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Here’s a little cluster of thoughts that went through my mind one morning this week:

• Get up: “I shouldn’t check my email first thing in the morning. Bad bad. Should be making a hot breakfast for my kid and stretching first.”
• Brush teeth: “I should have taken better care of my teeth when I had braces.”
• Sit at desk: “I should respond to all the writers who are pouring their hearts out to me. They must think I don’t value them.”
• Still sitting at desk: “I should have sent flowers to Phoebe for her birthday. What a lame Godmother I am.”

I’m starting to realize that the self-critical chatter in my mind is staggering, really. Beneath the belief that my thoughts contribute significantly to my reality, behind my commitment to the intentional use of words, and next to my sweet knowing that I am a child of a magnificent Universal Love, is a bitter judge. She races to critique my every feeling, thought and action. The bitch must be exhausted.

“Self-judgment is perhaps the greatest source of inner suffering and discontent. More than that–or because of that–it is one of the major barriers to change, growth, expansion, and transformation. In particular, it prevents you from simply resting in yourself from moment to moment.”
- Byron Brown, author of a Soul Without Shame

THIS WEEK: Listen closely to your mind-natter. Tune in right now. Are you giving yourself hell for something? Is there something else you should be doing or being? Review your to-do list and see if your judge comes up. Or better yet, just sit on the couch and do nothing and see what natter that ignites.

Who’s looking over your shoulder and telling you what you should be, do, feel, and say? You are. Maybe the voice echoes of your past but you’re the thinker of your thoughts today.

The judge probably won’t move out without a fight. But who don’t need to oust her. Fighting isn’t the answer. Love is. Love converts judges into champions. And lives into expressions of freedom.

. . . . . . .

Soul Without Shame: A Guide to Liberating Yourself from the Judge Within, by Byron Brown is a book that could turn your worldview inside out. It is has taught me so much about just being with my soul’s experience – an exercise in profound acceptance.

Byron Brown is a student of the Diamond Way Approach to Self-Realization developed by A.H. Almaas. Absolutely brilliant work.