How to conquer addiction/Right Speech
- Oregon Gnosis Guide
- 2 days ago
- 14 min read
Right Speech
Right speech is the third step on the eightfold path. Right speech is also known as right communication and is to abstain from any type of false speech (lying, gossip, sarcasm, criticism, all types of negative speech).
We explained in previous lectures that when we use the words right or wrong we are simply referring to purity and impurity. When we do something that is impure, we disturb our minds, hearts and bodies. We are seeking to discover the impurities that we have within ourselves. We are simply seeking what is impure and what is pure. Wrong speech or impure speech, whether internal or external is motivated by impurities that we have within ourselves. So, with each one of the steps of the eightfold path, we are seeking to see what keeps us trapped and conditioned in vice and error.
With this step we are striving to be mindful of our speech; with the way we communicate internally and externally. We’ve mentioned mindfulness during each step thus far, and when we arrive at step seven we will discuss right mindfulness even further. But truly we need to be mindful of each step; to pay attention, to have awareness of how we perform each step from moment to moment. With this step of the eightfold path we need to be mindful of the way we intend to speak to others and ourselves, whether internally or externally. To be mindful is to pay attention and mindfulness helps us catch ourselves before we say something that causes harm.
“One not only fornicates with the sexual act: fornication with the word is another type of fornication. The improper use of words is also fornication; fornication with the verb creates misfortunes. It hurts to see how people abuse the word and fill their world with pain. Slander is the worst of all blasphemies. One must achieve perfection of the word and language within oneself. One must comprehend the responsibility of the word. One must learn how to use the sexual creative organ of the word (the larynx).” – Samael Aun Weor
What we say in our minds has effects and eventually the things we tell ourselves internally get expressed externally.
For example: When we feel anger and we have angry thoughts, eventually we will express our anger through some type of action and what happens when we express our anger through our speech: we cause suffering-people get hurt. Motivated by anger and pride we say things that cause harm. Our speech motivated by anger causes people to feel emotional pain and fear.
Many of us have addictions to anger, we like the power we feel from it, and enjoy making others suffer. If this is true for you, become aware of it and seek to intuitively understand what it’s doing. What are the causes and effects on others and on your psyche.
Can you recall a time when you said something that was motivated by anger? Did you regret it and feel remorse? Or did you enjoy the fruits of your anger?
Anger is a destructive force that only seeks to cause pain and suffering. Anger is a blind force that we all have within ourselves. Our anger needs to be studied and comprehended. If we aspire to overcome anger, we need to study it and comprehend the causes and effects. When we comprehend that our words fueled by anger cause suffering and we feel the suffering we have caused, then little by little we transform our anger into love and compassion. When you truly comprehend the suffering you’ve inflicted and you care, because you feel compassion, you begin to intuitively feel and know a truth, and to know and feel the facts intuitively lead to psychological transformation.
There are many types of wrong speech and lying is one of them. We all lie, and some of us have developed addictions to lying; telling tall tales. Some of us picked up the behavior of lying for many different reasons: such as abuse, attention seeking, to get what we want, fear, etc. In order to end this type of speech requires the knowledge of why we began to lie and why we continue to lie. We start by having awareness of when we lie, no matter how small or large the lie is, pay attention, be mindful. Pay attention to your thoughts, and pay attention to the lies you tell yourself. In the beginning this will be difficult because we’ve been lying to ourselves for a very long time. Our pride gets in the way, which is something else we are very addicted to. We tell ourselves many lies every day because of pride. “I’m right, they’re wrong, they need to hear it, even if it hurts them, people should be more like me, I don’t need this, I don’t deserve this, they do, I don’t have to understand them, they need to understand me.” Or the reverse, “I’m no good, I can’t do it, it’s too difficult, I should just give up,” and on and on. The lies that we’ve been telling ourselves is infinite.
It behooves us to understand that anytime we say “I,” we usually are motivated by an emotion or thought of selfishness; some type of psychological aggregate. We also should be aware that there are many different things we tell ourselves constantly that are rooted in self-deception.
