Jealousy

Things to do to soothe the green-eyed monster

I’ve been struggling. I’ve been doing that thing, which is so disappointing, where you measure yourself against others. And while we know it’s not a good idea, it’s like picking at a scab and you think, if I just peek underneath and see how it’s healing …

It’s very difficult to not feel an emotion that is clearly here for a moment and isn’t going away in a hurry. For me, jealousy feels like a big gob of phlegm in my throat, and a radiating burning sensation from that part of me towards me heart and shoulders. I feel on the verge of tears and my ears ring a bit. It is unpleasant and unwelcome.

It doesn’t matter what I’m jealous about. Well, it sort of does, because I feel a lot of shame around my jealousy. The things I am jealous about have to do with decisions I didn’t make, a long time ago, and judging myself for that. And also, it has to do with decisions I did make, a long time ago, and wondering whether those were the right ones to make.

In any case the conclusion I arrive at is I am here now, as I am, and I wouldn’t be the way I am today if it weren’t for those decisions made or not made.

I mentioned to someone wise that I am a pleaser. They said to me that what I do in my life is rarely that of a pleaser, but it is how I do the things I do - that’s done in a pleaser way. Being a pleaser is just a habit I have.

This shook me to the core.

My work as a practitioner, and as a coach, is to zoom in on habits that we cannot see and to work out if there are other less painful or abrasive ways to use the world around us (like gravity, or language) to express or do the things we want.

When I look at my anarchic lifestyle (laugh, go on, I’m such an anarchist) there is nothing that really adheres to ‘how you should do things’. I mean, shouldn’t I own property or have a retirement portfolio? Shouldn’t I live closer to my widowed mother or widowed father-in-law? Shouldn’t I have a tidy home? Shouldn’t I have a robust income?

I think in my past I have agreed to do things that I didn’t really want to do. Or, I did things I wanted to do but didn’t march through ahead with full agency because I didn’t want to step on people’s toes or upset their values and way of seeing the world.

Interestingly I did something to bid jealousy farewell.

I went back to nondual practice. On the night of a particularly green-eyed bout, I went to bed early, and thought about the people who seemed to ‘have’ and ‘be’ the things that I didn’t have or am. And remembered that there is no separate self. And that there is just all of it. “That” is big mish mash of the cosmos and it is made up of ideas of matter and emotions and individuals. That if I really go into nonduality, I have and am all those things too, because “I am X” (the person with the nice house or the new title or showered all their children with braces whatever silly thing that was bothering me). And I couldn’t be anything but happy for them. I also thought of all the hardship and effort and practice those beings went through to ‘have’ and ‘be’ those things and how integral it is for the journey (of experience experiencing itself) to have done those things. Also of all the nice experiences these bodyminds can have along the way and from now on.

Of course I want that for me. And I fell asleep knowing I can have that vicariously. And the pain in my heart felt a bit fainter, lighter and kinder.

Stepping aside from nonduality, I noticed a part of me that doesn’t want to grow up or work hard. If I lean into nonduality once more, there are no parts. And if I practice piano, or go for a vigorous walk or work with someone, I can do that with ALL OF ME. All that I am. And that is how jealousy can only be a concept. It is just a feeling that comes and goes. It cannot be chased away or transformed. It is what it is. A forgetting.

I am grateful for these reminders of the illusion of being separate. It felt so real. The ‘I’m not enough’. The ‘I’m a loser’. But it cannot be. Because there is also an idea that those other people are enough and are winners. And when it comes to nonduality, both cannot exist.

Is this word salad, as another friend of mine would say?

Maybe.

Is it spiritual by-passing?

Maybe.

But it brings me peace and freedom. And helps me love people again instead of measure them against me, or me against them.

And when did that sort of comparison ever lead to something beautiful?