“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
– Carl Jung
Hello Spiritual Warriors! Welcome to a week of identifying our needs & consciously sharing them. Not so easy when we reflect on all the ama – the toxic residue – we leave out there throughout the day…in emails, texts, phone calls, and innocent conversations. The Buddha taught 2600 years ago when in-person speech was the primary way to share information. (remember those days?)
But almost 3000 years later, here we are, and the concept of Right Speech (the 3rd teaching of the Noble Eight-Fold Path which includes right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, & right concentration) flows into all the ways we communicate with others.
The Buddha referred to all these communications as Verbal Acts and encouraged all beings to reflect on your speech, before, during, and after speaking.
He encouraged the self-reflective question, “Will this verbal act lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both?”
If the answer is yes, he considered it an unskillful verbal act.
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Deepak Chopra echoes the Buddha’s teachings when he encourages us in the Law of Karma to ask, “Will this choice bring fulfillment & happiness to me and also to those affected by this choice?”
If upon reflecting on your words before you speak, you determine that they would lead to self-affliction, to the affliction of others, or to both – then we must acknowledge in that moment that they will create ama and the ripple of that toxic residue will release pain into the world. Therefore, we would be better off – the world will be better off – if you don’t speak them.
But what if it’s too late. What if you’ve already released ama into the world through your written or spoken words? To this the Buddha counseled, “confess it, reveal it, lay it open to the Teacher or to a knowledgeable companion in the holy life. Having confessed it… you should exercise restraint in the future.”
So today, let’s come clean with our unskillful verbal acts. Let’s confess them, reveal them, RELEASE our attachment to them and make the conscious choice to perform a more skillful verbal act in the future. We are not bound forever by our past unskillful verbal acts – we get to speak new loving, truthful words again after thoughtful reflection. And we have the ability to make more conscious choices and re-cast the trajectory we have created…create a new ripple…one filled with truth, kindness, & purpose. Then your world will flow with greater sweetness, greater grace, and greater ease. Join me this week on Hay House Radio and let’s manifest some skillful verbal acts. See you in the gap! Peace. -davidji
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