Using Right Speech
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
–Winston Churchill

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.... In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things....government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone....More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. [except a minimum wage that is not a living wage.] ...Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men....True they have tried, but ...They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish. The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men. Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now. – Franklin Roosevelt

Words are very powerful. A person on the spiritual path is aware of this keenly. Words are like seeds that are planted and grow into the bushes, the trees, or weeds and thorns Beautiful seeds that are positive and loving will yield loving and positive results but seeds that are bitter will yield bitter results.

As we can see by the portions of the two speeches that I read at the beginning of my talk, Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt acknowledged the challenge they were facing and then answered this challenge with a thundering solution which echoes up through time and speaks with authority to the situations that we face today, whether our ongoing challenge of Al Queeda or our latest stock market scandal which seems to be robbing the middle classes of their retirements while the wealthy scions of old families walk away with respective bags of silver and gold.

As citizens of the world, we use technology to allow ourselves to communicate instantaneously with others around the world. "You've Got Mail" is a phrase that is heard by over 20 million people a day using America Online and our corporate media thrives on feeding us entertaining news stories that punctuate the sale of soap and other products. Our life is cradled with communication from our first howling gasp for breath to our last exhausted sigh and prior to those events and after them the rooms are filled with voices that are sharing thoughts and feelings.

We lament the pain caused us by the deceptive practices of big corporations in their obfuscation of the truth and we celebrate the clarity of communication from the various spiritual masters and lovers of the light who touch our lives. The source of each of these emotions are the words that were used to conceal or reveal the truth.

Clarity and transparency are essential to our maintenance of democracy and it is democracy that gives us the freedom to be here and share our spirituality. As citizens of the world we do not begrudge others having a good life but we do seek to enfranchise and empower all people to share equally in the joys and beauty of the world and the first step toward empowerment is freedom to be oneself and to speak ones thoughts and feelings and then to be free to seek the fulfillment of ones' potential and thus to be able to give to the world the best of ourselves and the energy that permeates each of us.

Last time I spoke, I spoke of the first of the 7 Tools of Transformation: Affirmative Prayer. The other tools are Meditation, Visualization, Right Speech, Contemplation, Goal Setting/planning and Journaling. This time I will talk about Right Speech.

Like it or not, words are one of our primary means of communication. Words can be used to obfuscate or to communicate and it is our spiritual task to insure that communication is how our words are being used. Good communication is at the heart of good relationships. Right Speech is an important part of positive and effective communication and a tool in personal development. Just as the way we think affects the way we speak, the way we speak affects the way we think In fact much has been written in the field of cognitive psychology about "self talk" and how this affects our self esteem and our interactions with others. Being mindful of our speech can have a wonderful effect on all our relationships and most importantly upon ourselves.

Some of your might recall those speeches from the early moments of your lives and even more of you will recall the routines of Lenny Bruce who used language to show that if you used certain phrases enough they could lose their meaning and how important it is not to suppress our language but to celebrate it. Yet we know that beyond the comedy club, cursing scares children and other as well as offends many people. So it is wise if we have habits of cursing to work upon them and let them go by replacing them with better habits of loving and kind speech. I have seen young children blanche and feel fear because of someone's curses and listened to people of other countries tell me about how Americans freely use curse words as punctuation calling each other foul names in life as well as movies. So our language can inspire and uplift or our language can debase and abuse. Our words are quite rich in their possibilities.

There is a metaphysical principle that your word is your wand; your speech has a powerful effect upon your life in fact creating your reality. . Thus it is wise to only affirm that which is good, speak well of your future and positively about what you wish to happen in your life and the world. Again this does not mean to go about murmuring positive platitudes, but to recognize what you see and to go beyond the surface to increase good. As Ernest Holmes pointed out, we must not deny reality, we must acknowledge reality but then focus upon what we wish to see manifested. Thus when we see barrels of toxic sludge floating in the river, we don't deny that they are there, but we take action to insure that they are removed and that more barrels are not added to them. We see the good in our country and the world, and also we should be unafraid to see what is bad and to take positive action to transform these conditions. Unlike Taoism, Buddhism, Christianity and New Thought are paths of action.

