What's the difference between judgment, discernment, and contrast? Well, from our usual perspective in physical reality, not much.  However, when we get into the realm of energy and conscious creation, taking a closer look at our own assumptions and feelings about these words can mean becoming aware of where our energy is really going and how to put it where we really want it.

Words are symbols.  Symbols often have unique meanings for each of us along with a societally accepted meaning.  For the purposes of this article, I'm going to use the symbols (words) in the title simply as a means of showing the difference between concepts, concepts that can SEEM similar until we take a closer look.  The actual words or symbols that I will "redefine" aren't as important as the dilineation of the concepts, so I ask you to step beyond semantics.

Judgment

Judgment is the labeling of something, or the putting of something in a category, usually "good" or "bad".  Judgment is based in struggle and duality.  This is good, this is bad, which means we're wanting the good and pushing away the bad.  Inherently, this is a splitting of our energy, our focus.  When I JUDGE, I end up standing still, going nowhere.

We grow up believing that we must fight for what we want and then also fight against what we don't want.  However, one of the ideas inherent in the shift in consciousness is that resistance is futile.  Energy is energy, and the universe will gladly give you whatever you are focusing on.  So we put energy into what we like and also put energy into resisting what we don't like.

Not only are we now resisting people, objects, or events that our senses take in from the physical reality around us, but in doing this we are resisting the flow of our own thoughts and energy.  So, still, we go nowhere.  Does this mean that when we stop judging and stop resisting anything, that we suddenly are full of love and light and acceptance for everything around us and simply live among it all, as it was before, but don't have opinions or preferences about it anymore?  NO WAY!

When you deal with things from within judgment you are not really free to choose because your energy itself isn't free.  For instance, if you want to create a nice sum of money for yourself, and yet are focusing half your energy on having money and half on trying NOT to struggle to pay your bills, your focus is divided.  Or if you want to create money and yet have much energy and judgment against those who already have it, or even have judgment against that part of you that DOESN'T and are rejecting it.  In each case it like having one foot on the gas and one on the brake.

Sometimes though, judgment can be a first step in becoming free.  Once you realize that you DON'T like something, you can start from that vibrational relationship and start the quest for what DOES resonate with you.  And start releasing all the fears and energy and feelings of powerlessness around what you have been resisting or repressing in your own mind or in your physical environment.  For you really wouldn't RESIST something that you didn't FEAR.

The difficult part in letting go of judgment is the fear that when you stop resisting the "bad" thing it's going to overrun you.  We're not used to the idea that being open and allowing is POWERFUL - this kind of "vulnerability" is seen as a weakness.  We wonder what horrible thing will happen when we stop trying to resist the "bad" things in our lives.  So we struggle against that person who is saying something "bad" or a situation that we don't like and consider "bad" or even those thoughts that we "shouldn't" be having.

Taking the step into releasing judgment really requires a decision to trust.  Trust god, trust ourselves, trust the universe, but TRUST.  If you want to get to the point where your energy is free enough to simply choose what you want and have it show up, that's a place of total trust.  So how do you get there?  By one leap of faith at a time.

Didn't know that being "spiritual" would take so much courage, eh?

Each of us must start where we are.  For instance, let's say that your spouse physically abuses you.  This is an excellent example because the threat of physical injury is so obvious.  If you stopped resisting this onslaught or stopped walking on eggshells around this person, you're sure to be hurt badly or even killed, right?  That's what the voice of fear says.  Energetically, you're so busy focusing on your own survival fears and in keeping yourself alive that all of your energy is on this one perceived threat in front of you.  It's pretty much impossible to create what you want in this situation.

Let's just say, however, that you start to step back from your association with fear and start seeing your situation a little differently.  You have recently accepted that you create your own reality, that you get what you focus on.  You look back at the last episode of abuse and notice that you were so focused on defending yourself that you didn't even THINK of what, if any, pro-active action you could take.  You were so busy dreading this person's attack, that is, giving this other person all of your energy and focus, that you weren't thinking of what YOU could do at all.

When we judge a situation such as this as "bad" we IMMEDIATELY know how we're supposed to RE-ACT to it.  We go back into our memories and search around for what to do in "bad" situations.  (Someone once said that the definition of true insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.)

When we STOP labeling something as "bad" (or "good"), what happens is that there's no label to look at and we start seeing the whole of the situation as it is - we start coming into the PRESENT with our energy, instead of retreating into the past.  We stop trying to stop another's flow of energy (even if it's directed violently at US) and start flowing our OWN.  We eventually stop seeing the situation as something bad or horrible or painful or impossible, and start seeing the patterns.  "That person is trying to hit me."  Instead of cringing in fear we start to, for example, get ANGRY.

