Tag: dont judge

He’s Gonna Get His

When you experience, witness, or hear about someone’s wrongdoing, it’s easy to respond with a nonchalant, “He’s gonna get his,” which casts a powerful karmic spell. Take heed about wishing karma on someone because if it’s cast with malice or negative emotion it will backfire on you.

He’s Gonna Get His

This is a basic fact of the divine balanced nature of life. Everything that goes around comes around but it is not up to you or me to decide when, where, or how karmic justice will play out.

We can participate by casting our karmic spells, aligning ourselves with the justice of divinity. Your heart is a powerful energetic tool which can cause you to reap unforeseen karma yourself if you do not do so with a pure heart.

The saying, “He’s gonna get his,” is a shorthand reference to the more descriptive,

He is going to get what’s coming to him

That is to say, if someone thinks, says, or does something with malice of intent to take advantage of someone, to disrespect God or His creation, to do harm to someone or something, or even to neglect or ignore someone in need, that this will in some way revisit the very same person, in some way, possibly when he least expects it.

This gives us all a chance to revisit our selfishness, our egos, which for the most part run unbridled sometimes without a thought of how our thoughts, words, or our actions might affect others and the world around us.

Karma is not about revenge, karma is about love, about having the chance to make right that which was wrong in perfect balance and harmony. Karma is not about crime and punishment. Karma is about perfect love. Perfect love casts out all fear and all negative emotions which are connected to fear.

Karma is a bitch

How you can cast a karmic spell using the phrase, “Karma is a bitch,” with purity of heart is beyond me but it may be possible, if it can be said without any negative (fear-based) emotion.

Take heed: If you cast a negative karmic spell on someone, any negative emotion ricochets the spell back on you.

The Born Loser

The Born Loser refers to the person, who is not a bad person, but he just seems to have the worst luck No matter how hard he tries, he gets stuck in the never-ending cycle of bad luck, seemingly out of proportion to any deserved karma. Sometimes people will grab onto the idea that he is paying a karmic debt from a past life.

More often than not, if you dig deeper, you discover that he is paying the price of casting karmic spells with an impure heart.

The Born Loser is likely one who passes judgment on others quickly, and casts the karmic spell to in effect punish people whom he has defined as abusive or criminal and in need of a serious readjustment, not realizing that any negative emotion, which is not pure love, will bounce the karmic spell back onto he who has cast if.

While the Born Loser might be an extreme example, I think you get the idea.

You might know someone (someone you may know intimately, who might even be wearing the same skin as you) who seems to be experiencing a disproportionate degree of negative karma.

If you look closer, I think you will find that this person is casting negative karmic spells and reaping the rewards for doing so. I see it all the time. I think you will too, now that you know what to look for.

The cure is simple. Stop casting negative karmic spells.

It’s simple but it’s not easy to stop doing something you’ve been doing for a long time and instead; doing the opposite, casting spells of pure love, free from judgment or angst.

It doesn’t happen overnight (though I have seen people change instantly due to an epiphany or major paradigm shift) but you can learn to replace a negative thought with a loving thought.

All your effort to move from fear to will pay off in living a better life, your best life, and who knows? You might even end up making the world a better place.

It all starts right here, right now, if you choose. It’s your choice.

You can change your whole life

Note: While the theme of this article was written addressed in the masculine, it applies to the feminine just as well.

When Someone Judges You

When someone judges you, you feel slighted or are offended. Thankfully, for the most part, you have no idea how often you are judged by you, what they say behind your back, what they think or judgments they make about you which are rarely, if ever, spoken.

When you become aware that someone has assumed something about you which is not true based on some small detail which you thought was innocuous, but to them it triggered a whole lifetime of living, tracking information, categorization, and complicated belief and protective emotional and rational processing.

Often people come to quick conclusions based on their observations and perceptions so as to save valuable time in a fast-paced world, and as our world gets more and more fast-paced we assume and categorize more just because we don’t have the contact with people which would be required to really get to know someone.

People judge you because they don’t know you, who you really are, and because they lack self-confidence, feel threatened by you, or are preoccupied with fear.

When someone judges you, it is unfair and doesn’t adequately represent how you feel, what you do, or who you are no one would blame you for getting upset, angry, or having your feelings hurt when someone judges you.

