Unlocking The Jail Of Our Beliefs

Throughout the years I have talked about the jail we put ourselves in because of our beliefs and perceptions.

So when someone ticks me off because of what they are doing or saying—and lord only knows we have enough of that going on—and my righteous anger and upset wants to kick in and judge what is happening, I try to stop and remind myself of something essential.

If I react that way, we all lose.

They will lose because of how I have treated them. I will lose because within my own being I will suffer for that judgment. Stress will have found a way in. Stress, ill health, unhappiness, the loss of peace of mind. All because I judged.

This doesn’t mean I won’t do something to fix a situation, if that is required. Because, not judging doesn’t mean not taking action. But action taken without judging another will be more effective for everyone.

Don’t we all want to acquire and then live with more awareness of our oneness and equality? Oneness and equality negates any divisions that have to do with race, religion, social standing, or sex.

One of the reasons we often rush to judgment is because we are afraid of losing what we possess. Perhaps we think something like, “If that person is allowed to do that, or think that, or be that, it might impact my life, and what I own. I might have to change my belief system. And my belief systems are a form of possession. I don’t want to give them up for another.”

We might think that if we change the way we see another person we would have to treat them as an equal, and if we do that we might lose what we have worked so hard to own.

This is crazy thinking.

Because when we judge, putting aside the outcome for the one we have judged, we have put ourselves in a jail of our own making.

Let’s look at it this way.

Our judgment, of ourselves or others, destroys our inner peace. Our clinging to our possessions traps us into to protecting them and caring for them. Possessions become our jailer, whether they are a belief system or something material that we own.

We judge because we are afraid. Afraid that we won’t have enough or be enough.

But that’s not the real us. That’s a human representation of ourselves. A representation built by perceptions. Ours. Theirs. The only way out is to see everyone else’s true spiritual nature, including our own.

The gift we can give ourselves and every other being in the universe is to see them as God sees them.

Mary Baker Eddy said that we are the compound ideas of God. Now that statement just might take some serious contemplation and could transform our perceptions.

It could release us from the prison of judgment and fear of not having enough.

At the very least we could see ourselves as living in grace. And then we could see our neighbor that way. And the neighbor who lives thousands of miles away and doesn’t believe what we believe, or look like us, or dress like us.

Because diversity is the outcome of Infinite creation. All beings are a child of the Love that is the father and mother of us all.

That’s the season we are in, isn’t it? That’s the season we are celebrating—the season of the gift of love.

Perhaps we could extend that season throughout the year. We could give the gift of inclusion and acceptance to ourselves and everyone our thoughts rest upon.

We could rejoice that infinite Love always supplies us, and them, with everything we need in every moment.

This is not a material universe. It is a Spiritual one.

It only takes a shift of perception to get a glimpse of that Truth, and from there the jail doors of our beliefs begin to unlock.

By letting go we will know, and live the truth, and we will be free.

“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” Marcus Aurelius