On this particular day, just as I walked through the door to the outside waiting-for-arriving-passengers area, the woman walking next to me began to talk to me. Oddly enough, I heard her and actually responded to her conversational opening!
Neither of us can remember how she started that interchange. Still, in the 10 minutes before her mother and daughter and my sister-in-law arrived (on the same flight), we had discovered some amazing parallels in our lives.

We were both Jewish psychologists who had had practices on the East Coast. We had both, ten years earlier, dropped out of our established personal and professional lives in order to come out West. We had both made those moves in order to do some deep inner exploration, healing and growing that we’d felt was not possible in our "old" lives. We had both lived in Santa Barbara and were both now living in Ojai. The level of synchronicity stunned us both. As our passengers arrived, we exchanged phone numbers with some vague idea of catching up with each other sometime in the future.

Within the month, however, I reconciled with my almost-former partner. I left the ranch on which I’d been living rent-free while care taking a menagerie of handicapped or ailing animals. Sharing a new rental we’d found in the East End of Ojai, the two of us began what shortly and clearly became an abortive attempt to reconstruct a healthier partnership.

It was such devastating time in my life. I couldn’t believe I had actually decided to try living together again. That I’d risked this after the enormous struggle I’d had trying to leave the first time, less than 10 months before. I was profoundly depressed and quite frozen, unable for the next few months to find my way to physically leave yet again.

During those awful months, the only peace I had (except for when I was working-focussed on my clients’ lives) came in the very early mornings. These were a few short hours that I had totally to myself, before the full weight of my depression descended. I’d do yoga, meditate, then walk a half-mile up the road to a forest trail. The trail led another mile up a chaparralled canyon to a creek. Once there, I’d melt into a boulder in the middle of the flowing water, awash in the natural sounds. For that small space of each day I’d feel truly held by Spirit, totally at one with the wonder of all that is the world of nature.

Living our separate lives–in and out of frustration, anguish and tension with each other–my estranged partner and I continued to share the rental house for just over 4 months. While doing errands in town during those months, numbers of shopkeepers and people I’d run into would ask me if I’d ever met Marcia Feldman (not her real name). They’d each tell me, in almost the exact same words, how much I reminded them of her; how similar our energies were; how similar our ways of being in the world seemed to them. I recognized the name. It was that woman who’d engaged me at the airport. It all seemed rather odd and a little fascinating. Still, I was too completely immersed in my despair to think of trying to make contact, of exploring the possibility of a friendship with anyone new.

Then one morning, as I wandered up toward the trail, I picked up a scrap of paper lying in the brush alongside the road. (I often "policed" the roadside, picking up bits of trash to dispose of when I got back home.) I glanced at the scrap before stuffing it in my pocket. It was a very old Visa statement for several florist purchases made back East by one Marcia Feldman. I actually burst out laughing! Clearly Spirit was into nudging me, trying to get me to pay attention. I finally surrendered and picked up the phone once I got home.

It took several rounds of phone tag for us finally to get to talk with each other in real time that mid July. As we tried to make a plan to get together, we discovered that she had been living just across the road, up a few properties from where I was still living with my ex-partner. She was at that point in the process of packing up the last of her things in preparation for a move from Ojai back to Santa Barbara, with plans to visit her oldest friend in Santa Fe in between.

We decided that I’d come by right then. That we would visit while she packed. I was by now quite curious about what exactly was up for me with this woman; why Spirit seemed so determined to bring us together at that particular moment. I gathered some cheese, crackers and fruit, and went across the road. I was actually feeling some real eagerness, some excitement about this meeting, about the possible adventure of discovering a new friend.

I was sucked right into a whirlwind. The woman actually seemed a bit of a lunatic! She talked and packed at warp speed. She kept pulling out and handing me endless photos of her "exquisite former house on the river," her fancy former sailboat, her former self in many "classy" settings. All the while seeming quite intent on telling me stories that would help me to understand that she really had been "a somebody" before she chose to dropout of her former life.

I was a little dazed by it all. I really couldn’t have cared less about how much of a mover and shaker she had been "before." In fact, for several years after my own dropping out, I’d been totally committed to "erasing my personal history." I was absolute in my dedication to meeting people as just the who I was in the moment. Diligent in not letting anyone know about all the pirouettes, accomplishments and degrees I’d used in my former life to create some sense of worthiness for myself.