What do you do when someone judges you unjustly?

Try not to take it personally.

I know that sounds like a tall order because how could you not take what someone thinks or says about you personally? I mean, it’s about you, right? How much more personal does it get?

Before you get defensive, you might consider that the person who has judged you prematurely, incorrectly, or unjustly may be doing so with very little regard for you.

When someone judges you, they do so based on their own lifetime of experience. The use of one word or phrase, a particular style of apparel or makeup, your choice of material goods or services, the way you walk or look at someone, even your tone of voice and the way you breathe. Any or all these things (and many more) can trigger a whole subroutine spanning years of collected data connected to someone’s negative past, and you are judged.

Let’s face it no one knows you better than you and if you could cut yourself, and your judge, a little slack, for certain there is no way that the person who has judged you could possibly know everything about you which would prove the injustice of his or her judgment based on very little real data.

You are offended, and you recoil from someone’s brash assumptions about something that couldn’t be further from the truth, and you feel like defending yourself or feel the inclination to give them a piece of their own medicine and spend time analyzing and judging the person who has judged you.

If you were honest with yourself, you could admit that you also have a propensity to judge others prematurely. We all do it to varying degrees. It is part and parcel of the human condition.

Thousands of years ago sage advice was handed down to us to, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” and, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Indicators that this cycle of judgment of others and separating ourselves from others based on appearances or assumptions has been going on for a long time.

When someone judges you, it feels like abuse, and in many cases, it could be viewed as abusive behavior. This judgmental cycle of abuse could be stopped if more people would stop projecting their own perceptions onto others, though this would be not easy undertaking.

Nonetheless, there is a change taking place, and others are starting to exercise concerted efforts not to judge others, and you could be one of them.

Plus, the law of attraction is at play here, for when you judge others, you attract more judgment from others.

You could try not to judge others because you don’t like being judged by others. You can take the high road and set a good example of how we can better respect each other in a world that is spinning out of control.

The next time someone judges you, remember their assumption have very little to do with you, it is more based on his or her own fear, anger, or insecurities, for if they were more motivated by love, they might be more understanding of you and others.

Love, authentic love, doesn’t judge. Love seeks to understand, is empathetic, and compassionate.

Love is good, kind, and realizes that we, all of us, are simply doing the best we can with what we have, and offers others the same rights and privileges, that we might like to have for ourselves.

Diagnosing Everyone

There are those of us who are in the mental health arenas, either professionally or as laypeople, who have varying degrees of knowledge of a variety of mental health disorders. Once you have access to this kind of information, you can fall into the trap of diagnosing everyone you meet or know as having a particular mental disease or disorder.

Some of these people are doctors, therapists, coaches, patients and/or curious bystanders.

It’s easy, once you get access to a certain amount of information, to consider yourself an expert, as you start to diagnose everyone you come across as having a problem.

In some cases, learning about certain mental disorders can be very valuable, such as dealing with someone you know personally, maybe intimately, who may (or may not) suffer from a mental disorder or disease.

Having a good understanding about how someone might react in certain circumstances can help you understand and deal with them when the face challenges or tend to react in ways that don’t seem normal to you.

This can be very helpful in helping you to determine if someone is “safe” to be around or have access to intimate details of your life, especially if they can have a negative effect on your life. You have every right to determine who has access to and influence in the life that you live.

Early detection of certain personality types, and of people who may be toxic, abusive, or potentially dangerous, is hugely advantageous.

Even so, diagnosing everyone is an unhealthy approach to building community and it keeps people separated by categorizing traits, which may not be signs of a mental disease or disorder at all.

This fits perfectly into the judge matrix.

The judge matrix keeps us separated from our peers because we can quickly determine what we do not like or approve of in someone else as we categorize those around us, placing individuals in a box of likeminded folks.

Doctors, therapists, counselors, and professionals in all trades do this; it is a widely accepted (and promoted) practice, but it not a high-vibration activity.

Admittedly, it may be an effective way to manage and filter through a wide variety of people and may enhance your ability to focus and save countless hours of discovery and therapy, it is unjust, and not conducive to promoting individuality, freedom, peace, and harmony.

