Telling the Truth without Blame or Judgment

Telling the Truth Without Blame or Judgment

by Linda Heron Wind, Ph.D.

Now telling the truth is something we have all been working on for a while—freeing up that throat chakra! We are finally learning to say what we are thinking and feeling. This is an especially big step for women, as many seem to have been sworn into silence at some early age. So we have been making great strides in having our voices heard. Telling the truth without blame or judgment, on the other hand, is a whole different ball of wax, as the saying goes. This is a challenge for men and women alike.

When I first heard this phrase I had to stop to consider what it really meant—as well as how to put it into practice. Telling the truth without blame sounds a lot like what I have been teaching people about communication for many years. It means you say how you feel or what you think without blaming the other person. This can be accomplished by using "I" language, for example, "When this happens, I feel angry," rather than, "You made me angry."

"I" language also implies that you are taking responsibility for your own emotions. Another person cannot make you feel angry or happy. How you feel is the result of your own previous experience and how you choose to view the current situation. For example, if someone insults me, I can choose to get angry or I might make a joke out of the insult and not be bothered by it at all. The situation is the same but my response is different. The idea that no one else can create your emotions has been around for awhile and I have enjoyed the understanding and freedom it creates. No one but me can create my emotions.

Telling the truth without judgment is a little more tricky. Judgment of ourselves or others is more in-grained in our thought processes and belief systems. How can I say how I feel without a judgment of something as good or bad, right or wrong, true or false? If someone hits me, isn't that bad and wrong? Maybe we need to examine what judgment is. Webster defines judgment as, "the ability to form an opinion objectively or wisely." Forming an opinion objectively means to me that you are judging only on the basis of what is evident or seen. That seems very limiting when we are coming to an understanding that reality consists of an energetic dimension which cannot be objectively seen. Forming an opinion wisely sounds good, but then I question what wise means. Webster says wise means, "having the ability to judge what is true or right," or, in an older usage, "having the knowledge of magic." Well, this takes me deeper into questioning what is right or true. It seems to me that true might imply seeing things as they really are. If this is so, then what reality are we talking about -- the physical dimension or other levels of experience. What is real seems to depend on what perspective is taken.

This line of questioning may seem like nit-picking but I believe that if we are going to make judgments we need to know exactly what we are doing. Back to "true" and "right," I have been a good enough observer of life and people to know that what is true for me is not necessarily true for someone else. People coming from different upbringings and different cultural backgrounds often "know" what is true about how the world works and how to behave, and yet their "knowings" are sometimes the exact opposite of each other. Some would say that the truth is that which we all share in common, yet I don't know what that is which we could all agree upon with our "wise" opinions. The only thing I do know is what is true and right for me. I know what is true by how I feel, and that might not agree with what anyone else in the world thinks is true or right.

So this brings us to a place where I might say that I cannot judge for another what is right or true, but can't I judge that for myself? Even this judgment becomes clouded when we consider that, even though I strive to know what is true and right for myself in the highest sense of the words, I don't always know because I am not aware of many non-visible factors. For example, I have stayed in situations, wanting to make them work, yet finally realizing that the truth was that I needed to be out of the situation. That was not my truth, however, when I was struggling with the situation. My truth then was that I was in conflict with holding on and letting go. If I define truth as how I perceive my experience at any given point in time, then I am always in my truth. I don't believe that this is the usual meaning given to truth.

But are there not some universal right and wrong things? For example, isn't killing a person wrong? Pacifists would say yes, the military would say no as long as you are defending your country, the law says no as long as you are defending your home or life, the moralists would say that it depends on the situation, and so forth. In my way of thinking, it depends on whether you consider death as bad, what the mission on Earth is for the person doing the killing as well as the person being killed, and probably a whole host of factors which my limited brain is totally unable to comprehend about how the universe really works. Does that mean that I will stand idly by while some one is being killed? No, because the act of killing is not consistent with my belief about who I am and what I feel is true for me in the moment.

There is a word other than judgment which we hear a lot today which might better describe my process of decision making. This is the process of discernment. In some places Webster equates judgment and discernment, but the difference lies in the definition of discernment as, "the faculty of recognizing differences," or "acuteness of understanding." This suggests that we can see that things are different and understand that difference without judging one as true (good or right) and the other as false (bad or wrong). The ability to discern in this way lies at the core of being able to embrace diversity. It also allows you to determine that a particular action is not right for you even though it may be right for someone else, or visa versa.

As I have pondered discernment, I have seen many examples of situations that appeared to me to be not right for someone else, but in the long run I saw that they were the exact situation that the person needed to experience in order to grow or heal. There are many experiences even for myself that, while going through them, I would have judged them as bad but found later that these experiences were the pathway to growth. So while I am able to discern what feels right or true to me about myself or someone else, I do not want to judge the purpose or effects. I suppose if I wanted the job of the Karma Keeper of the Universe and was given all knowledge about how all our lives fit together and what we are all doing here, I could make judgments about myself or others. But I don't want that job and I don't think you do either.

