The best place to start for me with this subject are in the memories of my childhood. In the small town I was born in my grandmother often referred to a certain group of women as the “circle of hens” because they went about clucking their gossip to everyone in our town. When I was young I didn’t know exactly what this meant until a situation occurred one day. On that day my grandmother and I and her handicap sister were getting groceries. When we got to the checkout my grandmother pulled out the old paper food stamps used in those days to pay for our food. As we stood there an old woman right behind us started grumbling under her breath and my grandmother must’ve heard what she said, and so she turned around and confronted the woman. I can’t remember everything that was said between the two of them, but the one comment that I heard very clearly was when the woman raised her voice at my grandmother. She said, “How dare you expect tax payers to feed that retard and illegitimate bastard of yours.”, then the woman spit in my grandmother’s face. After that we left the store and the food we were going to buy and went home.
Now I was about five years old and I didn’t know what the words “retard” or “illegitimate bastard” meant. All I knew is that they were mean words based on the woman’s tone of voice and my grandmother’s reaction to her. As I got older I came to realize that this woman was one of the “gossip hens” that my grandmother referred to in the past. In my childhood home town poverty was something that many people there had strong prejudices against. My family was often talked about in these gossip circles with a phrase like “white trash” to describe us. To these people it didn’t matter that I was an excellent student or that I never got myself into trouble. As a child in this town I was horrifically bullied and ostracized by my classmates and overtime I came to realize the destructive power that gossip had over my life by the way that it shaped my view of myself. In all honesty it has taken me many years to repair the damage that started then. It is only recently that I have managed to put a stop to its effects by developing a more solid sense of self worth.
Gossip is an absolutely vicious behavior and if I were going to compare it to something I would describe it to be like the act of crucifixion. When a person is nailed to a cross it can take them hours to days to die as they are slowly robbed of their breath while also dying of dehydration. Being a victim of gossip can be like having your breath sucked away, but instead of it being your breath its your words and or your self worth. Also the dehydration torture of it causes a terrible thirst and this is very much like the person gossiping depriving someone of access to the companionship other people. The point of this action is to humiliate the victim by stripping them bare and putting them on display, so they and others can mock them. Over the years what I’ve come to realize is that when people choose to gossip about another what they’re really doing is deriving entertainment from suffering. So, how does one fight such a horrible and hateful torture device as this?
Through getting people to understanding the consequences of their actions on their own lives and the lives of the people that they have done this too. The extent of the effects of gossip are like taking a dandelion flower that has gone to seed and blowing all of those seeds off and away into the wind. Would it be possible for you to know how far your words have gone like those seeds? Would it be possible for you to collect all of those hundreds of seeds again to completely undo what was done? The truth is that this task would be impossible! The reality of gossip is that once it’s power is out of your control it cannot be contained and it cannot be stopped and because of this the bad karma will never stop accumulating for those who engage in it. My questions to those that gossip are… “How much time did you spend talking about this person versus talking to this person?” and “How much do you think one can actually learn about anyone through someone else’s opinions of their supposed actions?” Some people may say… “Well, a truly good friend told me about it, so I can trust what they have to say.” My response is, “Really?”
We all need to question how truly good of a friend someone is when they’re the type of person who is willing to spreads gossip. Any supposed friend that would spread gossip is no friend at all, and point of fact they’re quite the opposite. The easiest way for all of us to stop gossiping is to accept and understand its consequences and that there is no real benefit in this behavior for any of us. We need to understand and accept that this is an act born of hate that will only cause destruction in its wake, which needs to be understood as the goal of some people. The reality is the karma that one will have to pay for this action will far exceed its value. In order to keep ourselves from this behavior it is important to remind ourselves over and over that when we choose to gossip we are deriving entertainment from another persons suffering and that doing so will only earn us suffering.
My best advice to those people that have seen and or been a victim of gossip is to leave the presence of these individuals or groups that participate in this behavior. Do not lend your energy to anyone or anything that allows this behavior to continue unchecked, in other words take your power away from them and it. My best suggestion for protecting yourself energetically against gossip is to have a solid sense of self worth. If you don’t have this then I hope that somebody around you can remind you of your worth in those dark times. I’ve been very fortunate with this at least in the last few years of my life. My partner currently is an amazing person who has been comforting and encouraging and has reminded me that I am a wonderful person deserving of compassion, love and peace. My prayer for anyone alone that has to deal with gossip is that they will find someone wether a friend, family member or the divine who’s love will act like a shield of protection from this kind of cruelty. Until next time please think about the words that come out of your mouth and please understand the long lasting repercussions of what you choose to repeat to another.
Until next time… Namaste!
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