All I was really curious about was who she was in that very moment. And, who she seemed to be in that moment was one very insecure, frenetic woman trying to impress me by telling me things that she had no idea had so little meaning to me. I was more than a little disappointed! I was certainly more than a little dumbfounded by trying to figure out exactly what people could possibly have seen in this frantic, hyperactive, insecure woman that reminded them of my (as I saw it) very slowed down, calm self! (I didn’t know then that she was not quite this same way out in the world!) And, I certainly couldn’t understand what the point was of all of Spirit’s nudging!

Yet, after a while, she did seem to settle down and we did talk more meaningfully. I could feel her warmth, her vibrancy, her juiciness and the intensity of her genuine interest in getting to see/know me. The similarities people spoke of made more sense to me then. Still, she was off the next day for several weeks away and then on to Santa Barbara. And, I had so much yet to deal with in finding a new home and getting myself free of my enmeshment again. So, that was about that for then.

Some five months later, after I’d finally extricated myself from the intolerable living-together situation, found a magical new home and entered yet a deeper layer of my healing of my broken self, Marcia turned back up in my life. I was at a fairly new friend’s house for a small, intimate Christmas Eve gathering of 5 very wonderful, empowered and fascinating women who were (except for our hostess) all new to each other. The evening started with Lois telling us that we were sadly missing one other woman she had wanted to bring into this circle. It seemed that that woman had an old friend visiting and the friend insisted on going to see Amadeus rather than coming to this dinner. The "missing" woman was none other than Marcia Feldman, who had asked that we give her a call at some point in the course of the evening.

When we spoke by phone that evening, she told me that the old friend–her best friend since kindergarten, the very friend that she had been going off to visit in Santa Fe that past Summer–was none other than the second of the only two close friends I’d had at college. It was so peculiar! More than a little eerie. And, once again, it seemed that Spirit surely had a hand in all of this. So, we made a plan to get together after the New Year.

When she arrived at my cottage in mid January, Marcia "dazzled" me by "reading," with awesome emotional accuracy, each of the many fiber masks (my "Spirit-Mother Totem" series) lining my walls. She "read" the masks to me in absolutely the very same magical way that I had always been able to accurately translate into words the feelings evoked by the work of many of my own artist friends. It was yet another remarkable parallel.

That January1985 meeting was the start of an extraordinary, intense, free-wheeling, sometimes challenging, sometimes delightful, sometimes delightfully challenging, sometimes (mostly past now) crazy-making but always phenomenally growth-inducing 18 1/2 year friendship. We came to the friendship each having done an enormous amount of personal work. We were both ferociously dedicated to our healing journeys. And though we each had our own wobbly places, we were both, for the most part, empowered and grounded in ourselves.

At times, calling it a "more-than-a-friendship" has seemed a more accurate description since it continually serves each of us as a cauldron in which we are endlessly forced toward our truest, most authentic, fullest, most transparent selves. Over the years it has become quite clear that it’s been for this work–and for the wisdom that comes with it–that Spirit brought us into each other’s lives

Strangely enough, an enormous amount of this growing and forcing has blossomed out of how intensely and profoundly we have judged each other. And, ultimately, out of how committed we’ve each been to owning and learning from that judgmentalness in our selves and in the field of our sharing.

Though neither of us is particularly judgmental of others, we have both been furiously, aggressively, both secretly and outspokenly judgmental of each other. Often in the most exaggerated and extreme ways. Always these judgments (mostly in the past now) have arisen in what we have come to recognize as very particular moments for each of us.

When we met, I was working seriously and deeply on recovering from overachieving, recovering from using what I did/accomplished in the world as a measure of my own self-worth, as a cover for my insecurities. My commitment was to being openly in the middle of any self-doubt, outing my vulnerability rather than obscuring it. This sometimes very edgy practice seemed to me to be the only way I would ever be able to feel really safe in the middle of myself.