Self-deception is the action or practice of allowing oneself to believe that a false or unvalidated feeling, idea, or situation is true, and one of the number one things that instigates this is the ego of pride. Our pride leads us to lying to others and ourselves. Pride is puffed up and full of itself. Our pride keeps us from truth, the truth about ourselves, others, and life itself.
Another form of wrong speech is gossip. Pay attention to when you gossip and try to understand why you are doing it or why you want to.
Gossip is to talk about others typically involving details that are not true. When we gossip we tend to bend the truth which is to tell a half truth and a half truth is still a lie; it’s deceitful.
What happens when we gossip about someone? What happens when the other person finds out? Do you care?
When we gossip we cause suffering in many different ways not only for the other person but also for ourselves. When we lie or gossip we are strengthening our addictions to lying, pride, anger, envy, and selfishness. Strengthening our egos is very unhealthy. We do not care about other people’s feelings when we say hurtful things about them and this is selfish. Selfishness is profoundly unhealthy for everyone. When you talk negatively about someone pay attention to how you feel: is your heart rate going up or down, do you feel positive, relaxed and serene or do you feel tense and psychologically filthy? Gossip disturbs our minds, hearts and bodies.
Gossip is rooted in some type of negative; an impurity. If we are speaking about someone negatively, if we are spreading a rumor that we heard but don’t know to be true, or we’re the one making up the rumor and are spreading it to others in order to cause harm what are the consequences?
What are the fruits of our wrong speech?
Jesus said,
“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” – Matthew 7:16
How about when we lie to our own children or gossip about someone with them, what are we teaching them, and what are the consequences? Did we learn this from our own parents and are passing it on to the next generation and thus keeping the cycle of wrong speech in motion?
Gossip and lying are profoundly unhealthy for our minds and hearts. Lying and gossip can eventually lead to not caring about the truth and thus creating enjoyment in expressing and living lies; creating chaos. How you may ask? Somehow we’ve learned to enjoy the energy and fruits that are born from gossip and deceit. If we enjoy talking horribly about other people, why is that?
The fact is we see this all over the world. If you turn on the news, or almost any channel on tv, you will find lies and gossip that are creating global chaos. Why is this?
We’ve learned to enjoy hatred, pain, and suffering. We’ve learned to exploit our fellow human beings. We’ve learned and thus conditioned ourselves to judge and believe what we hear is true without any concrete proof; without gathering the facts. We have become accustomed to taking someone else’s word for it.
How do we free ourselves from these types of behaviors? Pay attention to how you view things, your intentions and motivations. Strive to be mindful of the psychological factors within yourself that trigger you to view things unethically, and motivate you to behave in an unethical manner.
Observe yourself, pay attention to when you enjoy anger, when you enjoy hurting others with your words, when you enjoy talking negatively about others and ask yourself why? Why am I doing this? What is it doing to me and to other people? What are the fruits, the outcome of so much negativity? When we are aware of what’s happening and why, we see the causes, and their effects; observing the consequences and knowing the facts gives us a gift.
What kind of gift you may wonder?
A gift of gnosis (experiential knowledge), knowledge of ourselves that we gain from experience. When we are aware and comprehend why we do things and what happens when we do them we gain experiential knowledge. This type of knowledge is worth more than gold.
Wisdom is priceless! Real wisdom is priceless because it leads one to psychological freedom. To be wise is to know. Knowing has nothing to do with reading from a book or from hearing something from someone else. Wisdom comes from experiencing the facts.
Two other forms of wrong speech are sarcasm and criticism. Sarcasm may cause others to feel uncomfortable. Sarcasm may be funny for you but perhaps not for everyone else.
Do you care when someone is negatively affected by your sarcasm or criticism?
If you don’t, why is that? Is it because of selfishness? Do you only care about the way you feel?
