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[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You are lashon hara. One who speaks despairingly of another person, even though he may speak the truth.
Next time you're over remind me, and I'll show you a reference book where a Hasidic Source states: One mussar said that there never should be any need to speak about another person. "If you wish to speak of someone's praises praise God instead. If you wish to find fault with someone, you would do better to focus on your own defects."

The second statement takes on additional significance in light of what psychologists have learned about lack of self-awareness. Some have suggested that when people talk about other people, they turn the conversation away from themselves and, by focusing on other's shortcomings, they avoid the need to focus on their own. Slandering other people thus sets back the struggle for self-awareness, which is essential for optimum emotional and psychological health, because it directs one's attention away from oneself and onto the defects in others. One thereby does not have the information necessary to improve.

The Talmud states that lashon hara adversely affects three people: the one who speaks, the one who listens, and the subject [Arachin 15b]. We can easily understand how it hurts the last two, and we now have another insight into how gossips actually hurt themselves.

Consider this SS-

"Today I shall..... Avoid talking about other people's faults, and instead try to find my own, so that I can improve upon them.

--Abraham Twerski

God is fucked in the head.