Notes From Neale Donald Walsch

My dear friends... 

I’d like to talk with you about judgment and condemnation. And I’m bringing this up because there’s a great deal going on in the world today…. a great deal that a great many people in the world do not agree with….to put it mildly. 

Most predominantly in the news is, perhaps, the rampage by the group known as ISIS across Iraq and the northwest portions of Syria. 

But that’s not all. There’s also the events in Ferguson Missouri, the movement of the Ebola virus to the United States, the ultimatum given to the peaceful protesters in Hong Kong, and a host of other events around the world, both large and small, that bring up for me in almost every instance the temptation to be judgmental. 

When I was discussing this topic with some of my friends, one of them said, “I don’t know how you can look at what’s going on in the world today and not condemn it.” 

And I, myself, find it very hard to stay out of judgment, and to steer clear of condemnation, when I watch what ISIS is doing, what China is doing to the demonstrators, and all that is happening elsewhere on our planet. 

Yet here’s what I know. Here’s what every spiritual teaching that I embrace has taught me: “Judge not, and neither condemn. For what you condemn, condemns you. And what you judge, judges you.” 

Those words are, of course, from the Bible. 

There is another way of saying that…Conversations with God says: “Every act is an act of Love”. 

That may be very hard to believe, but I am assured that it is true. Everything that people do, they do because they love something. 

Maybe it’s power that they love. Maybe it’s money that they love. Maybe it’s a religion that they love, or a political belief that they love. 

Maybe it’s their goal or their objective that they love. Or maybe it’s just being right that they love. And in some cases, it’s another person that they love. Whatever it is that they love, the problem is that they do not know how to express their love FOR it… in any way except that which is hurtful and cruel… And in some cases, even inhuman. 

The fact that their actions are foundationed in love, are based in love, does not excuse those actions when they are cruel and inhuman… but it does help us understand them. And understanding can often be the first step toward resolving the issues that have created violence between human beings when they can’t get what they love… or when what they love has been taken from them. 

If human beings were not ignorant of their own true nature, they would never use cruelty and violence to experience what they love. 

They would know that they don’t HAVE to. They would know that as Individuations of the Divine they have the ability to collaboratively create their own jointly-desired reality without destroying all those and everyone who they see as getting in their way. 

Our job, then… our biggest challenge on the Earth today… is to carry to the world that we touch, with every one of our own thoughts, words, and actions… the truth that we hold in our hearts; the truth that motivates, inspires, fuels and uplifts our own day-to-day lives; our own moment-to-moment experience. 

Holding back judgment and condemnation does not mean holding back action. It does not mean that we are to do nothing to stop cruelty, to put an end to terror, to bring a halt to the systematic torture and in-humane treatment of people on the earth. 

No, withholding judgment and condemnation does not mean withholding action. It means taking action with a whole different purpose, for a whole different reason, in a whole different way. 

To place this idea into the context of the events of this day and time, you’re invited to consider the question: What would Jesus do? What would the Buddha do? Or, asConversations with God put it: “What would Love do now?” 

I want to suggest that what we are invited by life to do is “right the wrong,” “fix that which is broken,” do whatever we can to end cruelty wherever we see it, but to do these things from a place of peacemaker, not judger and condemner. 

This sounds to me like a Bible quote: “Judge not, that ye, yourself, shall not be judged.” or as many of the younger one’s may say: “What goes around, comes around.” 

What shall be, then, my emotional response when I see the horrors committed by ISIS? What shall be my reaction when I see shooting and burning and looting on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri? Or government crackdowns on peaceful protests in Hong Kong? Or what seems like the careless bringing to the United States of the deadly Ebola virus? 

Is it not okay for me to feel anger? Is “anger” somehow not spiritually evolved? 

That would not be true. There is nothing “unevolved” about anger. Anger of one of the Five Natural Emotions. These are gifts from God… tools, if you will… that we can use to negotiate life. 

The tools are: Anger, Envy, Grief, Fear and Love. If these emotions are repressed, they will turn into very unnatural emotions. Anger is our way of saying “No, thank you.” It is our way of saying, “I don’t agree with that, and I’m unhappy about it.” 

It is energy that often ignites our desire to do something about a circumstance or condition. Yet we always want to make sure that what we do is CONstructive, not DIStructive. 

That’s the difference between the Master and the Student. The Master CONstructs, and the Student DEstrusts. The teach INstructs. 

And all the great teachers in human history, have told us that the secret to moving the evolution of our species forward, and the secret to speeding our OWN passage on the Journey of the Soul, is to never condemn or judge anybody….. Even as God never judges or condemns us. 

In my own case, I have to find an emotion that follows my natural anger at some of the things I am seeing in the world, but I realize that I can CHOOSE the emotion I wish to feel. I don’t have to be subject TO them. 

This was a great shift in my thinking brought about by my Conversations with God, in which I was told that emotions are things that we CHOOSE, not things that we simply EXPERIENCE without having any choice. 

Emotions are conscious choices, not unconscious reactions. Most of my life I didn’t know that. I thought I just FELT a certain way, and I didn’t have any CHOICE about that. 

Now I know that the way I feel is the way I DECIDE to feel. So now when I feel angry about some of the things that I see happening in the world, I realize that I am deciding to be angry…because NOT to be angry would be an announcement of something I’m NOT. 

I am NOT indifferent to the suffering of others. I am NOT apathetic in the face of cruelty and injustice. I am NOT someone who simply doesn’t care what horrors and unfairness others are experiencing. I am against violence… and I will have nothing to do with the Violence of Indifference. 

Yes, to me there is such a thing as the “Violence of Indifference.” 

It creates just as much suffering, just as much sadness, just as much unfairness and cruelty in the world as every other form of violence. Because Violence of Indifference is what allows the OTHER kinds of violence to be perpetrated on humanity with impunity. 

So I’m having nothing to do with indifference… but I’m having nothing to do with judgment and condemnation, either. 

I’m going to choose a second emotion to follow any anger I may feel when I see the hurtful and cruel things I’m observing in our world. And that emotion is Compassion. 

As I allow myself to feel compassion, I notice that i feel it both for those who are suffering, and, in an interesting way, for those who are inflicting the suffering. 

It has been said that “only the injured injure”, and so I send my compassion as a healing energy to those who would injure others…and to those who are injured BY them. 

Then I let my compassion motivate me as well… I allow it to inspire me to do what I CAN to make sure I never become indifferent to those CAUSES which need my support. 

There are plenty of those, too, all around us. There is not just violence and suffering all around us, there are ways to help all around us, too. All we have to do is look for them. 

So my invitation is for all of us, when we are tempted to judge and condemn others, to offer compassion for all those who are caught up in the dramas of life… I mean, imagine the poor family of the man from Liberia who brought the Ebola virus to Dallas… and the man himself…

So we are invited to have compassion for all those who are caught up in the turmoil of life… and then to find a way to help. 

Then what motivates me, returns to me in like kind… what goes around DOES come around… and I will continue to experience my own life as a wonderful blessing. And when I show Compassion and Love… Nothing’s gonna change my world. 

Blesséd be. 

© 2014 ReCreation Foundation - http://www.cwg.org - Neale Donald Walsch is a modern day spiritual messenger whose words continue to touch the world in profound ways. His With God series of books has been translated into 27 languages, touching millions of lives and inspiring important changes in their day-to-day lives.

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