One of the big traps of the ego is deciding who’s right and who’s wrong.  Who’s good, and who’s bad.  Often, we find that we’re the biggest culprits of them all.  The ego is the mindset of separation. It’s job is to separate and it does that through the activity of sorting and labeling.

Sorting out who’s worthy or unworthy of our Love, respect, admiration, condemnation is a major use of ego, time and energy.

We can spend huge amounts of our precious attention on determining who’s to blame, who’s to be punished.  And, when we figure that out, or settle on an answer, then, for a moment, the ego seems to feel fulfilled, empowered, justified, and important. But only for a moment.

Observing life, you can watch people all day long as they struggle to figure out who’s right and who’s wrong, to assign blame (and often shame) as well as responsibility.  It gives the ego a lot to do.

What many of us don’t notice is that all that judge, judge, judging leaves an energetic hangover that’s painful.  The pain leads us to tune out, disconnect, and hide.  And then we slowly begin to learn what a bad investment we made with our precious attention.  Labeling people isn’t helpful.

Since God is all there is, aren’t we tuning out from God?

Since Spirit is omni-present Love, aren’t we disconnecting from Love?

Since the Infinite One Mind is omni-active are we really thinking we can hide from our own mind?

Where can I go from Your Spirit?

Or where can I flee from Your presence?

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If I ascend into heaven, You are there;

If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.  Psalm 139

Deciding who’s right and wrong is predicated on the concept that I am the decider.  When I’m the decider it often means that I’m either thinking that God has left the building and now I’m in charge or it’s pure anarchy.  I’ve learned that I do NOT want to be in charge.  I’m not (yet) able to see through all directions of time and space and so I’m not able to discern what everything is for.   My Spirit knows it’s all working together for my relentless good, so I’ll just trust that.

I don’t wish to replace God in my mind – I tried that and it didn’t go well for me.  I’m not going back to that mindset.  I couldn’t if I wanted to.  That genie is not going back in the bottle.  I’ve worked very hard to realize that God’s plan is the best way for me to go.

God’s plan doesn’t include my judging people and deciding who’s good and bad. I can think I know what’s right and wrong in the moment.  I look for the loving choices and that feels right to me.  Unloving choices feel wrong to me.

All people are good at their core, even the ones that don’t seem like it.

Their essence is still God – perfect and pristine, regardless of their behavior.  Knowing that, I don’t need to label people with some story I’ve made up.  I’ll stick to focusing my attention on remembering the truth, which is that we’re all good and perfect.

I hardly use the words right and wrong anymore.  Mostly they’re helpful in describing how things feel.  Paying attention to how things feel is a great skill that I work on each day.  Labeling people isn’t helpful to me, only to the ego.  I don’t work for the ego anymore.  I work for God, Inc.  I serve the Light of my soul.

Is there anyone you’ve labeled wrong that you could let go of the label?  You can still feel their actions are unloving, but do you really need to label the person?  This is a very powerful and healing contemplation.  We can call the angels in to help us and be willing to see clearly the face of God in each one we meet, for our own Peace of mind.  It works!  Peace is worth it!

NEW ACIM PODCAST EPISODE: my topic is This Stuff Works with Linda Soto, ACIM Teacher Counselor. Everything in our life is helping us to release the past and remember to laugh. In this week’s episode I talk with Quantum Counselor and ACIM Teacher, Linda Soto about moving through the most devastating things in life with ever more ease and grace. We can choose Peace instead of pain.