How to Make a Just Appraisal

A just appraisal is a combination of mental faculties — logic, reason, discernment, discrimination and discretion. Never induct from your physical senses or permit emotions to cloud your mental processes while you are making a just appraisal.

To be just means to be upright and impartial in one's dealings, rendering everyone his due, equitable. An appraisal is a formal evaluation of the performance of a person over a particular period, evaluation or assessment in this manner, intended to improve individual performance. You cannot justly appraise anyone or any situation with an on-the-spot snap judgment or while emotionally reacting.

A just appraisal is different from analysis, criticism or suspicion. You apply the law of a just appraisal to the appearance of a situation or person, without being gullible. Soul illumination and intuition, based on common sense, gives you a just appraisal. Yet you must watch that your appraisal does not degenerate into mere criticism or an unjust judgment.

– Linda Mihalic, Via Christa site editor


Edna Lister on Making a Just Appraisal

A shift in focus, quality, and intensity separates the lesser and higher degrees of ascension — the Neophyte, Disciple and Adept are separated at the fourth or Mystic Degree, from the higher degrees of the Master, Priest and Christos. So, appraising the qualities of an individual is often difficult. In one sense, all souls are equal — all are of the one God and have equal rights to advance. However, further equality depends on the individual soul's choices. If the soul chooses the high road of ascension, that is barely the first step. Then comes action, the progress of choosing the right, the hard climb. So you cannot appraise, at a glance, the capacity for choice.

However, the mediator-oracle holds the power of innocence and purity to look through the appearance into the soul, which is of the same substance in every degree, high and low. You must give each soul the same understanding, opportunity, and consideration without regard to its dwelling or type of outer sheath. This does not mean that you may be gullible. Always use a proper outer appraisal regarding the truth, not only of appearances, but in the soul's ability to express. Accept your responsibility to appraise higher or lesser degrees accurately, not expecting too much of the higher degrees or too little of the lower degrees. You cannot judge how long it will take the student to hear, accept and obey, yet inevitably, you will become ever more expert, compassionate, and understanding.

Above all, allow nothing to disturb you to the point of expecting too much too soon, which will always degenerate into unconscious demands. Be sure to outline the differences in the quality and quantity of the love a soul expresses, for only love can be the key to wisdom. Remember, acceptance is the first step; application to and practice of are the second and third steps. Stand firm in the Light, upholding law. Demand no credits to self for doing and lifting, no demands on anyone to become. Loose them and let them go on the outer. Lift and hold them high on the inner. – Edna Lister, December 12, 1958.


Suspicion, criticism and analysis are different from a just appraisal. In analysis, you can still be critical, condemning and intensely personal. Your own opinions and prejudices are always involved as you analyze and congratulate self for your self-satisfying insights. Under suspicion, you create the thing of which you are suspicious. Under criticism, you create a black cloud of blame over the one criticized. By passing judgment you hold yourself and the one you have criticized in bondage until you pay the debt. The last thing forgiven is found where you have criticized unjustly. This requires an acknowledgment of self-delusion. You cannot forgive another person until you forgive yourself, and most people do not like to admit they have deluded themselves.

A just appraisal should include:

1. A complete surrender of self under the law of forgiveness.
a. I have forgiven him but he had better not do it again.
b. Father, You forgive him.
c. Father, forgive me lest I speak a word that could offend my brother and cause him to stumble.

2. Praise all the previous good the individual, organization or evil ones have done. For example, Hitler ordered an increase of the birthrate and floaters entered earth bodies, thus becoming vulnerable to paying their spiritual debts. Therefore, his action resulted in good. This is an example of why you declare everything good.

3. Making a Just Appraisal: Lifting the individual away from earth into the arms of the Father, by whatever picture in imagination, will release the individual or the organization to God, and knowing that the Father does the work.

With a just appraisal, you cannot be gullible about surface appearances. If personality stands between you and the Father, you are blind. – Edna Lister, June 12, 1961.


A just appraisal has several steps, which include a complete surrender of self under the three steps of forgiveness: First, I forgive him but he'd better not do it again. Second, Father, You forgive him. Third, Father, forgive me lest I speak a word that could offend my brother and cause him to stumble.

Praise is the second step; praise all the previous work done by the individual or the organization. For example, God has used the evil works of even Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, the Nazis and the Communists to ascend earth and the masses.

The third step is lifting individuals away from earth into heavenly realms by whatever procedure means release for them. Lift them to God, knowing that the Father is doing the work. – Edna Lister, May 1, 1962.


A just appraisal is different from suspicion, criticism or analysis. In analysis, you can still be critical, condescending and intensely personal. Your own opinions and prejudices are always involved.

Many pursue analysis as self-justification, congratulating the self's satisfying insight. In suspicion, you create the thing of which you are suspicious. As an old adage says, "Well, I have the name, so I might as well play the game."

In criticism, you create a black cloud of blame over the person you criticize, and passing judgment holds you both in bondage until you, the criticizer, pay the debt. The last thing forgiven is found where you have criticized unjustly. – Edna Lister, May 3, 1962.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 –1971
The original Pioneering Mystic,
American Idealist, Founder, Society of the Universal Living Christ, minister, teacher, author, wife, and mother

../Edna Lister


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