ACIM Lesson 243 Today I will judge nothing that occurs.
Lesson 243
Today I will judge nothing that occurs.
1. I will be honest with myself today. ²I will not think that I already know what must remain beyond my present grasp. ³I will not think I understand the whole from bits of my perception, which are all that I can see. ⁴Today I recognize that this is so. ⁵And so I am relieved of judgments that I cannot make. ⁶Thus do I free myself and what I look upon, to be in peace as God created us.
2. Father, today I leave creation free to be itself. ²I honor all its parts, in which I am included. ³We are one because each part contains Your memory, and truth must shine in all of us as one.
I have discovered that to judge is to invite chaos.
This is a good plan! I have so little to go by that it is ridiculous that I should try to judge, and trying to do something I cannot do often leads to a bad outcome. It also keeps me feeling separate from others and separate from God. I think it took me a long time to give up the bad habit of judging because I thought I needed my ego to make decisions.
I thought I really could put together enough information to make a good decision and that I had to do this. But here is what Jesus says about this. ⁶You are afraid of this because you believe that without the ego, all would be chaos. ⁷Yet I assure you that without the ego, all would be love. (ACIM, T-15.V.1:6-7) I have discovered for myself that he is right.
Here is an example of choosing peace.
Last year my son was staying with me. New Orleans, where he lives, didn’t have any power anywhere in the city, and they didn’t know when they would. Main transmission lines fell into the Mississippi, and when you lose main transmission lines, it could be a month or more before you get electricity back. He has no plans yet, and I told him he could stay here as long as he needs to and his girlfriend could also stay.
I meant that, but I also had a lot of thoughts about what that would mean to me. I began to feel uneasy, and then I remembered that I don’t have enough information to judge this situation, and I felt immediate relief. The tension left, and peace returned. Thank you, God, for A Course in Miracles and for the truth that set me free.
That was a good lesson for me.
I enjoyed their visit after all. And this year, he is with me again for an undetermined time. I was not even tempted to judge this situation, and I have loved having him here. Choosing peace influences how I feel about a situation. Deciding that I am happy my son is visiting makes the visit a happy one. And each time I choose peace, I get stronger in my desire for peace. This is important because desire is all it takes for me to have peace. I seldom judge anymore, and when I do, I recognize how foolish this is and choose again.
The idea of judging is ridiculous.
We know so very little, and much of what we think we know is either wrong or, at the least, incomplete. I just turned 73, and here is the good thing about that. I have had 73 years to explore the idea that I know something and that I have enough information to make judgments. Now I can say with assurance that this is not true. It is not that I am bad at making judgments. I just cannot do so with any degree of accuracy. I will never have all the information necessary. No one will.
For instance, I have a plan for today. I have considered all my options and decided what to do and when. I had to make a few judgment calls, and others are involved, making it a bit complicated. But it seems to be working out perfectly, better than I expected. It would seem that everything is in place and will go as I planned, and I might judge that as good.
The thing is, my soul has a higher plan.
This plan has nothing to do with my ego desires. Its plan is always geared toward my spiritual evolution. Also, its plans are deeply entangled with the rest of the Sonship. Sometimes things work out differently than I planned. While I might judge the change as a problem, it might very well be exactly what is needed to set up my next step Home. I have no way to judge that because I can’t see the big picture.
To the ego, life appears dangerously random, and from that point of view, it seems necessary to judge situations and control life. It is an exhausting way to live and is inevitably a losing battle. Surrendering to the Master Plan is easy, and the result is always perfect even if it is not immediately, or ever, apparent as to why that is so. I just know that with 73 years of experience trying it my way and then trying it God’s way, the contrast in the methods has taught me to trust Life and to have faith.
Regina’s Tips
This is an excerpt from Regina’s thoughts on “What is the World?”
The ego is the cause of all disease, death, war, fear, anger, and violence. Although many thousands of years have passed, human beings have made almost no inward progress toward ending suffering, sorrow, war, fear, anger, violence, cheating, and lying.
Thousands of years ago humans had suffering, sorrow, war, fear, anger, violence, cheating and lying.
