Putting on the Breaks to Gossip

Putting on the Breaks to Gossip

Even if we have little interest in conscious development, some corner of our being knows it is essential to resist the inclination to complain, critique, analyze, or simply lose ourselves through other people. Most people have experienced the feeling of energy depletion and exhaustion after a rant of gossiping about others. Gossip is a form of identification with other people the Fourth Way calls “Unnecessary Talk” and it usually digresses further into negative emotions. It is not only speaking ill of others but can also manifest by preferring to live through their joys and trials by speaking about them versus keeping awareness toward the experiences of our own life.

Do not repeat nor listen to slanderous gossip. It is like a veil covering the face. Report only of things observed, not heard. — Egyptian Wisdom of Ptah-hotep

It has occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons that this Facebook Group is relatively quiet is that the nature of our posts and the request not to debate or to express negativity inhibits the communications that many of us have grown accustomed to. By the successful removal of forms of unnecessary talk such as gossip and verbal expressions of negativity, I am rendered a much quieter person. (Paradoxically, we do want to encourage you to comment and ask questions about the Fourth Way.) Fortunately, Higher Centers and higher states of consciousness are independent of words and speech, and they are, in fact, assisted through silence. An anagram for “silent” is “listen” and self-observation begins with self-remembering and simply listening to the voices inside and outside of my machine.

We find our Self in silence but we lose it with unnecessary talk. This state does not need talk. Conscious talk does not use words. —The Teacher

So how do I meaningfully communicate in order to share experiences that may provide instruction or even higher states for myself and others? By trying to speak while self-remembering. Being present and the pilot of my four lower centers requires emotional intelligence and a rewiring of mechanical reactions that have been hardwired through many years of habit. The resistance to the uncontrolled habit of gossiping – putting on the breaks– can bring remarkable awareness and further my conscious evolution when it is coupled with sending the resulting energy to self-remembering. The lower self is directly opposed to this effort because it feels puffed up and comfortable belittling others to applaud itself.

Our lower selves try to veil presence with laughter and useless chatter. —The Teacher

Although at the beginning it is important simply to resist gossip and engage self-remembering, I like to have in my back pocket neutralizing observations about myself that can dissolve accounts or grudges I hold against others. One such solvent is to remember when my complaint about someone else is connected to a behavior that I observed and found difficult to transform in myself. Accounts or grudges are collections of complaints that form a static, unflattering picture about another person. What I forget to remember is that these very attitudes are the internal gossip and clutter that keeps relationships stagnant and smothers my own presence. It is useless mind activity – internal unnecessary talk – that stands in the way of my own conscious development. The Teacher reminds me not to have a conversation that smothers presence.

Stop plunging into unconscious conversation. —Sufi Aphorism

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Egyptian Wall Relief, Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir el-Bahari, ca. 1470 BC