Have you ever heard someone say that they feel envious of you, although they mean well? The truth is that envy has its roots in hidden feelings of admiration, hate or frustration, and these are products of the subconscious conditioning that comes from comparing ourselves with others. From a young age we are taught to compare ourselves with those around us and to seek their approval, and we are trained in a ‘what will they say’ mentality. As such we go from being happy and spontaneous children who find enjoyment everywhere, to being decrepit, cold, calculating, bitter, sad and rigid old people, since most of the time we base our tranquillity in factors outside ourselves.
The problem stems from our habit of comparing ourselves with others (be it in terms of power, prestige, money, recognition, physical appearance etc). We fall into the wretched hands of envy, which consumes our inner peace. In reality envy, although you may not believe it, is born of the simple act of comparing oneself with something or someone. If you really want to stop suffering for silly little things, give up once and for all the harmful habit of comparing yourself and you will be surprised to see how envy immediately disappears. If you think about it, you never compare yourself with the stars, animals, nor with nature, you only do so with other human beings, since that is how we were programmed, and such comparison is always based in wanting to be or have more.
If from today you learn to be conscious, to leave aside criticism and to eliminate comparison, you will find that anger, hate, falseness, and jealousy immediately disappear. As a result you will easily be able to go back to basics and you will instantly recover your natural happiness, spontaneity and the enjoyment you felt when you were a child and that with time you have lost.
At times we are mired by comparison, we forget to appreciate what we have because the grass is always greener on the other side, we magnify our most insignificant problems and we play the role of victims, without appreciating all the beautiful things that surround us.
This may be one of my favorite Papa Jaime posts. Love it!
So true….we forget to appreciate what we have…beautiful post…
God Bless
Nadeem
Dearest papa,
even when we compare ourselves with stars or sun we dont become jealous of it, instead of it we admire it and try to become like it. that is why children are so blessed in my eyes, they look at the beauty of others with joy in their heart and then try to become like them, not out of envy but out of admiration.
Wish you love, peace and happiness.
Trisha
I really really liked this post. It is so much accurate, to the point and helpful. It is so strange that we never envy the universe and its magic because somewhere we have assumed we cannot become stars, planets etc, so why get jealous. We only get jealous when we know we could be where someone else is, and where we are not, because of n number of reasons. These feelings disappear when we accept ourselves, if we can love ourselves then even better and then we do our hundred percent. Being grateful to what we have and appreciate our good qualities does the job. thanks for posting the article.
Garima
nice.