Now, today, currently, humans have suffering, sorrow, war, fear, anger, violence, cheating and lying.
What has kept humans in the same pool of inward unsolved problems?
The ego (the imposter) has kept humans in the same pool of inward unsolved problems.
Inward problems cannot be solved by looking outward. Inward problems can only be solved by looking inward.
The ego knows that if the attention is turned inward, the ego will be found to be a myth, an imposter, an illusion, a delusion, a dream. Therefore, due to the ego’s fear of ending, the ego keeps the attention directed outward.”
Here is an excerpt from her thoughts: “Today I will judge nothing that occurs.”
Judgment is based on the idea that we know what is good and bad, right and wrong, etcetera. If you look carefully at these ideas, you will see they are part of the outward seeking and projection loop described above. In other words, judgment is a primary function of the ego. Since judgment is an ego activity, believing judgment keeps the ego active.
The entire world and all of its problems are a projection of the ego. To believe the ego is to continue the projection. This is very important to see!
When we believe our own ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, etcetera, we think we will make things better through judgment, but in fact, we are keeping the problem creator, the ego, active. This is very important to see!
In short, by trying to seek pleasure and avoid pain through judgment, we create the very suffering we seek to avoid.
When this is seen, the only reasonable response is to genuinely surrender all judgment and to turn to inner spiritual intuition regarding what to think, how to see, what to say and what to do.
Today, try not to believe judgment.
My Thoughts
Not only are my judgments likely going to be wrong, but more importantly, as Regina points out, they are keeping the ego alive in our minds and causing suffering. So, what do I do about my plans for today? I will go along with them, and if they work out as planned, that’s good. If they don’t work out as planned, that’s good. I will look at the day with anticipation and interest but without judgment. Let’s see how I do today. Will I use the mind to continue projection, or will I use the mind to enjoy life as it unfolds?
This is a past journal entry from when I first learned not to judge.
This is a good lesson for me today since I spent the whole day judging yesterday. No matter how often I would go to Spirit with my judgments, I would find myself right back there. I just could not get past the thought that I was right. How the Universe must laugh at my foolishness. I am the one who has thoroughly examined the tip of the elephant’s tail and believes that I know the elephant.
Today I look at what happened yesterday and am grateful for the lesson it gave me. I see the effect of judging. As I judge, I lose my peace. I am unhappy. I am restless and anxious. IForgetting what it feels like to love and be loved, I feel separate and alone. And I gladly accepted all of this loss in exchange for being right. What was I thinking?
And I gave up all that mattered for nothing because I was not right.
How could I be right when rightness is dependent on being different? If I am right because someone else is wrong, I have lost all contact with reality. I am part of one great Whole, and the very concept of wholeness precludes the possibility of separation and differences. No wonder I could not find comfort in being right. The cost was so great as to make it inconceivable that I would even want it.
Being right is the great illusion. It follows naturally from the impossible thought that I could judge. I do not know anything. On what basis did I think I could judge? As I surrender to that thought, I feel as if the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. And I feel the love of God rush through me. I think of my brother, and suddenly, I see him as he is without my darkened thoughts dimming his light. I recognize his light and love his light and know it is my own.
Holy Spirit, how odd that I would hate the idea of giving up my right to judge.
The first glimmering of the truth brought tears to my eyes, but not tears of joy as I would expect, but tears of regret. I would have to give up being right, and I saw that and felt a sense of loss. This could not have been done as ego, and am grateful that ego is just a small part of who I am and not even the truth of who I am.
I am so grateful that You are the truth of who I am and that while my mind may be temporarily split, I always have access to that truth. If You were not in my mind and always available to me, I would be stuck forever in the hell of my illusions, with only the lie of being right to console me. How loving is my Father, Who answered my question with the truth and placed it forever in my mind.
Today I embrace whatever is in my life and wholly accept it as perfect.
I judge nothing because I have nothing on which to base a judgment. I realize that and am grateful to realize it. If someone stands before me, I accept that they are a messenger of God who comes to give me the keys to Heaven. I gratefully accept the gift they offer and do not judge the form of the gift. I forgive myself for temporarily being in judgment and gladly return my mind to my only purpose.
Contemplation 2026