...Of course, it is human nature to be curious and to want to know personal details about others. That, in itself, isn't such a bad trait. Interest is one thing; destructive gossip is another. Some journalists seem to relish magnifying each stain into some murky mixture of true and untrue headline gossip. Raucous and pretentious news show debates create national obsessions about every morbid, shocking, enticing, and risque detail in the life of whatever public figure is being tossed to the gossip lions today. As a result of the media's propagation of this bad habit, we've become a gossip mongering society. This is a problem, because gossip destroys not only the object of gossip, but also those who are doing the gossiping, and the fabric of society as well.

Nevertheless, blessings can be found anywhere, and one blessing that has come from this bad habit of journalistic gossiping is that we've finally learned, once and for all, that nobody is perfect, except in the universal sense of spiritual perfection. If you're here in form, you have lessons to learn.

This understanding makes it easier for us to also acknowledge our own frailties, without getting into a swamp of judgmental internal gossip about ourselves. Having witnessed the media's array of spicy personal revelations about just about every well-known person in history, we can come to the mature realization that nobody is absolutely perfect in every way, and through the eyes of every judge.

...more of this chapter is available in the book, "Secrets of Spiritual Happiness," by Sharon Janis.

Home Page | Contact | Site Map | Books | Links | Chanting and Devotional Singing | Inspiring Videos | Sanskrit Spiritual Scriptures | Workshops | Blog | Photographs | About the Author