Step Seventy-Six

 Releasing Judgment and Allowing Others to Have Their Process By Tiela Garnett

Step 76. Today I Will Not Judge Another.

Without judgment you can see. Without judgment you can learn. Without judgment your mind becomes open. Without judgment you understand yourself. Without judgment you can understand another.

Upon each hour today, repeat this statement as you witness yourself and the world around you. Repeat this statement and feel its impact. Release your judgments for a few moments, and then feel the contrast and the experience that this will provide for you. Do not judge another today. Allow others to reveal themselves to you. Without judgment you will not suffer under your own crown of thorns. Without judgment you will feel the presence of your Teachers assisting you.

Allow your hourly practices to be consistent. If an hour is missed, forgive yourself and rededicate yourself. Errors are to teach you, strengthen you and show you what you need to learn.

Regardless of what another is doing, regardless of how he or she may offend your sensitivities, your ideas or your values, do not judge another today.

Practice 76: Hourly practice.

Here you will find the entire book free for download http://stepstoknowledge.com/

Here you will find pointers for getting started if this is your first encounter with this practice: Taking the Steps to Knowledge.

February 17, 2013 Round One: I really appreciate what it says in this Step about allowing others to reveal themselves to me rather than judging them. It is so easy to judge others, it is almost automatic—I make someone’s acquaintance and immediately I form an impression based on my own judgment without even realizing what I am doing at first, without allowing time for a true picture to emerge.

Instead of this, it would be so much more productive to refrain from initial judgment and allow others to reveal themselves to me, feeling the presence of my Teachers as this occurs and taking their cues. This for me is a true lesson in distinguishing between my own will and God’s will, another lesson in subduing my arrogance.

This Step also helps me in my relationships with people close to me, people who are a daily part of my life, people I have ongoing “issues” with, like my husband, children, parents to some extent. It helps me to understand that I need to honor my True Self, my core, and not allow others to sway me from what I know to be true for me. And I am not to judge others in their knowing what is true for them.

September 27, 2014 Round Two: Just yesterday,  I was thinking about judgment and seeing it from a new angle, and now today’s Step is about judgment.

What came to me is that in order not to judge, I have to let go of my own interpretation of things. I project my own feelings, emotions, understanding onto things, often without realizing that is what I am doing. It is something that occurs automatically I think. It is part of human nature. This is judgment though, because I am seeing people, places, and things through my own perception, my own experience, and this may not be at all how things actually are in reality. It is very hard to see this while it is happening and stand back.

I also applied this to others, in situations when I feel someone is offending my sensitivities. I must realize that they are only interpreting things from their own viewpoint and not being deliberately judgmental. They cannot be blamed for that. I also misinterpret others because I am looking at them from my viewpoint. This is natural.

So again I say about today’s assignment – it is a tall order. Not judging takes a lot of conscious effort, because judgment is so ingrained in human nature. Not judging takes more than one day to accomplish. All I can do as I practice Steps is attempt to do what is being asked of me, attempt to make the assignments part of my daily living and behavior, while fully realizing that I am not perfect. Another AA concept serves me well here: I am striving for progress not perfection.

Another thing that jumps out at me in this Step is, “Allow others to reveal themselves to you.” Having the privilege of reading Douglas’s Steps journal is a good example of allowing others to reveal themselves to me. Journaling, when shared, is an excellent way to reveal yourself. It allows others to have a candid glimpse of you at moments when your soul is bared.

I was pretty consistent today in reminding myself not to judge. I am not sure I made any breakthroughs, nor can I say I felt my Teachers assisting me. I like to think I have made some progress in being non-judgmental. I get the value of allowing others to have their process as Tiela so eloquently shared in the post I found when I was looking for a picture for this Step. For me, it addresses precisely what this Step is getting at – “Without judgment you can see. Without judgment you can learn. Without judgment your mind becomes open. Without judgment you understand yourself. Without judgment you can understand another.”

September 11, 2018 Round Three: “Regardless of what another is doing, regardless of how he or she may offend your sensitivities, your ideas or your values, do not judge another today.” I thought of Volodya when I read this. I am able to not judge him in some situations. He came to the door of the greenhouse yesterday when I was picking the rest of the peppers and asked for one, any one I chose myself. I picked up a juicy red one and handed it to him graciously with a smile. He smiled graciously back. At such moments we are in harmony and I do not judge him.

I was not consciously aware of stopping at the top of the hour to remind myself not to judge another, but I did stop regularly throughout the day to do this. There were opportunities to judge another today, but I tried to see it from a broader perspective, from the perspective that this particular other does not know any better, this is the way he was brought up and he is unlikely to change his thinking. I just have to let his attitude roll over me like water from a duck’s back. Volodya believes we are beholden to him since we live in his house. He seems to have forgotten that he invited us here in the first place to look after the house in his absence. We have invested a lot in this house and are doing a fine job of keeping it clean and ship-shape. But now that Volodya is living here, he is putting out new demands, expecting things of us that show our gratitude for his “generosity.” This is putting a whole new spin on our relationship and now I am thinking we should have been wise enough to iron out the details of this new relationship in the beginning. Volodya obviously needs us here, otherwise he would have asked us to leave when he first decided to move back here. He would have said thank you, but you are no longer needed. He did not do that. So he needs us. But we are now in the position of being his lackeys. We are tolerating it because we have no other choice. I am trying not to judge Volodya. I see him as acting without Knowledge. I cannot do anything to change his attitude, I can only relate to him from a position of Knowledge and hope he will change his ways.

I am also trying not to judge Ursula. I believe she is in error. Her thinking about me is erroneous, but I will not judge her, she has to learn in her own time and way.