Yesterday I described how we literally watch natural emotions developing in our baby. Just some time ago I saw another small incident here at the Ashram which is related to this and which I thought I would tell you about.
One of our teacher usually brings her one-and-a-half year old girl to school. She is called Pari. She cannot even really speak yet and just communicates with noises and pointing but she understands every word you say. She spends her days partly in school, partly walking around here at the Ashram and everybody talks to her, smiles at her and plays with her. She was the smallest one at the Ashram.
Now Apara came. While Pari looked small to us before, Apara was even smaller. When we brought her out one day, the teachers and all people around naturally came to look at our Apara. She was the center of everyone’s attention and everybody talked to her or about her. One of the teachers took Apara in her arms and the others leaned over to have a closer look. Pari, at that moment on the arms of her mother, had already pulled a face before and now even started pushing the teacher who was holding Apara – she was jealous!
We managed to calm her down with some cookies but it was really a very clear display of a natural emotion: jealousy. She is so young and small, nobody taught her what it means to be jealous. She has no personal issues with Apara – how could she? – but jealousy got triggered naturally when she noticed that people’s attention get diverted from her to Apara.
There are different levels for becoming jealous depending on your mind, consciousness or willpower. For this little girl, it was enough to have another person who got more attention than she herself. For adults it may take a bit more, for example if your partner falls in love with someone else.
Whatever it is that makes you feel jealous, you should not fight this feeling. This is the first thing that you need to learn because it will only make it worse. I hope the story above shows you that it is a fully natural feeling. You are not bad or wrong for the fact that you have this feeling in you. You need to accept jealousy as something natural. There is no reason to create guilt about being jealous. Accept it.
You are however not as young as Pari anymore, so you should not start pushing or punching your object of jealousy or anybody else. Accept that you are jealous and then realize that there is an adult way to treat this problem: talk about it if you feel like it, not blaming the other one but explaining your feelings. If it works without and you realize that there was no real reason to be jealous – that is even better! Just don’t have a bad conscience for the fact that you felt jealous. It is simply natural.
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Jealoosy is a strong emotion. It tells a lot about your selfesteem. If your selfesteem you are dependent from the attention others give to you and messure their love for you by that. Otherwise you would be sure about the feelings other persons have your you.
For children its of course a different story…they still need to learn a lot about emotions and how to deal with them.
Jealousy is not at all fun, I cannot stand the feeling and wish that I could turn it off at some points but then as you said it is a natural emotion, and sometimes you cannot help but feel jealous. I guess the really challenge comes with whether or not you decide to do something about it or not.