How about criticism? Criticism is to pass judgement or to express disapproval and is something based on perceived faults and mistakes. Most of us are very quick to judge and criticize others. All of us make mistakes, all of us have faults, and most of the time when we criticize someone we contradict ourselves. How, in what way you may ask? When we criticize someone we usually see something in them that we to have within ourselves. If we criticize someone for getting angry, and we’re really hard on them about it, is that helpful? If we criticize someone for relapsing are we passing judgement without the facts? Do we see the entire picture, and have we relapsed or got angry before? Is it helpful to point our fingers at someone or is it more helpful to give them support, positive encouragement, and help them learn how to overcome their anger and their substance abuse? So the question becomes, how can we help someone without criticizing them?
One way is to use yourself as an example, and put yourself in their shoes. We call this empathy, to empathize with them, try to understand them and recall that all of us have anger and many types of addictions. We all have been angry and that is something we should remember when someone else’s anger upsets us. We may in that moment really want to point our fingers at them and treat them like their a bad person, but, if we remain aware of ourselves and consciously choose to empathize with them we can keep from criticizing their behaviors and remember that we to have acted in the same way. Instead we observe ourselves and the situation in order to find a positive way of being helpful. We want to help the situation, and not make it worse. When we do our best to self-observe, and empathize, we discover the facts and this helps us find a better approach for giving advice. There are healthy ways we can give advice but when we criticize someone else’s behavior we usually instigate arguments or some type of conflict erupts. Most people to do not enjoy being criticized and before we pass judgment try to gather all the facts of the situation first and before you begin to criticize the behaviors of others take a good look at yourself.
Another key point we can discuss is when we feel motivated to give advice: giving advice is great but is the person ready to receive it and did you ask if they wanted your advice? When you are motivated and intend to give someone advice take a look at where it’s coming from. Most of the time it’s pride. Before you give advice ask yourself, “is it coming from a place of genuine helpfulness,” and if the person doesn’t like my advice will I get upset?
How many times have you got upset because someone didn’t like your advice and why did you get upset?
It’s important to become aware of how easy it is to see the faults of others versus recognizing their strengths. Why is that? Why is it easier to see the negatives and not the positives? Is it because most of the day we spend our time and energy focusing on negatives? And why is that? Why are we attracted to the negatives more than the positives?
Rarely do we hear people speak positively about other people or about the beauty in the world, or the goodness that is all around us and why is that? Why is it difficult for us to see and feel the positives in ourselves, in others and in the world?
Truthfully, there are many reasons: we watch garbage on tv, we read garbage, we listen to negative music, we consume filth, impurities, and what’s the outcome? A humanity that applauds violence, negative hateful speech; gossip, lies, rumors, and that no longer cares for truth. Why do we enjoy impure speech? Why do we enjoy hurting our fellow man with our words? In order to discover the facts we need to not only look outward but also inward. The impurities that we have within ourselves psychologically speaking are attracted to negatives. Our ego craves the sensations of sarcasm, criticism, and hateful speech. Before you watch tv try to understand why? Why do you want to watch what you’re about to watch? Before you talk about someone ask yourself why? Why am I about to talk about so and so? Is it negative or positive? What are the consequences? Take notice, pay attention, observe yourself mentally and emotionally, and learn to question your motives.
If we wish to work on our impure speech we should be asking ourselves these questions. Every time you are motivated to speak horribly to or about someone become aware of why? One of the reasons is that we want to be better than others. We have been taught throughout our lives that we have to compete, to be the best, to be special, to be the one that is noticed. Everywhere on this planet we find profound competition, everyone is competing for all kinds of things and this has created global envy and greed. Competition leads to suffering. One only needs to take a look around to figure that out. We are losing the ability to work together, to be a team, to be helpful and useful to one another and to ourselves. We are losing motivation for upright sacrifice. It is much more common to sacrifice each other. We exploit and sacrifice each other in order to get ahead in life. The world does not become a better place through acts of selfishness. True sacrifice comes from a place of love; love for each other and for all.
