Healing Separation

It seems that one of the roadblocks we continually face on the spiritual path is judgment—judgment towards others and judgment towards ourselves. Have you ever stopped yourself in the middle of a condemning statement just in time to realize that you were right in the middle of judgment?

At the root of judgment is our sense that we are separate. You are out there (object) and I am in here (subject). We not only experience separation with others, we can experience separation within ourselves. For instance, we objectify certain characteristics within ourselves that we find objectionable. Whenever they surface in our lives we pass judgment on them.

You can catch yourself doing this whenever you say something nasty to yourself like, “What an idiot you are!” or “That was stupid!”. We can also catch ourselves in judgment towards others when we say the exact same things! When someone cuts us off on the freeway we can be quick to say, “What an idiot!”.

What if we were to meet judgment at the source of the problem, by looking at separation and our tendency to objectify that which we find uncomfortable to look at? If we were to embrace everything as being a part of ourselves we would remove things from being ‘out there’ to putting them ‘in here’. This would make every thing become one thing.

Whenever we see something in others, it is also in us. This is a hard truth to swallow. We have been raised to see ourselves in comparison to others and to rate our worth on how we measure up in comparison to others. Just remember for a moment those star charts in elementary school and you can realize how early on this tendency towards seeing ourselves as separate from one another started. Of course, it started even earlier than that.

Perhaps we could start integrating all of this disparity and separation by practicing a simple mantra. It goes like this: “I am that also.” The force behind all healing is the power of love. If I am able to draw into myself and embrace that which I find objectionable and love it, I am able to heal it.

For example, when I see a quality or behavior in someone else that I find unkind or un-thoughtful or objectionable in any way, I can first respond by saying, “I am that also.” I can then hold this in my heart and ask that love be there to embrace this quality as I find it in need of healing in myself as well.

We all exist with everything inside us—the good the bad, the positive and the negative. Both polarities of every quality have the ability to manifest within us. What I choose to manifest and what I choose to remain un-manifest is a matter of consciousness. The more aware I am of my choices the more control I have over what shows up in my life.

If I am able to embrace the negative polarity, I can transmute those qualities that I dislike through the power of love. The indwelling Christ power and the presence of the Spirit within me can become a powerful source of transformation. By identifying with the negative polarity and saying, “I am that also”, I am able to hold these qualities in the light of transforming power and transmute them into the positive qualities that I want to see in my life and in the world. This releases me from the negative cycle of perpetual judgment and brings me into alignment with the power of One.