The judge matrix destroys community, fosters separation and dissention, and is harmful to the potential expansion and evolution of the human race.

If you must diagnose clients as part and parcel of your day-job, or must attempt to diagnose someone in an effort to keep yourself safe from potential loss or harm, then do so, but do not let your judgment spread to your circle of influence, or the community at large.

Diagnosing others is judging them based on a very limited amount of data, and you cannot know a person well enough be evaluating a short list of “red flags.”

Mental disorders or diseases are not the only way we categorize, diagnose, separate, and judge others. This applies to all categorizations which separate people into groups.

It is socially acceptable to sort people by gender, health status, age, height, color of eyes or hair, income, political views, religion, race, physical location or address (or lack of physical home address), media preferences, even the clothes they wear, and the cars they drive, amid a nearly endless list of categories to judge and separate others by.

Judging others is not good medicine.

One of my personal heroes said, “Judge not, lest you be judged.” And is akin to, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Unless “Judge” is part of your job title or job description (or necessary for personal protection) then it should be avoided. Even so, if you are required to judge, keep it focused on only the areas when and where it is warranted, and try to celebrate the differences of anyone else.

Judge if you must, then move on, loving and accepting others for who and what they are, regardless of their individual characteristics. Don’t take judgment home or to your community.

After all, aren’t we all just doing the best that we can with what we have?

I know I am.

And I love you just the way you are.

Only a Fool Would Say That

Even though we like the welcoming, warm feeling that comes from being surrounded by like-minded people, there is no impetus to try to convert others from one point of view to yours. Certainly, there are people you like or admire whom you would like to have join you on your journey, and maybe they can be great traveling companions, but to try to convert them from where they are to where you are, is unwise, if not possible.

It’s not to say that they couldn’t come around or eventually find their way to a more resonant vibration if that is part of their journey in this life. It is not incumbent upon you to save anyone from anything or to make someone think the way you do.

I like having many different kinds of people joining me on my journey while trying to be mindful and not judge people for being who they are. At first blush, this might look like a politically correct “celebrating diversity,” but it’s much more than that. It’s not looking at the diversity (diversity is a form of judgment), it’s allowing anyone, everyone, to simply be. To be who they are, where they are, to come and go as they please.

Just because someone else might share a particular resonance with you today, does not imply they we resonate with you tomorrow. We are all on our own journeys, our paths cross from time to time, to stay in one place too long leads to complacency and stagnation. You must keep moving if you want to continue to grow, change, and evolve into the best version of yourself, and allow others to do the same.

If you disagree with someone’s point of view, to criticize them for their belief is an act of violence. To impose your belief on someone else suggests you are supporting yourself with a sense of superiority, in essence looking down on someone else for not being as enlightened as you. You might even insinuate or call them a fool, as you sit on your self-endowed high throne of superiority.

Only a fool would say,
Only a fool would say that.

On your own road of enlightenment, you may be able to recall concepts which you held close to your heart, things that you believed so much and held so dearly, that you would defend them with everything you’ve got, even possibly give your life in defense of it, only to find out later, that belief no longer serves you. How could you not bless someone else for being on a similar journey on their own path to enlightenment?

No two journeys are the same. Even amongst the like-minded people you share experiences with, none of them followed the same path you followed to get to this point in time. Some may have had similar journeys but no two are the same, even if you’ve traveled hand-in-hand along the way.

To judge someone else for their beliefs is to disrespect their journey, and doing so explicitly demonstrates your lack of tolerance. For as much as you feel more awake or enlightened than someone else, to devalue another for where they are on their path is preventing your expansion, tethering you to your barbarian roots.

Pick Your Perspective

Fear or Love

Judgment or Tolerance

Tolerance is the polar opposite of judgment. Judgment is rooted in fear, tolerance is powered by love.

When you meet someone who believes something differently than you do, bless them, try to see their belief from their perspective, love and accept them for who they are, where they are, and celebrate their life, without the imposition of your beliefs.

This is not to say that you cannot share your perspective, certainly, you may, but do so with love and compassion, only to leave clues for someone to ponder along their journey.

To debate, to try to convince or convert someone is barbarism. Aren’t you ready to cut the cord that binds you to those archaic thought forms and leave them behind?

