Recently I was watching a replay on public television of "Fifty Years of Peter, Paul and Mary" and I was very moved by their performances as I had been years ago. As I listened with tears flowing I felt that I was being reminded of what life is about...the beauty of this earth, the beauty in each of us and how we are meant to be together, all of us. Peter, Paul and Mary seemed to be telling us through their performances that we are all tied together by love! Music and songs can be powerful reminders of what is important in life. I guess mostly about how important relationships to other people are. I think that most of us know that and yet very frequently things happen and we end up feeling isolated or alienated from others. It is easy to feel that we need to protect ourselves from other people because they don't believe what we believe, or that we feel that we are different in some way that seems important. Sometimes stress will cause us to isolate more and also to see more people as wrong and like they are the enemy. In my more than thirty years of helping people to be less stressed, I have never seen it helpful for anyone to isolate themselves or judge and criticize others. Inevitably this increases their stress level and depressed feelings. This has been true even if someone feels a part of a group that is judging and criticizing others. It still separates us from others and this leads to feeling stressed and depressed.
So, how do we avoid this isolation and this judging and criticizing others? We can learn to recognize when we are being critical or judgemental and stop ourselves or at least try to defer this to a later time in the day that we have set aside for being critical and judgemental. This deferring the criticism and judgemental attitude to a later specified time can work if we have clearly set a goal of stopping this and are trying to reduce it this way.
We could all try this and we might find ourselves influencing others in a very positive way. Would that mean that we would be like modern day prophets?