How can we distance ourselves from jealousy?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How do we distance ourselves from jealousy? Again there is an outer cause for it. We see somebody who has something better than us or who has something that we want to have but they have got it.
So basically all of us have a need for self-affirmation or self-validation. The world is so big and we can appear so tiny that we may feel that I am insignificant. And we often, we get our sense of self-worth from the things that are outside of us.
So if I get something good in the outer world, that makes me feel I am worth something. So that is the reason why some people when they feel bad, they adopt what is called retail therapy. They start buying things.
I buy this, I buy this, I buy this. Oh I can buy so many things. That makes me feel good about myself.
So this may give us some good feeling. But basically we are becoming dependent on externals for our self-worth. So rather than trying to get what somebody else has got and thereby trying to feel better or trying to take away from that person what they have so that they don’t feel so good and that makes us feel good, which is a very distorted way of living.
What we could do is, if we can go inverse and look at what is our actual need. We often think that I want this, I want that, I want that. However, ultimately what we need is affection, belonging.
What we want is to feel valued, to feel loved. And we hope that by getting this or getting that, that will help us to feel valued and to be loved. But no matter how many things we get in the outer world or no matter how many things we don’t get, as long as our self-worth is dependent on those things, till that point we will be insecure.
Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t care about things in the outer world or we just give up the things in the outer world, but rather we can see that occurrence of jealousy as a reminder that we need to shift the center of our consciousness from outwards to inwards. So through spiritual practices like yoga, like meditation, like mantra chanting, we can center ourselves within us. So every outer incident that stimulates a negative emotion within me, whether it be jealousy or whether it be anger or whether it be fear, it is a reminder to me that my center is somewhere displaced.
So now getting ourselves centered on our spirituality is a long-term process. But at a practical level, but that is what we have to do if you want to get inner calm. Say if a patient is sick, then the doctor will give a curative medicine.
If the patient is in pain, the doctor may give also a pain medicine. But the pain medicine is not the curative medicine. The real cure is by taking the curative medicine.
So what I am talking about is getting our center within ourselves, that is the curative medicine which we need to have. But along with that, if the stressful situation is there, the pain medicine in terms of external measure can also be taken. So external measure would be, okay, what exactly is it that is causing me jealousy? Is it that, okay, this person got this and I wanted to get this.
Then, okay, in my situation, what is it that I can get? And more importantly, what is it that I really wanted by getting this? Often we get fixated with particular desire or particular object that we desire. And sometimes if those desirable objects don’t come in our life, we feel very agitated. But if you go deeper and what do I exactly want? Oh, I wanted this car, I wanted this relationship, I wanted this job.
Okay, what exactly did I want? I wanted this job for what? Okay, I wanted a respectable position in society. Okay, I wanted respectable position for what? As we go deeper, what do I exactly want? So often in situations where we feel that we are being deprived of something. Now the specific object may not be immediately attainable for us.
But what we wanted by that object, that if we go deeper, that might be attainable in some other way. So if we go deeper to understand what our actual need is, then at a practical level, we can also address that. So both ways.
So arranging for something at a practical external level, that is like the pain medicine. It is often needed while we are functioning in the world. But along with that, trying to practice a spiritual process by which we can center our being within ourselves, that is the ultimate cure.