Which is another good first step in self-empowerment.  Anger is a wonderful focusing tool, especially when we're first trying to find our own voice.  It's a gathering of energy that tells you that you have now discovered that some boundary, that you may have not even recognized before, has been crossed.  It becomes undesirable for you to create this kind of situation for yourself, and so, knowing the ideas behind reality creation, you start looking inside for the subtle, perhaps life-long, vibrations or beliefs that you've held that have attracted this kind of situation to you.

I'm not saying it's EASY, and we don't have to do it all by ourselves, but ultimately the decision of what we choose to focus on is up to each of us.

Discernment

So what's the difference between discernment and judgment?  Judgment assumes that we must do something about what we DON'T like, which means putting focus on what we DON'T like.  Discernment takes a step out of good and bad and resistance and duality.

You can discern the difference between a red shirt and a blue shirt, and choose the red shirt without trying to shred, burn, dye, or destroy the blue shirt.  This is, of course, much easier to see in a situation, such as the shirts, to which we have very little emotional attachment.  It's a little more challenging for us to see this kind of preference or discernment in the physical abuse example above.  However, there is fundamentally no difference in the two examples.

The more clearly you can SEE the situation without judging it, and heal/release emotional attachments, the more you empower yourself to CHOOSE.  It's easy to say you'd rather have a loving partner than a partner who hits you.  It's not so easy to untangle the energy you have around the situation to begin with.  When you step back, and untangle your own energy, you reclaim it and empower yourself.  That's HOW you're focusing, and why you're getting exactly what you're focusing on.

When moving from judgment to discernment, it's really important to be honest with yourself about how you really feel.  If you find yourself telling someone, "Oh, I'm never going back there again," - do you really believe it?  If not, part of your energy is still attached to the fear.  (Now, don't JUDGE that!)  Luckily, love (choosing empowerment and personal preference or integrity) is infinitely more powerful than fear.  This is important to remember during the times of untangling - you'll also notice that even if similar situations come up, your response to them will be changing as you go.

Eventually, or maybe sooner, you'll be seeing through the eyes of discernment.  If your spouse, in our example, hasn't changed, your feelings may change from hatred and anger towards them, to pity, or even a sense of love.  You will have accepted them as they are, without fighting against them or trying to change them.  You will have also made different choices for yourself.  Perhaps your spouse will also change as you change or perhaps you will continue to move apart as your vibrations or beliefs move farther apart.

Interactions with Others

The place where the concept of judgment/discernment tends to get a little confusing is in our old patterns of interaction with others.  Despite the idea that both of you are actually creating your participation in the interaction, each of you always has freedom of choice in what to do and what to think.  The interaction, or the flow of energy is a two-way street.  If your energy is focused on changing or controlling the other person instead of what you'd rather create, then your focus is on preventing another person's expression, be that as it may, which is exhausting and impossible.  You're reacting instead of creating.

The point is not to stand there and take abuse because being loving and accepting is supposed to be "spiritual".  The point is that when you are no longer focused on THEM, you can then focus on YOU and what YOU want to do.  Putting your focus where you want it, on what feels GOOD to you, and then allowing the energy to flow towards that creation.  There doesn't have to be a conflict between what you want and what someone else wants, but when there is, that's where you have to start.

Contrast

The channeled entity Abraham discusses the idea of discernment as the idea of CONTRAST.  Red contrasts with blue because it is different. Abuse contrasts with loving hugs because it is different.  When you judge one as okay and one as bad and therefore must be STOPPED, there goes your energy again - fighting and struggling AGAINST instead of pro-actively choosing.  (Abraham also reminds us that trying to EXCLUDE something from our experiences because your energy is still going there, as you fight against it.)  Contrast is part of the experience of physical reality and is not something we're trying to eradicate, just relate to from a different, more encompassing perspective, than from within the duality.  When you can choose a happy relationship for yourself instead of an abusive one as you would choose, say, a peanut butter cookie instead of a sugar cookie, that is freedom and empowerment.

Everything Exists

"Just because you're not focusing on something doesn't mean it doesn't exist anymore."  Very true.  In a way, EVERYTHING exists at all times.  In order to really appreciate this, let's step beyond our usual beliefs in linear time and space.  In coming to physical reality, we agree that the basic premise of linear time and space exists.  However, instead of FACTS, let's think of them as parameters of focus.  Time really does, as Einstein may have said, prevent everything from happening all at the same time.  Think of your life as a ball of twine, and your EXPERIENCE of your life as if you were unrolling that ball - it exists all at once, and yet you experience one event at a time.  Same thing with space.  Our lives, or physical lifetime expressions are holographic in that every moment contains the whole, even though we may not PERCEIVE it all at once.

