enlightenment | Alisa Battaglia

Withholding Judgment

By Alisa Battaglia

“Our morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to our lives.”
~ Albert Einstein

Last weekend I participated in a shamanic ritual guided by Jorge Herreros trained by Maestro Don Solon Tello of N. Peru. In an intimate setting, twenty one of us experienced personal energetic journeys with the plant soul of Ayauasca (La Madrecita) in a revealing dance with our own Souls. My intention was to bring something back-a nugget of information to help others. When I asked, “What can I take back with me to help others?” the immediate and profound reply was to “Remove Judgment-that judgment is the great obstacle, it closes the heart from opening”. This was so simple and yet what we intellectually know, but perhaps don’t make it a conscious practice in our daily lives.

I decided to take heed the wisdom given. Since then I have been vigilant to the ways in which I judge. I have observed with clarity so many falsehoods whose foundations are based upon my conditioning, not my authenticity, those transgenerational judgments that I have accepted as true without ever really questioning them. WOW!

I have noticed that one of many attitudes we hold in judging others is that we measure what people have rather than by the quality of being that they are. The things we acquire are all well and good if we don’t use them to define who we are and certainly not to define others. Things of external value certainly cannot compete with a deep inner life of compassion, joy and richness. It is important to remember that not everyone lives by the same goals or aspirations, so the principle upon which we measure others is therefore faulty and rendered obsolete.

In some way we are all drawn to glamour, money & power. We want to rub shoulders with the “elite’ as if by osmosis, we too, will become rich and powerful. Funny thing is that rich & powerful does not necessarily connote interpersonal development, but rather organizational methods to produce wealth. In addition, those who have a well cultivated inner life also attained from organizational methods to produce enlightenment, do not always reflect an equal monetary measurement of their inner development. I find the imbalance between both the inner and outer life, of synthesis, to be a crisis of our times where inner hard work is not adequately manifested into the outer material world in a viable energy exchange. I find that an integral life must be committed to the integration of higher consciousness with financial wellbeing. The marriage between the two, no doubt will cause us to feel empowered in all areas of living and fill us with joy to pay it forward.

The goal is ever to ground Spirit into matter and to dissolve the emotional charges that keep us limited in a particular spectrum of consciousness. Holding judgment is reflected not only in our attitudes that keep the authentic self shrouded from view, but from fully being present in our bodies. Our filters of misperception and of our dis-connect selves provide the foundation for dis-ease. So, we must look not only to how flexible our minds and bodies are, but to how flexible we are in our hearts to withhold judgment; let go of control; exercise our capacity to forgive; and how broadly we are able to receive and give love. A loving, open, and flexible heart is the key and doorway to a vibrant life of total wellness aligned in Divine Love.

Keeping ourselves in check to judgment is a purposeful step in the expression of right human relations.

Some people live closely guarded lives, fearful of encountering someone or something that might shatter their insecure spiritual foundation. This attitude, however, is not the fault of religion but of their own limited understanding. True Dharma leads in exactly the opposite direction. It enables one to integrate all the many diverse experiences of life into a meaningful and coherent whole, thereby banishing fear and insecurity completely. ~Lama Thubten Yeshe, “Wisdom Energy”

There are many who claim to be accelerated on the evolutionary path to enlightenment who parade around in a sheath of spiritual ego full of self-aggrandizement. Their attention is anchored with concern over how they appear to others and thus, they exaggerate their own importance, power, and reputation masking their inadequacies under the guise of love and compassion. With a need to secure false personal power in the eyes of others to appear expert on matters that elude them, their emotional bodies are easily thrown off balance and threatened when their thoughts and ideals are questioned and processes examined. Quick to mask their overcompensations from feelings of self-doubt, inadequacy, or victimhood, they react with quick emotional force. Taking things personally, with a swift wave of the hand they judge and dismiss differing perspectives and approaches of others on the path. Be weary of such manipulations. Discernment is needed here. The hallmark of a true initiate is non-attachment and clearly unconcerned with others emotional positions, as they are steadfast upon bridging inner and outer connections on many levels and to transmit that synthetic union to others through world service. Their lower bodies are aligned and integrated with a focus on living a more Soul infused reality as the expressive link in consciousness.

While the spiritual egoist espouses to tout the law of love, they miss the mark and project onto others a love-less vibrational state de-spiriting those in their chain of connection. These characters having reached a small measure of congruency between what they think, feel, say, and do, and their uncontrolled emotional bodies ever lead them astray. Emotional reactivity leads to imbalanced thought. Imbalanced thought creates a whole new set of frequency patterns.

While to err is to be human, it is most wise to take personal responsibility to grow and make better when it is due. Halting judgment and embracing another’s ways of being is a good place to start. With finger-pointing fear based approaches, many refuse to own their projections lost in their own demagoguery. The virtues of humility, trust and the integrity of simultaneous interplay between teacher/student as a co-creative experience, is lost to their desire for guru-hood. Overriding true wisdom and halting acceleration, is the ever-common failure of the Path Seeker to control the emotional body into a calm sea of glass.

I have extracted and revised a piece of my work, “The Seven Attributes of Heart” to express the many evolving layers of heart consciousness that differ only by degree of vibration that is discernable as our level of awareness rises.

A selfish heart functions from conditioned logical responses, while the emotions are a continuous shifting of moods and sentiments wrapped into the self. A desirous heart is concerned with sense gratification and is motivated by that which brings pleasure. An egoic heart, pride and vanity plays an important role so that others may fall in love with the mask perceived as Self. Misidentification further thickens the veil of glamour and illusion. A compassionate heart stimulates the innate potential for healing and through the path of selfless service, love flows gracefully and lovingly brings calm and influence upon others. A listening heart is a self-aware organized consciousness of integrated perceptions between inner and outer worlds, open to the channels of knowledge and illumination. A wise heart perceives a world of differing forces that must congeal into a unified whole if there is ever to be systemic harmony. Virtuous, without distortion of any kind, the tide of beingness is in rhythm with an undifferentiated Kosmic awareness. A spiritual heart recognizes the essential unity in all things and merges with supreme consciousness with reflection in the Kosmic self.

Like a huge mirror our ability to govern the law of our own being always operates in accordance with our actions. We must come to realize that we each are responsible for our own happiness and our own misery chained by the instinctive forces that enslave us. We must move beyond these forces into self-mastery by using the gifts with which we are endowed to promote our inner ideal. Each day we can overcome the effect of our selfish hearts and brackish deeds if we act wisely by evolving our hearts vibration to more inclusive values. This leads us to live a noble life with potential to change the world.

Alisa Battaglia 2/11/2009