I remember how I used to stand in the queue at the supermarket checkout, a never-ending stream of judgement flowing through about the rubbish people were buying, about the state of their bodies. It was disgusting to me. They were disgusting to me.
And all the while I was struggling with my own disordered eating.
Now when I stand in the queue at the checkout, that stream of judgement isn’t there. I just see people with lives and stories I don’t know or understand and I look at them and see myself.
I saw so clearly through this particular experience that truly it is only possible to stand in judgement of others when you are in some way standing in judgement of yourself. When you beat yourself up with your internal dialogue, you can’t help but do the same to others. If those people disgusted me, it was only because, somewhere, although it wasn’t a conscious awareness, I was deeply disgusted with myself.
Realising the deeper truth of who you are – not the ego, separate self – but the pure consciousness, BEing Self, you just see that you’re such a pure and innocent thing, no matter what behaviour might have been layered on top. And there’s so much compassion that comes then. You stop hating yourself for not being able to change your eating habits, for not being able to stop bingeing or whatever your thing is and suddenly the judgement has been replaced by this growing compassion. And because you have compassion for yourself, you can’t help but have it for others because you’ve also seen…
that we are one.
And so you really get to see that judging yourself is judging others. And judging others is judging yourself.
And strangely, ever so strangely, I found that the less I judged myself for what I kept on doing or what I couldn’t stop doing, the less of a hold that thing seemed to have and it just sort of began to change all by itself. And if there was a ‘relapse’, if there is a relapse, that was and is also ok.
But I wouldn’t advise anyone to ‘try and stop judging yourself’, that seems just the same as ‘trying to stop bingeing’. Instead I’d say to look more deeply into the truth of who you are, because it’s that realisation that cuts the judgement off and plants seeds of compassion in your heart.
That compassion will grow and grow. And it will heal things you thought might never be healed.
Love and courage,
Leah