Same thing with physical experience overall.  Just because you're not, at the present moment, experiencing yourself as a 5-year-old unknowingly stepping on a bumble bee doesn't mean that aspect of you doesn't EXIST anymore.  Just because you're not focused on how great that cake for your 20th birthday tasted doesn't mean it doesn't EXIST.  And yes, just because you're not focusing on physical domestic abuse doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.  Focusing on that cake will bring a similar event (cake) into your present experience as sure as focusing on physical domestic abuse will bring a similar event into your current experience.

Now, the big question... in the latter example, are you focusing on empowerment and freedom and choice for yourself and have found yourself drawn to others in domestic abuse situations or are you judging domestic abuse as bad and trying to simply eradicate it?  Energy is energy - it goes where you focus it.  Being honest with ourselves not only about how we feel but our true motivations for our actions is one of the big keys to seeing ourselves as clearly as possible.

During this time of shifting consciousness, I've noticed that many people are coming face to face with many of judgments that they may not have even been conscious of having.  Do you believe that certain parts of what passes now as our societal experience of physical reality should not exist in the "world of the future"?  For instance, many people say that money won't exist in the future.  Maybe, maybe not.  Are they saying it because they believe that money is the root of all evil?  If they believed that money (or commerce, or exchanges of energy) would take on a different form, wouldn't they be focusing on that instead of what WASN'T going to be?  Maybe, maybe not.  <grin>  No matter what it LOOKS like people are doing - it's up to each of us to determine our own meanings and motivations.

Do you believe that you can't stop fighting or struggling until all forms of abuse (self, others, child-related, environmental, animal, plant, chemical, etc.) are obliterated?  If there's a certain kind of abuse that keeps drawing your attention, that's the place to start, the place to ask yourself some of the really hard questions.  Most of the time when we're reacting against or judging something as "bad" it's because we have a personal attachment to the essence of the situation.  That is, we have projected our own feelings into an "outside" situation where we may see them more clearly.  Physical reality is a mirror to the self, is it not?

Back to the original point of this section, however - everything exists.  The structure of our bodies is actually a great symbol for focus - we can only see what's in front of us.  And we focus on what we CHOOSE by turning in the direction we want to face.  This is the same psychologically as it is physically.  If you are focused on empowerment, for example, you will continually interact with people who are, for example, learning empowerment or ARE fully empowered themselves.  If you are focusing on fighting abuse, you will continually interact with people and situations that are abused and abusive.  If you think you can't allow yourself to feel good or even "okay" if someone else is "suffering", you get exactly that.  If you think that you must focus on abused people because everyone else out there is focusing on empowerment and the abused people are being "forgotten", then that is what you will experience for yourself.  Perhaps there is a little of yourself in that situation that you see everywhere that you are trying to recognize and heal?

Let's take our examples out of the realm of physical reality and look at it energetically for a moment.  If you've had a conscious out-of-body experience, this may help you picture this idea.  We exist as energy, outside of our perceptions of linear time and space.  We vibrate, like a guitar string, with a certain frequency.  Following the law of attraction, we then meet up with those things that also resonate with us.  Now, there is an infinite range of frequencies to choose from, and yet what we are not resonating with, we do NOT experience.  Those things exist, yet because we are focused within a certain range of frequencies and they are not, we do not experience them.  It's exactly like changing the channel on your television.  The other stations are still THERE, you're just not focusing on them.  Now, if you believe you must fight against a station for running certain programming, you're focusing on what you don't want and what DOESN'T resonate with you, and thus perpetuating it.

Of course, choosing to resonate with something that makes you feel uncomfortable or scared is equally as valid as choosing something that makes you feel good.  Depending on our beliefs we may get some kind of value fulfillment out of the idea of suffering or of playing the role of a victim.  The idea though is to get from unconscious choosing to conscious choosing.  Of course, then, it sorts of seems to be a moot point.

Paradox and Energy

Ironically, or perhaps more accurately, paradoxically, the more vulnerable and open we become by letting go of judgment, the more POWERFUL we really become.  The more we simply ALLOW, the more things that DON'T resonate with us naturally drop away and the more we focus on and create what we want.  So all the fears that seem so real within the old framework of duality really don't apply anymore as we move out of that framework and into the new.

Trust your process.  Be where you are.  Choose what you want. 

(c)1999, Kristen Fox.  Printed in the June-July 1999 Issue of the Conscious Creation Journal.  (Feel free to copy this article for personal use only.)  http://www.consciouscreation.com/