Recently a friend told me that a part of her morning prayer and meditation is, “Please help me to learn and grow spiritually today.” The concept struck me because I usually just ask for help to make it through the day!

Most of us are so busy during our physical waking lives that we’re not even aware of the higher dimensions of our existence or what we could be learning spiritually. We are so involved in the mental, emotional and physical aspects of daily life that we don’t really have (or make) the time to tune into what it all means to us spiritually.

I’ve always known I was a judgmental person and I judged myself for it. I felt somewhat better about it when I learned in my social psychology class that everyone is judgmental to some degree. Being able to quickly assess people and situations that could be dangerous to us was an important survival mechanism, especially people different from us. However, as many old survival behaviors do, my judgmentalism had become a bad habit and one that had outlived its usefulness to me.