What if you’re on the receiving end?

How do you feel when someone tries to convince you that you are wrong and that you must change your mind or life to align with his or hers? No doubt, you can feel the barbarianism behind that approach when you are on the receiving end.

Your first response to being attacked by someone is

Fight or Flight

You could turn and run, or post up, defend your position and prepare to engage in a battle of wits, or you could choose to

Love

When you choose to love someone who is assaulting you, you try to see things from their point of view. Encourage them to share their thoughts and feelings, expressing explicitly their point of view, and blessing them for where they are on their journey with compassion, not condemnation.

If you are safe and secure in what you believe, you have no need to defend it. You are impenetrable. If you harbor doubt and fear about what you believe, you are more apt to take a defensive stance, because there’s a part of you (that higher part of you) that is incongruent with your belief, so the ego takes over and prepares to battle in an effort to impose congruency by brute force.

Seeing different people as different, through the eyes of fear, building walls and separating them leads to chaos. You know that. Take a look around… You see it every day.

Seeing people as harmonious, through the eyes of love, allows you to see the perfection in everyone and everything. From this vantage point, you can see everything is connected and perfect.

Just the Same Only Different

Different people do things for different reasons. Sometimes they do the same things for very different reasons, so we (especially those in the help professions) have to be careful about stating anything affirmatively as being true 100% of the time because the truth of the matter is that nothing is true 100% of the time (or at least, very little).

One person might do something or display a certain characteristic, while another might do exactly the same thing only for very different reasons. Just the same, only different.

One person might hang up the phone in the middle of a heated conversation defensively because they are fearful that they might say something in their defense which might hurt the other person’s feelings, make matters worse, or utter something they think they might regret later. Another person might hang up the phone in the middle of a heated conversation as an act of aggression, purposefully with the intent of making the other person enraged. Just the same, only different.

In Star Wars Episode 8, Luke Skywalker and Ben Solo tell the same story very differently. Each one from their own perspective, each one being truthful based on their own experience and understanding. Just the same, only different.

For instance, I spend a little of my time helping victims of psychopaths because I know what they’re going through. Even though this type of work does not resonate well with the rest of my work, I do a little of it out of reverence for my own experience and my empathy for others having to deal with this kind of tragedy.

So, I have put out a book, put up a website, and created a video in an attempt to help these people as much as I can. One of the ways I try to help victims of psychopaths and potential victims is by trying to help them to detect a potential psychopath early on, so I list six characteristics that can help someone identify a potential psychopath quickly and easily in a brief 10-minute video in an attempt to help as many people as I can as quickly as possible, without making it so complicated.

Of course, this is in no way an official diagnosis which would take a professional a great deal of time and study reviewing over 100 characteristics and behavioral expressions. It is what it is, a simple tool that is quick and easy to use.

As you know, if you put yourself out there to do anything good, haters will come out in droves to try to knock you down. Based on that 10-minute video, I have been attacked and ridiculed, but I don’t take it personal, nor do I take it too seriously. I am also more resilient and am for the most part unmoved by their attempts to hurt my feelings, so I am grateful to be their target, which might defer their inclination to attack someone else who might be devastated by such a virtual assault.

Thankfully, I get praised both by victims and potential victims for having the intention to help and put the information out there for them to find, far more frequently than I get put down by people who are just doing the best they can with what they have, as am I.

If I say (as I do in this brief video) that psychopaths are charismatic, it does not imply that anyone who is charismatic is a psychopath, nor does it imply that all psychopaths are charismatic, to assume so would be at the very least unwise.

No matter what human characteristic or action you are reviewing from your perspective, you cannot know what is, or was, actually going on at the time because you can never truly know what is going on inside another person’s head. It is just not possible. Even if the person in question desperately wants you to know what it was like to be him or her in that moment in time, no matter how they try to convey the totality of this information to you, you cannot really know.

Each one of us is very different, and there are personality traits that in general seem to accumulate around certain types of people but these are only generalizations, and they are not 100% accurate in all people at all times. These are only general observations over time, tracked and cataloged by people who are doing the best they can to help others.

