find great peace, for we can understand that in all future moments, we will also have the opportunity to acknowledge the presence of love and be thankful for its perfection. Invitation Activity: Friend vs. Stranger
This
Month’s Invitation Activity
This invitation will only be as difficult to accept as the denseness of the fog that surrounds the memory of who your brother or sister truly is. I know that while lost in the fog you have been confused and afraid. But the time has finally come when you will notice the twinkle of the lighthouse on the horizon. Congratulate yourself and know that it is showing itself now not because it is burning brighter, but because you have come to a place on your journey that allows you enough clarity to see. The light was there before the fog and it will be there long afterwards. It has brought many a lost ship safely home. And just as the people on these ships blessed and thanked God when they saw the light, so too will you one day breathe a sigh of relief and thank God for such a blessing. The ego has taught us to call our brother or sister a stranger. The ego has taught us that when we first look at a brother or sister we must immediately judge something about him or her. The ego does not explain why it has us react in such a manner; yet we are trained so that our first reaction is not to question its motive, but to think like it thinks and react the way it has taught us to react. The ego wants us to acknowledge it as our one confidant, the only one we can truly count on and trust. The ego will use words, it will use thoughts, it will use actions and reactions, judgments and blame. Its tools are as limitless as the illusions and the results they produce. My friend, with one thought or action unlike that of the ego, the fog will begin to lift. Just as thinking with the ego-self produces confusion, judgment and separation, so too does thinking with the Godself produce clarity, peace of mind, unity and joy. My friend, such a wonderful moment is about to happen to you and any attempt to describe it with words would be futile. A moment is coming when you will look at the being the ego calls a total stranger and you will see him as a friend. The ego will defend itself against this perceived attack to its "reality" by saying that this is no big deal. But I offer you that this is the beginning of the end of the ego's grip on your perception of reality. As soon as you do this once with a completely open, love-filled heart and mind, the fog will immediately begin to lift. Simply lay your eyes on a brother or sister who in the past you would have immediately judged as a stranger, and see him or her as God's perfect creation. Seeing your brother without judgment, with a completely open, love-filled heart and mind will fill you with so much compassion, love and joy that you will never again consciously choose to see another brother any other way. You will be so grateful for being able to see him as he truly is that you will look forward to doing this every day. The more you do this the clearer your days will become. Day by day the fog will continue to lift, and as it does, clarity will begin to surround your every thought. You will quickly develop deep gratitude and respect for all your brothers and sisters, and as you do the lines that separate your physical selves will begin to dissolve, merging into a oneness that is new to you, yet somehow quite familiar. As you continue to spend more time during the day remembering and acknowledging this oneness, the ego's attempts to have you fear and separate from your brother or sister will diminish, until one day the ego completely dissolves into the nothingness from which it came. In Kahlil Gibran's book Jesus Son of Man, Kahlil discusses the concept that the "stranger" you see is much more like you than you realize, and the more understanding you receive, the more these so-called differences or barriers fall. Gibran explains this concept using an example of Peter's recollection of Jesus talking to him. Jesus says:
Share Your Experiences Visit the forum on the website to share your experiences and interact with others about this Invitation activity: Friend vs. Stranger. Weekly Meditation Activities We welcome you to join us for weekly meditation practices in which we will join our energies together. These specific meditations are then followed by dream preparation, where we will go to bed with the intention of continuing that night’s meditation. Please click here for all of the details.
Participate in our Forum Visit the forum on the website to share your experience and interact with others regarding the weekly meditation and dream work activities.
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I
am simply here to remind you and myself that there is another way. Through
compassion and understanding, we can choose peace instead of anger. We can
choose a peaceful mind instead of an anxious mind. We can choose happiness
instead of sadness and we can choose compassion instead of condemnation, anger
and regret. We are all spiritual beings, having a human experience. We have yet
to remember our perfection, and that is why we are here. Someone with whom we
may be angry is here to assist us in remembering our perfection. He or she is
our teacher, as well as our student. All of his or her actions and reactions
offer us an opportunity to choose peace in a situation where we once found the
possibility of peace unobtainable. This person offers us another opportunity to
forgive what we once found unforgivable, and to love who we once found
unlovable. In making these choices we remember our own perfection, and in
remembering our perfection, we can find peace, forgiveness and love within us
now. 
Knowledge
that the perfection of the present moment is available to everyone all the time
will fill your heart with an overflowing sense of gratitude and joy that even
the most blind will see. Your heart will burst with rainbow-colored love that
will touch everyone, and the judgment of your brother and sister will all but
dissolve in its light. Your simple willingness to put judgment aside will result
in the complete love of God flowing through your soul and not one cell in your
body will be left untouched by His gratitude and love. You have dammed a free
flowing river, and as a result, you have not felt God’s complete gratitude and
love flowing through you. But by trusting the present moment, you are once again
putting your trust in God. Once you have done so, thousands of illusionary
bricks will fall, again letting the river flow free. The river will overflow its
banks, and you too will overflow with God’s gratitude and love. As the banks of
a flooding river cannot contain its waters, your ego-self will not be able to
prevent your Godself from extending and offering all that has been extended and
offered to you. As you extend this love to your brothers and sisters, your
gratitude and love towards them will grow, for as you extend love so too will
you experience it, its fullness, beauty and purity. Simply put judgment aside
and allow the present moment to be. If you do this, all your brothers and
sisters’ colors, races, religions, beliefs, actions and reactions will melt into
a pot of gratitude and love so fulfilling that peace of mind and joy will
forever overwhelm your heart and life.
Allow
me to offer you a way to live more peacefully in the moment. Try looking at a
brother you have never met and instead of calling him a stranger, call him a
friend. Instead of judging him for what he looks like, wears, does, acts or
reacts, or who he seems to be, simply look at this stranger and know him as a
friend. Outwardly, you might consider this possibility and say, "big deal, what
could changing one word and seeing a stranger as a friend possibly do?" I will
share with you that this simple act would completely change your world. You
might say that there is "no way that such a small shift could completely change
my world." For on a foggy day not so long ago, I also verbalized these same
thoughts. But today I invite you to give your heart honestly to this effort for
just one moment in time.
All of the
profits from the book You Have Chosen to Remember go to the charity StandUp for
Kids, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization founded in 1990 to help rescue
homeless and at-risk youth. To learn more about this great organization, please visit