Judgments are an integral and inescapable part of being a human being, and certainly of being in relationship with other human beings. Even the most spiritual among us still judge each other to no end.

When you feel judged by a partner, you often react strongly against it, fighting to prove it wrong. When you’re the one judging your partner, your kids, or anyone in your life, you might be reticent to admitting that you’re indeed passing judgment.

Our judgments of others can be used productively in several different ways which is covered in this podcast.

They contain a plethora of information about ourselves and our world.

For example, judgments ...

• Reveal our values and what we care about.
• Point to our dreams and our desires, for we usually want the opposite of what we judge.
• Showcase our past, our history, our identity. Decisions we have made from our pain and our joys.
• Display to us our unenforceable rules, the codes of conduct we have written for ourselves and other
• Lets us know how much we don't understand or know about another person or another point of view.
• Illuminate the confines of our thinking and reveal our lack of curiosity and openness to that which is unknown, foreign, different and uncomfortable.
• Reveal to us our shadow, our unconscious material (we often judge in others what lives in us unseen). I project my shadowed aspect on to others.
• Reveal aspects of ourselves and our lives that we don't allow or push away, and point to where we would benefit from expanding and growing.
• Show us where we have closed off our hearts and could stand to love more.

In this podcast, you will discover how to use your judgements of others to gain insight into yourself, and how to ultimately replace judgments with understanding, compassion, forgiveness, empowerment and even love - for yourself and others.

Once you can more flexibly work with your own judgments of others, and others’ judgments of you, you might even have fun with it.

Sonika will sometimes say to me with a grin, “You are one judgmental bastard!” To which I respond, “It’s true”. On another occasion, she said, knowing my prolific judgments of TV watching, “I’m going to watch TV now - wanna judge me?” To which I replied, “Yes, I do. Let me tell you what I think about that ….” :)