So now that I have established, at least for myself, that judgment is something I want to eliminate from my thought process, how exactly do I do that? What does non-judgment look like? My understanding of this keeps changing as I continue to learn and practice truth-telling in my life. I don't believe that we know very much about how to be non-judgmental. Some seem to practice non-judgment by denying their own feelings and pretending they are not being triggered by a situation. This, however, creates the same old problem of acting one way on the outside and feeling different on the inside. We have had enough of that.

Others take the opportunity of truth telling to air any grievance the have ever had about the person or situation. This is blaming and, again, something we are trying to avoid. At least at the present time, I believe that telling the truth without blame or judgment involves stating your feelings, taking responsibility for them, and indicating what you will do different to address the lesson which the feelings are bringing up for you. I also believe that such sharing of truth needs to be done in love and with respect for the other person(s) involved. The ideal place to learn this is in a community where no one can run away and people are motivated to work things out with each other.

An example of this type of truth telling might help to clarify the process. Let's say that at a community picnic, I observe a mother screaming at her child and hitting her. Assuming it was a brief incident so there was not time to intervene, I might ask the mother if I could talk with her for a few minutes. I would then say something like this: "I overheard you disciplining your child and it felt to me like you were very angry. I found myself feeling very tense and frightened as it brings up some stuff for me. I am wondering if you would like to talk about the situation as it seemed as if it was triggering something for you as well. I know how hard it is when you feel frustrated with a child's behavior and I feel committed to finding ways to discipline children in love - ways that let them know that what they have done is not acceptable, but that they are acceptable and loved just the way they are. I don't always know how to do this but I feel that it is important for us to find new ways to handle situations where our anger buttons are pushed. You might feel that this is none of my business but I feel that it is my business is to love and support every mother and child that I see who need to be loved and supported."

So what are the elements of my response?

• I described what I observed and what my feelings were.

• I took responsibility for my feelings.

• I said what I felt I needed to do.

• I indicated a willingness to come from a place of love.

In such a situation I would not feel responsible for the mother or child but responsible to them—as well as to myself. Responsible means the ability to respond and I would like to be able to respond to people from a place of love. This response is from a place of integrity— standing in my own truth without denial or indulgence. Denial would be not saying anything at all—pretending nothing was happening. Indulgence would be acting like I had all the answers.Integrity is willingness to speak my truth without blame or judgment and with love and respect.

Our choices to use our voices to respond in love to the situations we encounter corresponds to Caroline Myss' understanding of the throat chakra as the place of will. It does not take much awareness to respond to people from our own woundedness—with anger, hurt, and judgment. It does, however, take considerable awareness to respond to all people and situations from a place of love and truly feel it. As we are learning to do that we can at least be willing to say what is true for us and take responsibility for it.

Another example might help to clarify this process. Suppose a friend of mine called to cancel a lunch date with me because she wasn't feeling well. Later I heard from another person that she was seen having lunch that same day with someone else. I might feel betrayed and angry that she would lie to me. The questions that I might ask myself to try to stay in a place of non-judgment would be, "Why did I call this situation into my experience, what am I suppose to be learning from it, and what does this friend mirror for me?" In talking to my friend I might say, "I am feeling very angry right now because I heard that you went to lunch with someone else after canceling with me. I feel that you lied to me about not feeling well and that is bringing up a lot of trust issues for me. I haven't sorted out what all of this means for me yet, but I would like to talk more about it with you so I might better understand what was happening for you as well. I care about you and our relationship and hope we can learn from each other through this situation." I think if we assume that if we find ourselves in the middle of a situation where our emotions are being triggered, there is always a big lesson waiting for us as well as an opportunity to break old habits and come into integrity.

When we are mastering the art of non-judgment, the core question is, "How big is our love?" It is easy to love when others are meeting our expectations. It is more difficult to have no expectations and to love no matter how they behave. The same is true for ourselves. When our love is big enough we can love ourselves and others no matter how things appear in this world of illusion. When our heart chakras open and we choose to speak from the heart, we will come into integrity with who we really are—light beings in human form.

At a women's spirituality camp this summer, a friend of mine, Julie Corey, received a song about the opening of the throat chakra. I would like to end with the words to that song which continues to inspire me to choose to speak without blame or judgment from my heart.

Opening, opening,

Letting your love and light sing through

Opening, opening

Be true to your song.

There's a memory of who you are

There's a memory of choice

There's a freedom song that's waiting inside

For you to give it voice.

Page last modified Feb.2, 2002 by RMC