A couple of years ago, I wrote this post about judgment and compassion, because I was engaging in some painful and destructive behaviors around judging other people that had serious negative effects on me and everyone around me. I needed to find ways to channel the time and energy taken by those thoughts into more constructive expression, both for the sake of the person on the receiving end of my negativity, and for my own mental and emotional health.

A little over two years later, I have made progress, although I still have a ways to go. I have fewer experiences where my brain’s first response is to go into judgment, and, when it does, I am more easily able to catch the thought to reshape it, and to shift the energy from negative to positive. Sometimes it’s quite the effort—I still do not deal well with careless drivers, as that triggers very deep things for me, due to my mother’s death in a car accident. That one is going to require a lot more work.

One of the practices I’ve developed that has been most helpful is that, when I find myself judging, I try to step back and see the person through the eyes of one of my Gods.

Sigyn asks me to consider whether this person might be suffering from a family trauma.

Loki asks me to consider whether this person feels alone or alienated, or is struggling with a mental health issue.

Eir asks me to consider whether this person might be dealing with a physical ailment, or be in need of some kind of healing.

Saga reminds me that this person may be unconsciously caught in a story that compels them towards negative behaviors.

Frigg suggests that perhaps this person is just having a bad day, and that they are under pressures which are preventing them from being aware of the effects of their actions.

Angrboda acknowledges that yes, this person may indeed be an entitled, self-centered prat, but their behavior is not under my control, so I need to turn my attention back to managing my own stuff.

All of Them encourage me to a place of compassion and understanding, rather than judgment. This is going to take a lot more practice, but it is easier when I view them through the eyes of one of my Gods.

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[Image description: A teaser screenshot of this week’s Insight from the Oracles, with just a hint of the cards and runes showing.]

The Red Poppy
—Louise Glück

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

Melancholia
—C. Dale Young

The whirring internal machine, its gears
grinding not to a halt but to a pace that emits
a low hum, a steady and almost imperceptible
hum: the Greeks would not have seen it this way.

Simply put, it was a result of black bile,
the small fruit of the gall bladder perched
under the liver somehow over-ripened
and then becoming fetid. So the ancients

would have us believe. But the overly-emotional
and contrarian Romans saw it as a kind of mourning
for one’s self. I trust the ancients but I have never
given any of this credence because I cannot understand

how one does this, mourn one’s self.
Down by the shoreline—the Pacific
wrestling with far more important
philosophical issues—I recall the English notion

of it being a wistfulness, something John Donne
wore successfully as a fashion statement.
But how does one wear wistfulness well
unless one is a true believer?

The humors within me are unbalanced,
and I doubt they were ever really in balance
to begin with, ever in that rare but beautiful
thing the scientists call equilibrium.

My gall bladder squeezes and wrenches,
or so I imagine. I am wistful and morose
and I am certain black bile is streaming
through my body as I walk beside this seashore.

The small birds scrambling away from the advancing
surf; the sun climbing overhead shortening shadows;
the sound of the waves hushing the cries of gulls:
I have no idea where any of this ends up.

To be balanced, to be without either
peaks or troughs: do tell me what that is like…
This contemplating, this mulling over, often leads
to a moment a few weeks from now,

the one in which everything suddenly shines
with clarity, where my fingers race to put down
the words, my fingers so quick on the keyboard
it will seem like a god-damned miracle.