How to meet with negativity and fault-finding?
Silent prayer, I suppose, as well as showing a good example oneself by praising without distinction. What doesn't seem to work is to voice one's disagreement with the negativity (by trying to point to the positive). I find this actually magnifies the negativity (since the la...tter is being used as the premise for what you're saying - better to overlook negativity entirely!).
I'm reminded of these passages from Esslemont's book:
On no subject are the Bahá’í teaching more imperative and uncompromising than on the requirement to abstain from faultfinding....
‘Abdu’l-Bahá tells us:—"To be silent concerning the faults of others, to pray for them, and to help them, through kindness, to correct their faults.
"To look always at the good and not at the bad. If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, to look at the ten and forget the one; and if a man has ten bad qualities and one good one, to look at the one and forget the ten."
As well as this quotation of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:
Remember how Adam and the others once dwelt together in Eden. No sooner, however, did a quarrel break out between Adam and Satan than they were, one and all, banished from the Garden, and this was meant as a warning to the human race, a means of telling humankind that dissension—even with the Devil—is the way to bitter loss. This is why, in our illumined age, God teacheth that conflicts and disputes are not allowable, not even with Satan himself.
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