Discernment is key to compassion
Most of us are taught from a young age not to judge others, yet we all fall victim to doing so. However, our judgments don’t make us a hypocrites, they make us a human beings! Sometimes those of us who view ourselves as being “spiritually evolved” struggle the most with being judgmental. From a spiritual perspective, it is easy to recognize that being judgmental is not the best path. However, as human beings, it is almost impossible not to judge. Rather than viewing our being judgmental as a problem, I would recommend that we view it as an opportunity to learn how to become more compassionate.
In order to become more compassionate and less judgmental, we need to change our way of being from one of contraction to one of expansion. When we are in a contracted state, we are unable to gain access to the deepest and wisest parts of ourselves. Most of the time, we lie somewhere on the continuum between two poles. The key toward moving toward expansion is having a greater awareness of our thoughts and feelings.
The greatest obstacle to expansion and compassion is our tendency to divide the world into good/bad or us/ them. This is referred to as “splitting” or “black and white” thinking. When we are in a state of expansion, we are less vulnerable to this mode of perception, but when we are contracted, splitting can cast a hypnotic spell over us. Anytime we buy into the myth of separation (i.e., an “us” vs. “them” mentality), we fall in to the clutches of contraction. We fall into judgment, and therefore separation, when we give into the KEY » PAGE 4