I Gossip in My Sleep

I Gossip in My Sleep

This is how it goes when I sleep. I grumble, “I wonder why they would do that if they were really my friends? How can they afford to take the whole family on vacation, but they are too cheap to foot the bill for dinner last night?” My wife interrupts, and she says in the dream, “Why would you talk about your friends like that? If they could be different, they would be. Who are you to judge and complain about somebody else? That is not your place. This is a photograph. Wake up.”

Startled into a moment of conscience, I am initially embarrassed by my utterances, irritated and annoyed with my wife and myself, but hopefully, I am sufficiently alarmed into the third state from my sleepy second state. I am not asleep in bed; I’m sleeping standing up and gossiping about my dear friends. My wife has reminded me of the Work. I rise out of my slumber.

I think I’ve always known it’s not a good idea to gossip, to talk about people behind their backs as if I knew what was best for them. But here’s a new reason, a conscious reason for not gossiping. Gossip is a mechanical manifestation and it's keeping me asleep. By complaining and talking about others, I fool myself and buffer my own contradictions. It’s a trap of the lower self.

On the flip side, gossip is a form of mechanicality that is immediately available for self-work, if I make the right choice. It can be transformed, but only if I interrupt the expression of this negative emotion. Don’t judge yourself, don’t judge other people, but observe how I talk in my head or aloud about what other people are doing. If I really cared about someone, I would do something to help them, fill their needs, or reach out and say I love you through my loving actions. Through Presence.

Conscious love must come from consciousness. ─ Robert

Gossip is the normal state. It’s easier and more mechanical to simply talk about another person when they are not present instead of engaging with them directly. Gossip not only fails to help the other person. It eats at my soul. It consumes all fine energy. It is a way of elevating my false personality, my ego, rather than elevating to my Higher Self.

The people around us need us. Kindness, a helping hand, or a gesture of acknowledgment is what most people need. Be Present to the people around you. Take your gossip and turn it into an act of external consideration.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart. ─ Marcus Aurelius

Every situation teaches; every interaction with another human being instructs. When I fail to consciously act on an observation and ruminate on how things could be different, then I not only fail to move forward, but I dig the hole where I sleep a little deeper. I am also not suggesting judging myself; self-denigration must be replaced with self-remembering. This dynamic struggle is all perfectly natural. It’s what this complex machine does. It sees things and then dwells on them. But to be in the Work means to transform, to bring attention, to do something differently. To become a different being.

Presence, love, and gratitude are always together. You cannot have one without the others. ─ Robert

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Silence, Auguste Préault