This morning I woke up and realized that I had been in judgment land last night. I could hear the conversation I had had playing over in my head. I was literally telling someone what I thought someone else should be doing with his life. I really believed that I somehow had the right to criticize how someone else was living his life. It is mind boggling to me that I would have the audacity to even think those things let alone to articulate them to someone else.

Let’s turn the tables for a second. What if someone was telling a mutual friend what she thought I should be doing with my life? How would that make me feel? Not so good, right? Maybe I would even get to the point of being pissed off. Nobody has the right to tell me what I should be doing with my life.

That is absolutely correct, no one has the right to tell me how I should live my life or what I should be doing with it. NO ONE!

So when I had some distance from the situation I realized that as it was happening I was not in a place of peace. I literally had ended up in the land of pain and suffering. Nothing positive was coming out of that conversation. I pride myself on the fact that I don’t judge and here I was judging.

What are the benefits to judging? What do we get out of it? We must derive some kind of benefit or we wouldn’t do it.

I can only tell you what my experience is. And that is that somehow I feel that I am better than they are, that I know more than they know, that I have the answers and they don’t.

When you really start to analyze it you quickly see how judgment land is not a place you want to visit, let alone inhabit. You realize how the small self has brought you to this place that is really ugly. It feels dark and heavy. It is joyless.

How do you exit judgment land? By giving praise to everyone and everything you will emerge from the trappings of the ego. Your state of mind will immediately be altered. The light will come streaming through you. You will have entered the land of peace and happiness.

Allow the light to pour through you! This is your purpose on this planet: to extend the light of God.