“He/she shouldn’t act that way in front of me. He/she shouldn’t like anyone else. She/he shouldn’t have a history with another woman. She/he should leave him alone. She/he shouldn’t exist. This shouldn’t be happening.”
When I read or hear these kinds of thoughts, I notice many people might think almost immediately afterwards, before these thoughts are even completed practically….
….that they shouldn’t be thinking them.
I’m beyond on all that, right?
I don’t have these kinds of thoughts! I don’t care which boyfriend is now with someone else, or what my partner once had with another!
That kind of thinking is for people who are attaching too much to the story of their partner, or stories about love and commitment and intimacy!
And yet….
….even the most brilliant, thoughtful, loving, kind people will have concerns that they want to be the only one in their partner’s life, or wish deeply that it went another way than it went.
I remember learning about a man I admire who finally found the woman of his dreams, after more than a decade of hunting and making it known to people in his world that he was searching for this woman.
He described their finally meeting, the fire that burned, the knowing. He described the fun, the wildness, the marriage proposal, the fights and make-up conversations, the passion, the dream-come-true.
Fights? They have fights? Like yelling and intense words?
Yes.
Oh, I thought.
I do not have that in my marriage. That sounds different. The freedom, the energy, the action, the zest, the fervor.
But I immediately laughed…it’s funny how the mind will compare, and decide you lose, or something a wee bit on the edge should be different.
Many people contact me because of terrible jealousy.
People are brilliant and wise. They know it is something going on inside their own minds, which is why they contact me in the first place, since they know self-inquiry will help them see the picture and question it honestly.
It’s like closing the gap between this knowing that they are attaching to something, but not sure how to stop.
The first thing to do, if you notice you feel jealous or envious of someone else, especially when it comes to love, is to allow your raging teenage or childish voice to write down what you’re most afraid of on paper.
(It can be absolutely anything you’re jealous of–I had big envy of other peoples’ money 8 years ago that doesn’t appear to exist now–after doing self-inquiry many times on wealth and money).
Let those thoughts about what you’re so afraid of be there, instead of thinking immediately “I should be beyond this…I AM beyond this.”
Once you’re there, in that space of seeing this other man or woman in your mind and feeling pain because they are with someone else, you can write what you really think should be happening instead.
You let that little child in you speak. You’re honoring that scared part.
And then….inquire.
I found every time, the only reason I would ever experience jealousy is because of what I believed it meant: That I was worthy of being left for someone else, that I was un-wantable, that I was losing out or missing out, that I needed to be something MORE than what I was, or LESS.
Who would you be without the belief that it’s terrible if someone you care about wants to go be with someone else? Who would you bewithout the belief that it means you’re missin’ out, or you’re abandoned, or you’re not as good as that other person?
Who would you be in your present moment, if NONE OF THESE MEANINGS are true?
I notice without using my busy mind which loves to make comparisons….
….they are just pictures floating through like a breeze. These images are very small. They are unimportant.
They are almost funny.
Actually they may make you laugh.
If you turned around the beliefs that it’s bad when someone goes off to be with someone else…..
…..WOW.
What would you notice? What is that like?
How could it be an advantage for you, a wonderful and marvelous and incredible experience that this person is doing what they’re doing, has done what they’ve done?
What does that make available or possible for you?
Could you open up to the idea that it should happen exactly the way it is, so far?
What if it has nothing to do with your worth….or even beyond that….what if it means you are deeply worthy and your are very want-able somewhere else?
What does it take for you to wake up and see how amazing you are?
How has it been that the person in question does you a favor, by having this history, or moving or acting the way they do?
“You see persons and things not as they are but as you are….How can you love people when you need people? You can only use them. If I need you to make me happy, I’ve got to use you, I’ve got to manipulate you. I’ve got to find ways and means of winning you. I cannot let you be free. I can only love people when I have emptied my life of people, then I’m right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for awhile, you’ll suddenly discover that it isn’t lonely at all. It is solitude, it is aloneness, and the desert begins to flower. Then at last you’ll know what love is, what God is, what reality is.” ~ Anthony DeMello
Thank you to the people who helped me stay in the desert because they were unavailable.
I would have never seen, with honesty, what I was so attached to, what imprisoned me in fear and grief and anticipation.
Thank goodness, thank God, thank mystery for their courage to move away from me.
Who would you be if all was perfect, as it is, when it comes to those other people?
They helped me find myself again.
