Judgment Detox: Release the Beliefs That Hold You Back from Living A Better Life

by Gabrielle Bernstein

We get a quick hit of self-righteousness when we judge others. It’s a reliable little crutch when we feel hurt, insecure, or vulnerable. Our judgments toward others seem to make us feel better than them—smarter, savvier, more enlightened, healthier, or wealthier.

While we all have different stories that caused us to separate from love, we all have the same response to feeling alone in the world: fear.

One way we respond to that feeling of fear is to fight back through attacking and judging of others. It’s an attempt to build ourselves up and lean on judgment as our great protector.

Our popular culture and media place enormous value on social status, looks, racial and religious separation, and material wealth. We are made to feel less than, separate, and not good enough, so we use judgment to insulate ourselves from the pain of feeling inadequate, insecure, or unworthy. It’s easier to make fun of, write off, or judge someone for a perceived weakness of theirs than it is to examine our own sense of lack.

Whatever we resent or dislike in another person is a reflection of something we dislike in ourselves or a representation of a deep wound we’re unwilling to heal.

Often other people trigger our wounds. We judge them when this happens instead of accepting that the discomfort is really about us.

The spiritual path to clearing judgment begins with your honest inventory.

Offering up your judgment through prayer lifts the burden from your shoulders while signaling to the Universe that you are willing to see a person or situation differently, even if you’re not sure how to do it.

But when you practice seeing someone for the first time, you release them from the false projections you’ve put on them and the false beliefs that separate you.

Learning how to see others for the first time sets you up for the powerful practice of meditation.

Some of my greatest healing has occurred on my meditation pillow—

when you understand that when you judge, you’re really just looking for love.

In fact, attack, fear, judgment, and any form of separation are all just calls for help.

You want to be free. When you witness your judgment without judgment, accept that you have chosen fear, and remain open to receiving the help you’re calling for. You can liberate yourself from this pattern.

Being the nonjudgmental witness of your judgment is the first step in this detox.

We fear that if we let our guard down and act compassionately and lovingly toward one another that we will be taken advantage of and will no longer be safe.

Behind the wall of judgment lie our deepest feelings of inadequacy and shame.

When we witness our judgment with love, we can see ourselves as innocent children.

The spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle says, “The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.”

So instead of addressing our own feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness, we avoid our pain by fixating on what we perceive to be the shortcomings of others.

Remember, the reason you judge is because you’re avoiding an emotion that you don’t want to feel.