It is also wise for us to speak well of others and use our words to build people up. We must seek to understand before seeking to be understood. We must affirm their progress on the path and look for positive ways to reinforce their upward mobility. We should not tear them down. When we are confronted with a yawning crevasse of negativity that we feel we cannot counter, then it is best to turn away rather than feel angry or frustrated. But eventually we will be able to face any situation and our words will be invested with deepest love and through this our language will become the magical language of the mystical Magi transforming life and reality even as we speak. The magic word sought by the alchemist is not a word but a sound and not one sound but a myriad of sounds that take effect because of the investment of deep feeling compassion and faith.

When creating affirmations think positively, creatively and learn to do this all the time throughout your life and throughout the moments of your life. Let no idle or cruel words form from your lips and you will see an amazing transformation of your life. There is a wonderful practice called the week of Right Speech in which for 7 days one practices never to let a negative word pass from one's lips and to counter all negative thoughts with positive words. Try it. Give it a try and if you don't make it through the 7 days, start over, until you get through 7 solid days and you will be amazed at the transformation in your life.

Changing our speech patterns can be hard when we have developed bad habits of speech.

I once knew a minister who often joked sarcastically thinking it was very humorous but members of his congregation did not. After many years of good service his board was happy to convince him it was time for him to move on.  Even the last time, I was out of state visiting him, he was still doing it. I got up in the morning and joined him in the kitchen where he was doing something and he exclaimed: "I'll be damned!". This is not a very good example of Right Speech particularly when coming from someone who is a minister. Another time I was visiting him with a spiritual man who was interested in creating a partnership with him to do some very positive work in the community but my minister friend once again let loose a few of these words and this changed the mind of his prospective partner. He no longer wanted to partner with the minister, all because of a bad habit of speech.

The term affirmation is usually associated with a positive verbal statement that is made about some goal that we are trying to reach, or some experience we desire to manifest in our lives. Some say that the act of affirmation is an act of faith. It can be an act of faith but it is definitely using the power of your speech to reprogram your mind and through this to transform your life. We must remind ourselves that our words are prophecies that we fulfill. A great teacher once said: "It is done unto you as you believe." Thus by using affirmations to declare a new and better path, by putting aside our doubts and fears and acting as if our desired goal were already a reality, we bring that reality into existence.

Too many times people will declare a reality that is not pleasant and begin to live it. Like the man who was always complaining, saying: "you can't fight city hall" or "what difference does it make" and investing his continual stream of negative statements with emotions and soon he was living in a life that was narrowed and painful. He would always find the problems and focus on them without offering a solution. He would not simply see the surface reality and go beyond it. He would dwell upon whatever cloud was in the sky until his narrowing focus caused it to fill his horizon and he seemed to have a constant storm above his head.

Or the woman I mentioned last time who would declare that every challenging situation in her life was a "pain in the neck". She was suffering from terrible neck pain and had been to chiropractors, MD.'s and massage therapists. She was deeply unhappy in pain. I pointed out to her that her language was creating her reality. And to prove me wrong, she retrained her speech and to her surprise, her problem 'miraculously' disappeared. But I know it was not a miracle, it was just the power of Right Speech. In this sense, an affirmation can be any statement, act, or symbolic gesture that affirms the best reality that you intend to create. Through the process of affirmation we "act as if" our highest aspirations were already a reality, thus affirming it as our reality and manifesting it in our lives. Here are some affirmations for various situations. I invite you to use them and to gather others and to even more importantly to cultivate the skill of making them and the habit of doing so on a daily moment to moment basis.
~~~
As Christ said: "by your words you will be praised and uplifted, and by your words you will be condemned." This is a powerful message that relates the core value of Right Speech. Our Speech is an active part of the creation of our attitudes and our influence upon others and hence it has a direct bearing upon our respective realities and the realities of all the people we interact with and like a stone cast into the pond of life the ripples of our reality will inevitably spread out and eventually touch all in the world so wisely we master ourselves and part of this mastery is Right Speech.