This is What Happens When I 'wake up'.

Have you noticed that when you are paying attention, recurrent themes seem present.

My recurrent theme is judgement. Both self judgement and the judgment of others.

Recently I was at a social function. Given that I have come to realise that I am not at my optimum when I am in a large crowd, on this occasion I felt comfortable. I felt comfortable because most of the crowd I knew. MOST of them.

I love getting to know people. I mean, really know them. What they dream about, what they love to do as play, what they want to do with their life. That is me. I LOVE the intimate connection with people and the soulful exploration. Because of this, I love engaging with people in intimate, smaller settings and not large crowds. BUT there is another reason I like smaller groups! There are less 'judgements' to deal with.

At this gathering there were some unfamiliar people to me. While I am always interested in people, I provided some space for these people to be in the setting, settle in, breath into it...and then connect when appropriate. AND I did. AND it was perfect. Intimacy in a small group! Perfect. Love it. THEN...I was reminded what can happen when we allow other people's perception and judgment potentially alter our experience.

As I made a 'judgement' to one of the other guests about how fantastic I thought one of the new guests was in their behaviour, that guest took that opportunity to tell me an 'apparent' flaw that person had. And may I say, it was so super minor that I thought "Wow...I can't imagine what you must say about me".

This is the power of words.

I am reminded that words have the capacity to change an ENTIRE experience. They can form the most negative foundation of an interaction from that point. We all judge. It is what we do. I judge that tall, brown, woody, green leafed thing as a tree, I judge and up turned lip gesture as a happy smile, I judge...we judge lets be honest. BUT how we judge doesn't have to be as we judge!

Is it possible that for the day, just today, when we are out in the world, we pay attention to the thoughts we create about other people. The physical judgements, the emotional judgements, the experiential judgements...So today, I am going to try to 'judge' people as warm, learning, changeable, adventurous creatures...and just see what happens! Thats all. An experiment of sorts!

Oh and the person I positively 'judged' on their behaviour that night, the attempt to bring that person down that one of the other guests made...well, I realised how much I have grown. I didn't buy into it as I would have previously. I would have wanted to find out 'more' about these apparent flaws. Not now. For me, it said more about the 'judger' than the 'judged'...as it always does.

Is it possible, just for today...we judge with love. I wonder...is it??