31 Jan The Key To Understanding Judgement (And How To Stop It)
Follow Your Arrow Wherever It Points
If you saw the Grammy Awards last Sunday, you most likely saw Kasey Musgraves. The young singer won both Country Song of the Year and Best Country Album. But it was the live performance of her tune, “Follow Your Arrow” that cleverly shined a light on a subject that permeates our lives and our culture more often than we’d like – judgment.
Why do we judge ourselves? Judgment often occurs because we’ve bought into the conversation that we’re somehow defective, broken or not good enough, wrong or less than. In a courtroom, you are innocent until proved guilty. In the world, you’ve already tried and convicted yourself before anyone’s even pointed a finger. Therefore, when someone labels you or judges you, you readily accept the sentence because you’ve already tried and convicted yourself. Judgment, whether it’s received or shared, is born of unworthiness. If you accept the judgment of another person, you’re unworthy. If you choose to judge another, you’re unworthy. It all comes back to you.
Why do we feel the pressing need to judge to others? We may have never put a name to it, but the illusion of “otherness” and separation is where judgment takes root. Otherness is created by your own mental evaluation of who other people are. It is based on your criteria of life and living, and whether others are or are not living life the way you feel they should be. They either meet your criteria or they fall short. If they’re not living life the way you feel they should, you may mentally ostracize them, diminish them or make them less than. This is all born of otherness – born of one person seeing another as separate, different, weird or simply something other than them. You may think, “as long as I see you as different, I can judge you, grill you,or sentence you because I’m doing it to YOU.” Your otherness makes you believe they are the accused, but ultimately the hard, cold gavel of realization comes down with a bang and delivers the verdict – the person you’re actually judging, trying and sentencing is you.
We can break free our cycle of judgment by shifting our energy away from our feelings of lack and shame and uncovering our true, brilliant self. We can transform our energy that stays hidden in the darkness and bring our authenticity and innate soulfulness to the light.
Kacey Musgraves’ song is a testament to going with the flow, following your intuition and doing what comes authentically and naturally to you. It’s about allowing yourself to live your truest expression. When you abide in that space, it’s almost as if it renders you immune to judgment. You become so filled with love that if someone tries to label or judge you, you don’t accept it – reaching a point where there is nothing to shield yourself from because there’s just nowhere for an insult, a label or a judgment to land.
So follow your arrow. Follow your own compass. Do what you want to do, what lights you up, what you’re called to do instead of getting stuck in what other people say or their expectations of how you’re supposed to live or be. In the end, no matter how you show up, people are going to judge you anyway. They may be afraid of your light, your freedom or your power. When you to abide in the love and fullness of who you are, you do not accept a sentence handed down by others nor do you hand one down to anyone else. Diminishing other people only diminishes you.
And you are far too amazing for that.