When Marcia would feel insecure or self-doubting she, it seemed to me, would do what looked to me like "putting up a front," sort of puffing herself up and acting in ways that felt really inauthentic or phony to me. I would get incredibly irritated with and critical of her when I’d believe this was going on. I would tell her how really "stupid" her behavior seemed, how easy to see through, how insulting it felt to have her think I could be taken in by these machinations. I hated it! Of course, she would take my extremely judgmental behavior as evidence of how unsafe it was for her to even consider openly being her insecure self around me! We’d go round and round with this as I tried to explain it wasn’t her insecurity I was judging, that it was her ways of trying to hide her insecurity that "drove me crazy."

We’d argue, argue, argue. Me calling her behavior insulting and stupid, she calling mine crazy and mean. Slowly, with this particular (and repeated) dance, we seemed to finally be able to agree to each look deeper into our own "stuff" rather than judging and berating each other. We committed ourselves to exploring what was "really" happening between us, taking it as an opportunity to do "research" into what these interactions might teach us about ourselves.

I came to see that Marcia’s behavior was like a dark mirror for me. In it I saw the ways I had, for so much of my past, hidden my own insecurities. Always, I had kept them secret, projecting instead an image of myself as a person who "had it all together," who rarely if ever had a fraught or anxious moment. Of course, that enormous effort was exhausting a lot of the time. And, it left me always in some degree of fear that someone could, when I least expected it, unmask me–leaving me exposed, quaking and terrified of being ridiculed.

My resolve in this season of my life was to expose myself directly, openly revealing whatever my deficiency, fear, insecurity might be. I chose to do this as if I believed it was perfectly acceptable, honorable, respectable and simply okay with me that I felt this way. The more I practiced living my "shortcomings" so boldly and so out-loud, the more they really became acceptable, honorable and respectable to me. And, as I treated them this new way, others had little choice but to do the same.

In these yet early days of my practice, I was doing what so many of us do when we make a major shift. I was judging, criticizing, devaluing and demeaning the old ways (now being left behind) that I had used to make myself safe. But, I was doing this indirectly by judging, criticizing, devaluing and demeaning what I saw as these same behaviors in Marcia! And, in doing this so aggressively and out-loud on her, I was becoming for her fearful-and-hiding self the very menace that I had always feared would unmask me!

I could stop beating up on Marcia for the ways she was making herself feel safe when I could recognize, reclaim and embrace the me that I had been when I had thought to make my insecure self safe in those very same ways. As I could be more compassionate and accepting with the earlier self that clearly grew me into this new place I was learning and practicing, I could also be more spacious and honoring with Marcia’s process. I could stop "taking it personally" and stop "feeling insulted," and stop seeing it as "stupid."

There have been over these 18 1/2 years many more such tales of our judging and being judged by each other (albeit about other issues). In each episode, we used to have to go through many "rounds," before we would begin together to look for the parallel "inside stories" behind the judgments. Now we are much more likely, one or the other of us, to catch onto the very earliest moments such a "research opportunity" appears in the field between us! We argue less and explore more.

It seems to me that I tend to judge in Marcia ways that she acts that (less than consciously) remind me of ways that I used to act. Ways that I do not yet fully accept or embrace as having been perfectly honorable parts of my evolution. She, on the other hand, it seems to me, is more likely to get judgmental of ways that I act that reflect back to her "secret" parts of herself she hasn’t yet come to accept and embrace as honorable parts of who she is in her current evolution. But, then, this is only my story about it all!

In any case, the lesson has been an enormously powerful and empowering one. Whenever we are judging someone else’s behavior it’s highly likely (maybe even a sure thing) that we are, through this judging process, disowning a part of ourselves. By heaping our negative, negating judgment upon that quality/behavior/aspect of the other person, we are almost always really saying, "I’m not that disgusting/unacceptable/disgraceful/etc way!"

If we stop whenever we find ourselves judging someone and look for what in our selves (past or present) we may be trying to separate from, every "judging moment" becomes a doorway into becoming able to acknowledge and embrace more of the all of who we are. Even the ugly, wart-ridden, foul smelling parts–once owned–are real contributors to the fullness of our rich, fertile, juicy selves!

Consider using your open or secret judgments of others as opportunities to lovingly reclaim and embrace usually disowned parts of yourself,

P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!

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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.

If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.

Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!