People who help other people as part of their work, ministry, or in the answering of their calling, use these categorization techniques to try to ascertain how best to help someone in an analytical approach to whatever is challenging them at the particular time, without having to invest hours trying to uncover the complex backstory of a potential client or patient.

“I killed a man.”

This is a powerful statement, which at first blush evokes an emotional response and might have you thinking about the death penalty, an eye for an eye, or some other such notion. Nonetheless, many people might find themselves in a particular situation where such an act might be prudent, part of your job description, or even financed by a municipal, federal or other government agency.

Depending on not only the facts and circumstances surrounding the killing, but what was going on in the mind of the person who committed the act at the time, and ever since, can be very different than you might be able to conceive of from your perspective.

Of course, actions which we make, based on decisions that we make, in every step that we take of our life’s journey need not be tragic or life-changing and can range from littering or parking in a handicapped parking spot to cheating on a test or speeding on the interstate, all for reasons you and I could not possibly know unless you or I are the transgressor.

Still, if you witness such an act from your own perspective, it’s easy to jump to conclusions, make assumptions, or judge someone for doing something that you might feel would be against your own personal knowledge, convictions, or morals.

Like on Facebook, one person might want to post on their relationship status, “In a relationship,” because they’re engaged to be married, while the other partner has nothing on their relationship status because… well, who knows. And what difference does it make?

There’s no need to get yourself all worked up over someone else’s life. They (just like you and I) are just trying to do the best they can with what they have. It doesn’t make them a psychopath, sociopath, obsessive-compulsive megalomaniac with narcissistic tendencies or any other conclusion that you might jump to, it just doesn’t really matter, unless you are being attacked personally, then… maybe… some other steps might need to be taken.

But, if it’s just in the fantasy world of social media, try to take it for what it is. What you see there does not define you, nor anyone else. Just have fun with it and try not to let yourself get out of sorts over it.

Don’t let it get to you.

If someone says something crazy about you on the Internet, don’t pay it any attention. It’s not for real. If there is no foundation for it, do not dignify someone’s rant or attack with a response, even if it’s brought up to you in a real-life situation by an uninterested third-party.

Keep this in mind: If you don’t want to be judged, refrain from judging others.

It’s okay. There is much love here for you.

 

Kill Them All

When a megalomaniac doesn’t like the idea of other groups of people possessing opposing views, he or she might insist the dissidents be silenced with little regard to innocent casualties. “Kill them all!” was a swift and effective command of the Catholic Church during the Crusades for cleansing a geographic area of heretics. Trying to ascertain who might be Catholic or not in a targeted area was simply too time consuming and inefficient, so when the Pope was questioned about whether fellow Catholics might be killed in the attacks, he added, some form of, “God knows who are his,” to the command to kill them all.

Later, the phrase and similar basic idea was adopted by United States military special forces as, “Kill them all and let God sort them out.”

Similarly, the royal charge to silence dissidence, “Off with his head,” represents the most effective way to silence someone who is resistant to compliance, especially if the dissident has anything to say about it. This phrase was adopted by popular culture and is demanded by the Queen of Hearts in Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland.

Ever since Cain and Abel, when the human ego feels as though it has been slighted, disrespected, or has suffered an injustice, a swift killing is the most effective method of making things right.

Instantaneous death is admittedly the most effective way to silence someone who doesn’t think or believe like you do.

Your ego (my ego, all of our egos) wants others to think, believe, and feel the way it does, and the unrestrained ego expects and demands compliance. In fact, the unrestricted ego believes sudden death is suitable punishment for anyone (or anything) that gets in its way.

How early in life does this appear in life? Hang out and listen to an active playfield in at any grade school in the USA and you will hear at least one child whose ego has been the victim of an assault utter, “I will kill you,” or alternatively, “I hope you die,” or wishing sudden death visits one or more of his/her classmate(s).

While this may appear to be barbarian and you might like to think that we are too civilized these days to adopt such philosophies, assuming we are far more likely to suggest something more civil, like, “Lock him up and throw away the key,” because that is a far more enlightened response than suggesting someone lop his head off.

Yet, all the assertions of, “I am right,” and, “You are wrong,” and holding onto the expectation that anyone could truly align with someone else’s way of thinking is simply too far from logic to be conceived of. To kill, imprison, brainwash, or otherwise punish someone into compliance is not sustainable.

