Errors of Others written by Vibka Wallder, Australia, 2012

It is so easy to find the errors of others, and when I grew up it seemed to be a sport for many people to find them and talk about them to third persons, behind the back of the person concerned of course, because it takes a lot more courage to talk about it with the person who made the perceived error. And to my shame I must admit, that I, like many human beings on this planet, am guilty of engaging in such reprehensible behaviour.

During my studies as a social education teacher I learnt that 80% of what children learn is actually not what we formally teach them, but what they subconsciously pick up from their role models around them, i.e. parents, teachers, siblings, peers and so on. So there is my excuse: growing up in an environment, where it was ‘the done thing’ to talk about others who weren’t present, has formed this behaviour in me and without knowing I followed suit. Does that hold up now?

Of course not, because over time I have learnt that we are responsible for our behaviour and that we can change ourselves for the better. Thoughts are very powerful, and we can achieve anything we want if we use them in the correct manner. That means I can unlearn this wrong behaviour of talking about others behind their backs. I just have to be more conscious of my thoughts and think about them before I open my mouth. And I have to reflect regularly on what I have thought, said and done during the day, and make an effort to improve where I may have slipped and made the same error again. Studying Billy’s teaching helps as well, because it keeps reminding us of the errors we make and how important it is to rectify them.

In contact report 169 from March 28, 1982, Billy and Quetzal talk about communication. Billy explains that we cannot make any progress nor have any self- recognition if we run down our fellow human beings, search for their errors and tell on them. If we want to learn, we have to keep our mouths shut and zip it. We are only allowed to register someone else’s errors if we happen to witness them, but we must never talk about them to others.

We are only allowed to observe the error, keep our mouths shut, register it and think about it thoroughly. The mere thinking about it serves the purpose that we use the error of others to check whether we may make the same error, and thus we can recognise and rectify it. Whoever talks about the errors of others, and therefore slanders and runs them down, will never learn anything. To the contrary: if we witness a error in someone and talk about it to a third person, we are never able to think truthly and discover our own errors. Such a human being constantly tries to shape others according to his/her own template and therefore he/she engages in antagonism, black mailing, quarrelling, talking behind the back and other terrible things. This behaviour also has an effect on our study of the spiritual teaching and so forth, because a human being with this life-conduct will then not be able to truly focus on his/her spiritual studies. The energy for it is missing, because he/she is wasting it with directing his/her attention to the errors of the next one, whereby he/she loses all powers and progress for self-recognition. The powers, which would be necessary for the study of the self, the spiritual teaching and the self-recognition, are then eaten up through the wrong behaviour, which is the slandering, reviling of others, the erroneous observation of others and the searching for errors in them. Instead of sweeping and eliminating the dirt off our own doorstep, we constantly mop in front of some else’s door. But of course, everyone claims that this is not the case, but that the other person was so crude and noticeable as well as unruly, aggressive and wrong, that we just could not ignore it. But this lame plea can be absolutely no excuse, because it only shows up our own erroneous behaviour even more, which we do not consider, because each one of us wants to be better than the next one, because the delusion of self-praise and self-worth in us is usually bigger than our honesty.

Now one may ask what the difference is to Billy and the Plejaren talking about other persons, which is often published in the contact notes. My understanding is that Billy has usually spoken with the persons concerned about their behaviour, and discussing it openly and publishing it serves as a tool to get the message across to the persons that they really have to work harder in order to make progress on their evolutionary path. This is similar to parents discussing the errors of their children or teachers discussing the errors of their pupils. It is done for the benefit of the one making the error, to assist that person with some strategies and advice.

And the best thing then is to talk with the child or pupil in a neutral-positive manner, so that they are willing to learn and take the advice on board. This is quite different to slander and backbiting, which does not help the person making the error, and which is usually done because of one’s excessive self-praise and self-worth.

Well, I wish I had known this some thirty years ago, and perhaps I would have made more progress on my evolutionary path. But, it’s never too late to begin with changing our behaviour for the better, so today is the first day of my new life without participating in any slander and backbiting. Wish me good luck!

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Truthly = wahrheitlich = der Wahrheit zugetan; der Wahrheit entsprechend; wahr- heitsbezogen; belangt zur Wahrheit (https://figu.org/dict/node/7410)

This was first published here.

Original article on They Fly