Judgement Day

What if there is no finding your power

I was sitting with my coffee this morning, staring out the window, watching the world wake up, and I caught myself doing something so ordinary that most of us never even question it.

I was judging.

· The coffee was too cold.

· The air felt too heavy.

· The dog next door barked too much.

The world, in that moment, was falling into categories inside my mind. Good. Bad. Comfortable. Uncomfortable. Welcome. Unwelcome. And I caught myself smiling because judgment, in its purest form, is such a human thing. After all, it’s how we move through life. It’s how we know what nourishes us and what depletes us. It’s how we discern what fits and what does not.

For a long time, I thought judgment was something to transcend, something to rise above, something that belonged to the ego. But age has a way of softening hard ideas. Experience has a way of humbling spiritual certainty.

What I have come to see is that judgment itself is not the problem. Judgment is information.

· It tells me where I resonate.

· It tells me where I contract.

· It tells me what feels aligned in my body and what feels foreign.

Judgment, when it is clean, is wisdom.

But somewhere along the way, I learned how quickly clean judgment can become something else. I learned how discernment can harden. How observation can become separation. How noticing can become condemning.

And if I’m honest, I have done this more times than I’d like to admit.

I remember years ago sitting in spiritual circles, listening to people speak about healing, awakening, ascension, liberation. Big words. Sacred words.

And I loved those words. I wore those words. I built pieces of my life around those words. I said them myself.

I told people I could help them heal. I told people I could help them step into their power. I told people I could guide them into wisdom.

And at the time, I believed it, deeply and sincerely.

Because I was speaking from the place I knew. The place where transformation felt like becoming something better, becoming more, becoming whole.

But life has a way of unraveling the places where we build identity.

I think my greatest teacher has been watching my own life fall apart in the exact places where I thought I was most evolved.

· Relationships.

· Career.

· Identity.

· Certainty.

I remember one season of my life where everything I had built cracked open. The work I had done, the image I held of myself, and the way I believed others saw me.

Gone.

And in that unraveling, I came face to face with something uncomfortable. My spirituality had become a hierarchy. This unfolded quietly, subtly, and I didn’t see it at first.

But it was there.

· If I am healed and you are wounded, there is distance between us.

· If I am awake and you are asleep, there is distance between us.

· If I am holding wisdom you have not yet found, there is distance between us.

And distance creates separation. Separation creates superiority. Superiority creates judgment.

That was hard to see. It was even harder to admit. Because it looked beautiful on the outside.

· It looked like service.

· It looked like helping.

· It looked like love.

But underneath it, there was an unspoken agreement. “I know something you do not.” And the moment I saw that in myself, something changed.

· I stopped trying to heal people.

· I stopped trying to wake people up.

· I stopped trying to carry anyone toward some destination I thought they should reach.

Because I began to wonder something.

What if nobody is broken?

What if nobody is behind?

What if every person is standing in the exact fire their soul agreed to stand in?

What if pain is part of the path?

What if confusion has intelligence?

What if darkness carries its own sacred timing?

I think about the moments in my own life where people tried to save me, tried to fix me, tried to offer wisdom before I was ready to receive it.

And I remember how lonely that felt.

Because what I needed was not saving. What I needed was witnessing. Someone to sit beside me and trust that my process had meaning. Someone to hold space without reaching into my experience and rearranging it.

That changed me.

It taught me what real presence feels like. And now, when someone comes to me in pain, I feel less interested in changing them. I feel more interested in seeing them. Seeing where they are, seeing what is true for them, and seeing what is alive inside them.

Because I have come to believe something simple.

Everything we need is already within us.

· Truth is already there.

· Wisdom is already there.

· Power is already there.

Sometimes buried, sometimes forgotten, and sometimes hidden beneath fear or grief or conditioning. But there, always there.

And maybe my role was never to give anyone their truth.

Maybe my role is to sit across from them like a mirror at a quiet coffee table and reflect back what is already shining beneath the surface. To remind them of themselves, to trust their timing, to honor their path.

I think this is where judgment becomes holy again.

When judgment returns to discernment.

When it helps me recognize what belongs to me and what belongs to someone else. When it helps me stay in my lane. When it helps me honor another person’s sovereignty.

It is then that I can discern without condemning, see clearly without needing to label, and witness someone’s choices without making them wrong.

And truthfully, this is still a practice.

And to be honest, some days I catch myself slipping. Some days I feel the old pull to define, to categorize, to separate. Us and them.

· Awake and asleep.

· Conscious and unconscious.

· Ready and unready.

And when I catch it, I get quiet. I come back to myself. I remember that every single one of us is walking through a private universe of lessons. Every single one of us is carrying invisible stories.

Every single one of us is meeting life from the exact level of consciousness we can hold in that moment.

Including me.

Especially me.

Maybe the greatest maturity in this work is realizing that nobody needs me to become themselves. Maybe the deepest service I can offer is trust. Me trusting in their path, in their pain, in their knowing, and trusting just that life itself is already doing the work.

And if that is true, then I am free too.

· Free from fixing.

· Free from carrying.

· Free from deciding what another soul needs.

Just present, just human, just here.

Sitting across from you, coffee in hand, wondering if the hardest judgment we will ever face is the one we place on ourselves when life does not unfold the way we thought it should.

And if you stopped trying to fix yourself long enough to truly listen, what truth inside you has been waiting all along to be seen?