For instance, we, as a society, are imprisoning Americans at an increasing rate every year. In fact, if things don’t change and we keep incarcerating people at current increasing rates, in the next forty years, you will either be in prison or working for a prison. Unsustainable.

The courts maintain (much like the Pope during the Crusades) spending too much time, money, and effort to sort out the details is far more ineffective than making more rules and erring on the side of punishing innocents. In effect, “Jailing them all,” and let God figure it out.

This more civilized method of keeping our streets clean, and removing the free-thinking, non-compliant, poor, mentally-challenged, or undesirables from society seems to be a solution we all can live with. Or can we?

As the current human evolution continues, the more evolved or enlightened individuals realize that punishing people for not thinking the way we do is not the answer.

What is the answer?

Where’s the Integrity?

Wait-a-minute, if I have integrity and I give someone my word (like I will do something at some point in the future), well, that’s then and this is now. If I’ve told someone I was going to do something in the past, that was so then and it doesn’t matter now. So, if I make a promise to you, it doesn’t matter? What about someone else’s promise to me? Where’s the integrity in that?

Want the truth? Nothing really matters.

You just have to realize that life on planet earth is a lot of some-will-some-won’t-next. If you can wrap your head around this, you will be okay, but it’s hard, because we’re not programmed to allow what is to be.

I am a product of my programming and I have a huge Integrity component. I feel like, if I tell someone something, it must be true and it’s up to me to make it true no matter what the cost because I want to be remembered as an intengrous person, one who has always kept his word. For the longest time, I thought, if my tombstone had anything on it, it should read, “Here lies an honest man. If nothing else, he was good to his word.” Which sounds good on the surface, but if you look at it, there it is: Lies and Honest in the same reference, as if it was to be something good.

And what does it mean to be good to your word?

Is it really any good to suffer through pain, turmoil, tragedy, confusion and angst, just because you uttered certain words in the heat of the moment? How good is that? Wouldn’t it be more good to say, “Sorry, something came up. I just can’t make it.”?

I can hear all the Eckhart Tolle fans starting to murmur in the background about my finally starting to get a clue.

I mean, what kind of a prison have I committed myself to?

Actually, I do maintain a high level of integrity, although I must admit, I am less happy than the folks who are actively more apt to be less integrous and live in the now.

Take a look at someone you know who has no idea about what it means to keep their word – no concept of it – because they’re so blissfully living in the now. What do you see? Happiness. They truly have found a way to be content and joyful, by disregarding anything that isn’t and only seeing what is.

As I move away from selfishness and more toward allowing what is to be, I find myself less judgmental against someone whom I might have considered a liar in the past. Why? Because this is the unrealistic expectation I had of myself. This was my standard. I militantly adhered to the ridiculous concept that if I were to utter a certain sequence of words at any time, and if they were not manifest as I had uttered them, then I would be a liar and deserving of severe punishment (at least personal berating). So, it was not unreasonable for me to hold others to the same standard.

Say something. If it does not manifest as you said, you were a liar. (Oh, silly Masters.)

I have to credit business principles for introducing me to concepts, like, some-will-some-won’t-next. It is a reference commonly used to put salespeople at ease in their dealing with rejection. When you pitch your spiel, then there are only two possible outcomes, followed by your best course of action: Next; keep it moving.

That’s all well and good in business but to apply it to life was well beyond my ability to comprehend. What about integrity?

Really? What about it?

Where is the integrity in life?

“Life is the least integrous system ever conceived.”

If anything, life (as we know it) is the least integrous system ever conceived. It is full of chaos, dysfunction, unexpected twists and turns and for god’s sake, even such random acts as to be referred to as acts of god!

And through all this confusion, if you’re listening, you start to hear the gentle flow of isness in the background; that soothing vibration of allowing things to be as they are. It doesn’t mean you don’t get your feelings hurt, suffer pain or loss along the way. By all means, do. Cry, scream, rant, rave – whatever your fancy – then be done with it.

Next. Keep it moving…

In life,
some things will work out the way you wanted
Some won’t.
Next.

Thank god for the many nexts we are afforded in this life.

Amen.