“Love never says it owns something, though it owns everything. Love does not say, “this is mine” or “that is mine,” but rather, “All that is mine is yours.” – Gospel of Thomas
Many people say that they want the world to become a better place. We hear people state they’d love to live in a better world. It is also common to hear people state that they don’t know how it can change. Most of us do not realize that change first needs to occur within ourselves. How can anything outside of us get better if we are a psychological mess. Our psychological state of being has caused the chaos that we see in our towns, cities, states and countries. Become aware of the effects, and imagine how the world would be if greed, lust, pride, and anger didn’t exist within us. Imagine what the world would be like if we worked on ourselves to become upright people.
“The exterior is a reflection of our interior. Only by radically transforming ourselves as individuals can we save ourselves and save humanity.” - Samael Aun Weor
Each one of us can change, but it takes sacrifice. Instead of speaking horribly about someone learn to sacrifice your own egotistical will and say something positive or nothing at all. Learn to see the positives in yourself so that you can see the positives in others. Make a daily effort to see the good in someone and yourself. Watch a sunrise or sunset and become aware of the beauty in the world again.
“The loveliness of the dawn should be the topic of the day, and the beauty and goodness in mankind our theme.” – M
There are many reasons why we have difficulty seeing the good in others and we need to discover them. There may be many factors, but we can find them by paying attention to ourselves from moment to moment and through profound meditation.
With this step of the eightfold path we are seeking to transform our impure speech into an ethical upright way of speaking. Pay attention to when you’re about to lie and learn to see the truth of why you want to lie. Pay attention to when you are sarcastic and observe the how’s and why’s of why you do it and how does it affect the person you are directing your sarcasm towards? If you like to tell jokes and make people laugh try to do it without hurting someone. If you like to give advice, try to do it without criticism and make sure that you too live by the advice you’re giving. Giving advice that we don’t live by ourselves is a contradiction. Many people do this, all kinds of people love to give advice and do not live by it themselves. All of us have probably done this at some point in our lives and most likely still do. Practice being mindful of what you’re going to say and why you want to say it. So many words cause suffering.
“At times, it is a crime to speak, and likewise at other times, it is a crime to be silent. One must talk when one has to talk, and be silent when one has to be silent. Therefore, let us not play with the word, because this carries a serious responsibility. Each word must be weighed before being uttered, because each word can generate in the world much efficiency or much inefficiency, much benefit or much harm.” – Samael Aun Weor, Fundamentals of Gnostic Education
The spoken word contains power, the power to cause harmony or disharmony. Reflect on this!
In order to end our impure speech we need to understand the causes and effects. Right speech comes from comprehending our speech that causes suffering and caring about the consequences. If we cuss to much we need to understand why. If we speak negatively internally or externally we need to understand why. Practice seeing something positive within yourself and say it out loud. Practice perceiving something good in someone else and telling them about it. When you hear someone gossiping about someone else don’t partake in it and don’t criticize the other person either, remember, you have done the same thing at some point in your life.
Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter will lead one to Right Speech. Learning to not lie and tell the truth no matter the cost will lead one to right speech. Study yourself, pay attention, be mindful of the way you speak to yourself and to others. Let’s make a conscious commitment to not partake in negative speech of any kind. If you find yourself moved to lie, gossip, or speak harshly, become aware of what’s motivating you to do so. Become aware of the facts: am I stressed, jealous, angry, motivated by greed or some type of selfishness? Do I fear rejection or do I desire recognition? Ground yourself by being mindful, pausing for a moment, remember your higher power, and contemplate the detriments of wrong speech, and then reengage with wise intentions.
“ Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth. Speak the truth; yield not to anger; when asked, give even if you only have a little. By these three means can one reach the presence of the Gods. Those sages who are inoffensive and ever restrained in body, go to the Deathless State, where, having gone, they grieve no more.” I teach about suffering and the way to end it.” - Buddha