Last week the topic at a meeting I was attending was “principals before personalities”. This led to sharing on being judgmental, our most common defect of character. It’s been said that after Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, things became exactly that for us: Bad or good, I like it, I don’t like it… and then we suffered. The Dali Lama once said: “The absence of judgment is love. “This is true for us; this is a program of brotherly love. We practice this in the steps, especially when we listen to another’s 5th step. We can listen without judging. This is where we convey to them that, like us, they are not their past. We point out how their greatest limitations become an opening to a relationship with a Higher Power.

I had a related experience this week. During a meditation meeting, we were instructed to picture someone we had trouble with, generate love, then give it to them. Hard to do, so we started with the love we had for a pet – or something along these lines. I had been walking around with a broken heart, which I thought I had come to terms with for two years. Because of the actions this person had done, whenever I thought of them, the story of what they did and the judgment about what they had done was inseparable. During the meditation (which is really just a visualization of the prayer found on page 67 or in the story “Freedom from Bondage” (both found in the Big Book) the story fell away along with the judgment surrounding it. I had a new feeling of love for this person. Freedom! Along with this freedom, came the ability to maintain or not maintain the relationship in a way that would be healthy for both of us.

The absence of the story is the absence of judgment. The absence of judgment is love.

By: Quiet Time Mediation Member