Perception Interpretation

How many times have you found yourself offended by the words and deeds of another person that may have been unwarranted? Even if you knew your feelings were likely unjust, still you found yourself filled with angst and fury and lashed out or made a rash decision based on the emotional whirlpool pulling you down to your lowest desperate state.

So you strike out, do or say something in your defense because in this emotional chaos, you can think of nothing more than self preservation at all costs.

You rationalize your thoughts and actions based on the truth you are able to extract from the all the data that you have access to. Using your perception you convert the results of your research and statistics to come to a cognitive conclusion justifying the torrential chaos you felt in that moment based on your interpretation.

perception interpretation what is truth rash decision perception is reality

This happens every day, and how can you blame anyone for perceiving everyday occurrences via their individual perception? You can’t. Why? Because we can only determine that is really truth from within. Only we know what is true for us based on our own interpretation of the information available to us at the time.

In example, take a look at Jasmine and Darnell. They are in their early thirties, recently involved in a romantic courtship and things are going so very well. They are professing their love for each other and even talking about spending the rest of their lives together.

On their six month anniversary, Darnell makes reservations for a quaint bistro, picks up a card and a teddy bear with a heart on its tummy and presents them to Jasmine when he comes calling to pick her up for their scheduled date.

Jasmine greets him at the door enthusiastically. Darnell holds out the bear and card to Jasmine, as her countenance immediately shifts to contempt and anger. She throws the bear into the street, rips the card into pieces and throws the pieces at Darnell’s face and kicks him off the porch while shouting disrespectful obscenities and slams the door as Darnell falls to the ground.

After driving away and pulling over to the side of the road, Darnell texts Jasmine, which does not go through, then tries to call to discover his number’s already been blocked.

Looking for emotional support, the couple reaches out to their friends in an effort to cope with the ensuing chaos. Jasmine tells her friends that Darnell is a manipulative predator, nothing short of a rapist, while Darnell spins tales of Jasmine’s severe mental disorders. Friends rally around the couple. Damages follow, some that are irreparable.

Knowing the details of Jasmine’s struggle with her past doesn’t justify her outburst and reaction to the otherwise innocuous display of affection. Issues she’s been battling within since childhood predicted her response with high-precision accuracy. Likewise, Darnell’s accusations of Jasmine’s mental instability were based on triggers from his past.

From their perspective they are both telling stories based on the truth they believe, as real to them as gravity, yet things aren’t always what they seem and neither of them have as much information as I have (purposely filtered) additionally I am certain there is much more information yet to be uncovered.

Jasmine would fare much better in the same circumstance today, because she has worked though many of the unresolved issues of her past and while she still tends to be quite impulsive, is training herself to pause (and count to three to herself) before responding, reacting or pressing “send” when she is feeling overwhelmed. This brief hesitation gives her just enough space to consider possibilities, and ramifications and helps her to manage her truth and consequences.

Don’t judge someone based on surface information because you may have no idea what lies beneath the surface. We all have lives consisting of a plethora of past experiences, beliefs, and misinterpretations the sum of which has gotten us this far. After all, we’re all doing the best we can with what we have. This is why we are cautioned to never judge a book by its cover.

If we are to have any faith in our ability to successfully share this planet with other inhabitants, we must find ways to stop dividing us one against the other, discover how to get along with each other and accept that we are all parts of the same soup, even though we all are so very different.

No one is blaming you or me for our perception or interpretation, because in heat of the moment it’s all we have to determine what is truth as it influences how i feel about you, how you feel about me and how we feel about ourselves.

In fact in all things perception is reality and subject to change pending accumulation of additional data.

Pausing in an effort to avoid making a rash decision or burning a bridge beyond repair like Jasmine does now, might be sound advice for all of us.

All you can do is to try not to judge or react too promptly, accept others for who they are and where they are at in their life’s journey and discover how to make yourself happy as you live a better life. A little tolerance goes a long way.

For me, I try to imagine what it must be like to the person who is reacting, put myself in their shoes and look for the love. While I haven’t perfected this method because I too, can react in self defense in the heat of the moment… but as immediately as possible look with empathy for love in the wings.

We’re all in process, for if we weren’t, we would not be. Let’s make the best of it.