Judgment-free, of you and me!

Maybe this has happened to you too. Have you ever been anxious about how others might see you and judge you? I had an experience where I felt anxious about what a friend might think of me, having not seen me for quite a while. What I soon learned, through deep, soul-searching prayer, was that the anxiety was rooted in judging myself!

I hadn’t seen this friend in a while. In the meantime, I’d gone through a difficult experience, and I didn’t feel the same – or look quite the same – as the last time she’d seen me. I believed I wasn’t measuring up to what I thought she expected of me – and, frankly, to what I expected of myself. While I waited for my friend to arrive for our visit, my anxiety compounded. Would she judge me?

I have learned that whenever I feel afraid or doubtful, it is always better to look at the situation from a spiritual perspective. So, right there in my living room, I reached out to God in prayer for a more inspired view.

Through my study of the Bible, illumined in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, I’ve learned that God is the all-knowing and all-loving divine Mind. This Mind has created each of us spiritually as the manifestation of the divine nature. God sees us as purely good.

Referring to “man” as including everyone, the book of Genesis in the Bible puts it this way: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; ... And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:27, 31).

Built into our spiritual individuality, which is one with the Divine, are Godlike qualities such as unselfishness, kindness, patience, understanding. Because of our unity with the one infinite divine Mind, we each have God-given spiritual intuition and discernment to recognize and express spiritual qualities and to see and appreciate them in one another. None of us can truly be held captive or be impelled by limited personal human opinions, expectations, or judgments.

Through Christ, Truth, we all have an unlimited, God-empowered capacity to know and experience something of this reality – to see the unchanging good that God manifests in everyone. As I realized that my friend had this capacity, too, my outlook brightened.

Mrs. Eddy writes in “Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” referring to the spiritual reality explained by Christian Science, “The sweet, sacred sense and permanence of man’s unity with his Maker, in Science, illumines our present existence with the ever-presence and power of God, good” (p. 196).

As I glimpsed the spiritual unity that we each have with our divine source, and the fact that we’re empowered to see each other as God sees us, as wholly good, I gained a new view – a judgment-free view – of my friend and myself. When my friend arrived, our eyes met with genuine affection, because that is all we could see in each other. We threw our arms around each other in pure joy.

During our visit I discovered even more how unlimited good – originating in the divine Mind – is expressed in each of us as divine Mind’s reflection. I felt completely free of anxiety and enjoyed all of our activities together.

God, the infinite divine Mind, pours good through each of us – and in every circumstance is present to inspire views of ourselves and others that are free of personal judgment and full of joy.