Volhv Veleslav: On "critics" and "criticism"

An now in English. Wise words from the Magi on "criticism" and "critics"...

On "critics" and "criticism"

... What causes a person to become a critic? Why for some people to criticize others becomes more important than to seek their own Path?

As often as we teach others, we criticize that which is created by them – living not one's own but THEIR life. As is often in the humiliation of others we see a way to transcend, if not to others, at least in our own eyes!

We are squandering ourselves in endless and useless disputes, in which THE TRUTH IS NEVER BORN. In disputes, in which LOVE DIES.

Over the centuries of its existence, mankind has invented countless ways to ESCAPE FROM ITSELF. The simplest of them – is an escape into someone else, in others, in other people’s problems and destinies.

The inability to be alone with YOURSELF, to peer into the Infinite within yourself, the inability to accept yourself as you are – is this not the reason for this escape?

The Spiritual Path begins in the depths of our Hearts. There it also ends if the concepts of "beginning" and "end" are appropriate here at all. True happiness never comes from outside - as well as Wisdom and Love, and Spiritual Peace (which has nothing to do with apathy and debilitating "fatigue" of a soul disappointed in its aspirations).

Criticism often hurts the person to whom it is directed; but even greater damage it brings to most critics, draining, and hardening his mind and Heart.

Criticism - it's not a friendly conversation, not a scientific argument and not a search for Truth. This is aggression in the word, it is a conscious and often unconscious desire to hurt someone who is its target.

Criticism - a recognition of one’s own weakness and spiritual bankruptcy. Recognition of one's own worthlessness and evidence of a "wasted" life. This is a tragic loss of SELF.

- Volhv Veleslav, II:XX:MMX (translated by N.L. Sanghrajkara, I:XX:MMXVII).

Original Russian