Your Judger Needs Your Loving Attention
I have two sisters. Pam is the oldest, Nancy is the youngest, and I am the middle child. Pam lives locally, but Nancy moved to California many years ago. Recently, Nancy drove up and we all had a family reunion with our kids. Being with family members can be joyful and challenging. I find it fascinating as I watch what I am experiencing when we are together.
Siblings can be a very powerful place to bring up what has been bound up inside of you since you were young. They are the only people on this planet that lived with and experienced the same family that you did. When you are with them as adults, great love can show up, but also judgment, competition, comparison, anger, irritation, feelings of better than or less than, and even despair. All of these states are asking to be set free through your willingness to see them rather than identify with them.
From ages 12 through 18, I shared a bedroom with Pam. There were two twin beds and two chests of drawers jammed into a small room with a tiny path that was barely big enough for one person to squeeze through, let alone two. So, we were always in each other’s “space.” Growing up, I truly believed Pam hated me. I was the younger sister, and my perception was that she judged me mercilessly. It was agony for me, especially sharing a room with her, and so I turned to food, which was my earliest compulsion. It was the only way I could comfort the fear, shame and loneliness inside of me. As I gained weight, it amplified my self-hatred and despair. When I am with Pam now, my heart is simply open to her because I have met all the different parts of myself that lived in such hopeless despair when I was a teenager.
Nancy stayed with me while she was in town and during that time, I noticed that self-judgment came for a visit. Here and there, I would recognize that my mind was saying statements like: “You should have done this when you were 10,” and “You did this wrong when you were 12,” and “Why did you do that when you were 18?” But I was also able to recognize that the judger was just trying to protect the deeper vulnerabilities that can be there when we are around family, and I could be with the judger rather than turning to compulsions, like I did so many years ago. Rather than buying into what it was saying, I could acknowledge it and then let go of its story and come back to being with what was happening at that living moment of my life.
What would it be like if you didn’t judge your judger, whether it is judging you or others? What would it be like if you saw it as a protector, trying to whip you into shape so you don’t feel so much pain (which never works in the long run)? What would happen in your life if rather than buying into what the judger is saying (it never sees the truth), instead it opens your heart? When you begin to recognize that judgment is only here when there is some kind of vulnerability that you are experiencing, you then can become curious about what the judger is trying to protect. And say hello to that part of you that probably has been waiting for a very long time for somebody to acknowledge it and honor its world. And if you can’t see what the judger is protecting, ask Life to show you.
The next time you are with family, especially your siblings, and you notice that your judger is present, can you meet yourself exactly as you are? Can you simply listen to what is going on inside of you? Whatever is there will be so grateful that you are no longer running away from yourself when it crops up. As you meet the judgmental part of yourself (without judgment), you will come to recognize that it is just bound up energy that needs your loving attention in order to be set free.
Image – “Three Sisters” by Artist Maria Pace-Wynters http://mariapacewynters.com/