Envy is a feeling of discontentment or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, luck or success. In essence, envy is closely related to jealousy and eventually leads to anger, resentment and suffering.

How can you give up this character defect of envy and replace it with the peace that passes all understanding?

Many people have become used to living from the Ego standpoint which is a mind-made image of who we are. Envy and its close friends, jealousy and judgement, feed off this mind which then leads to worry and fear. If not checked this can actually ruin one’s life.

From the Bible Proverb: The personal consequences of one’s actions are in proportion to the good or bad intentions towards others.

This is the paradox of intentions.

You may not believe it’s possible but ‘spiritual transformation’ can replace this character defect.

    • The first step is to understand and admit to oneself that envy, jealousy and judgement are occurring in the mind and are actually causing the suffering. 
    • This can be an amazing realization when its truth and deep self-honesty is discovered. 
    • Total self–honesty is imperative. This takes great courage. I like to describe a person who has this courage as being a “Spiritual Warrior”.
    • Becoming aware of this mind-made attitude towards life and others is one of the biggest of spiritual discoveries. 
    • When you are aware of the ego, a whole new spiritual world will open to you.

“Liberation is our natural, free, spiritual condition, minus all the harsh conditions of material nature.” —Krishna 

THE TRUE NATURE OF REALITY 

Most of us are spiritually lost; we are like lost sheep trying to have that fellowship and that love with others, yet find it difficult to escape the gravitational pulls of the Ego mind. I felt this way most of my early life. Early in my business career I wanted to be more like others who I thought were more confident, more successful, or more attractive personalities. I wanted to be like the guys who were  just a little cooler at the Country Club because  i no longer participated in drinking alcohol. I was not awake yet. Still caught up in illusions. Who or what was defining cool anyway?

For me it wasn’t as much envy as it was a feeling of not being good enough. Some how I wasn’t enough. I had yet to realize the wonder of my own True Self which is beyond the small-minded ego made self.

Believe that there is an ability within your True Self deep inside to go beyond the fleetingness of form.

In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus talked about taming the wild animal energy within oneself as “devouring the lion because, otherwise, the lion will devour us.”

This is a very interesting Gospel that was not part of the Canonical Gospels. This Gospel was buried in the early days of Christianity sometime in the early 3rd or 4th century and then rediscovered by a farmer in the Egyptian desert in 1945. It is famous for its reference to Jesus saying, “The Kingdom of heaven is within you.” It appears to me that Jesus was aware of something very true about life here on earth and life after we die. It’s as if He understood the true nature of reality, similar to the message of Buddha and the great Hindu yoga sutras.

We have to deal with our sense of fear and scarcity that emerges out of our Ego mind operating system. It’s almost like we have amnesia and have forgotten the True Self within us because of our Ego.

Once we cross this threshold of awareness, we can become more compassionate, loving, and forgiving, and release our addiction to the ego-made-mindset. 

When we achieve this, we begin to experience life from a deeper, more real perspective. Obviously, Jesus saw this. He was referred by his disciples as the Ihidaya, or single one. He became one with God. My hope is that you can see the truth of YOUR own Christ consciousness within you.

This isn’t religion, its practical spiritual living.

John 14:12 “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.”

Isn’t that an amazing statement?

The good news is that you and I can awaken to this mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation as well. This is what Jesus was teaching!

It’s almost as if we have a full body addiction to the ego mind in this realm.

So, what is the true nature of reality? In one of his most beautiful insights, contemporary Christian mystic Thomas Merton wrote, “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth, a spark which belongs entirely to God.”

In Buddhism, it is called dharma (in Sanskrit). This word, which is foundational to the conceptual framework of the Indian religions, refers to the system of natural laws that constitute the natural order of things. The teaching of the Buddha is that people can come out of their condition of suffering (dukkha), and this process involves developing an awareness of reality (mindfulness).

It was very helpful to me and my spiritual development to understand this, as opposed to continuing to fall for the illusions of the Ego mind.  The illusory mind made Ego would never allow me to be happy or content.

When we drop the story of our Ego and let ourselves work from our hearts we then can share that vibration with others. Humility is knowing the true nature of reality. Being humble allows us to finally understand that our lives are not just desires and wants. We’ll never be able to fill that endless of wanting, that the Ego wants us to believe. What we need to realize about the Ego and the mind is that it is always going to tell us we need certain things that, in many cases, we don’t really need.

When we reach that real peace beyond understanding, that peace is very, very deep, but it takes practice to reach that level. The idea of being without all of those other things we think we need can be scary at first. Until we retrain the mind, that is. Then the peaceful element of just being takes over from the restless, wanting mind. 

Mathew 6:33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

CONTEMPLATION 

Consider deeply where your true happiness lies.

  • What are the things that bring you genuine happiness?
  • Hold those things in your mind’s eye.
  • Take a few soft, gentle, deep breaths and fill your heart’s cup with the feelings of that truth.
  • Make short list of these things, circumstances, and people and then, every day, look at this list and appreciate deeply the simple beauty of them all. 
  • Practice this routine.  Take notice how your thoughts are separating from the ego-mind-made thoughts of envy.