Mohanji: Welcome to Mohanji Speaks. These are answers to questions from listeners. Thank you for sending them. Keep sending them. I will try to answer them as best as I can.
Speaker: This question asks, “How does one deal with envy experienced by both oneself, and by others towards us? This is for both materialistic and spiritual envy.”
Mohanji: Jealousy, envy, such matters; it’s habitual. You can’t really do much about it. But we can do something about it. The illusion that something is better is what causes envy normally, or the fascination for something which others have, which we think we do not have; this causes envy and jealousy. And people feeling jealous about us because of our accomplishments or because of our lifestyle, or because of our personality, how we look, how we talk, how we interact in life; you cannot do anything about it. And you should not. Just live your life and ignore everything around you in that manner, in that context. Just be yourself totally. There will be envy, there will be jealousy, especially if you dare to live your life as effortless as you could. There will be envy.
One man told me that he really hates me. I asked him, “Why do you hate me?” He said, “You’re too effortless. You’re handling everything effortlessly. For you, life is effortless. I know that you’ve gone through tremendous pains, but it’s not visible on your face. You’re effortless. I can’t do that. Everything that I do is effortful. I have to put a lot of effort, right from getting up in the morning to do daily chores, relationships, everything has effort. So, when I look at you, I see my deficiencies. And that makes me hate you.”
So I told him, “I’m happy.” You could voice it that itself is half the war won. If you are able to voice your deepest feelings, there is a great chance of improvement coming out of it. If you’re able to articulate it, address it, diagnose it; that itself is half the war won. But I would strongly recommend you should not change your ways unless it is for the positive, it is for upgrading yourself. Otherwise, you should not change. Every day see how you can upgrade yourself. See how you can improve yourself and position yourself better. This is a good sign of youthfulness, that’s the youthfulness that you can carry with you, and you can experience in life. But regarding silly things like jealousy and envy of others or you or you over others, see, we do not have any control over others movements. Some people may be successful in your eyes; some people may be failures in your eyes. It has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with you. Whether it is success or failure, according to you, in real life, it doesn’t matter. It’s just our opinions.
Why should we be envious about somebody? We shouldn’t. We just appreciate, “Oh, this person has done well. Very good. Or this person is conducting himself well, he is managing relationships well.” If you can take some cue from there or some tips on how to improve your life with that, good enough. Otherwise, just leave it.
Likewise, if somebody has envy or jealousy over you, you can’t control it. That only says that it’s an appreciation in disguise. Because, if somebody is jealous or envious about you that means you’re doing well in their eyes. So, it’s an appreciation in disguise, be grateful. But you should not do much about it, don’t try to prove anything to them. Instead, what you should do is that, if somebody like this person who spoke to me that he hates me, so I said, “Okay, how do you sort it out? All your life you’re going to hate me? Or you want to sort it out?” Then he said, “I don’t know how.” I said, “I’ll tell you how. First and foremost, if you love what you do, you will be successful. If you do not love what you do, try to love what you have to do. This is very important. Sometimes destiny gives you some things which you have to do. Then start loving it, start appreciating it. At least you have an activity, which is bringing in money. So be grateful. Secondly, this effortless you talked about. Do you know why I’m effortless? Because I really love what I do. And I have a clear purpose. So, increase your purpose, clear purpose, clarity of purpose, not for your personal gains but look at what else you can do using your skills, your own limitations or no limitations or capacities, whatever it is. Use your potential to the best. You will have more self-esteem, you’ll start developing self-esteem. You will feel more relevant in this world, automatically, you will be effortless because there’ll be self-inspiration, self-motivation connected to the clarity of purpose. The purpose should not be something very small, it should be large. Large purpose means doing something good for the world, not just for yourself. Just having a house or child or family, this is not the thing, doing something much larger for the world. If you are able to realign yourself, you have tremendous capacity, you will start feeling that. This is the way.”
We can address these things positively if they are open to it. If they are not open to it, and they decide that envy is better, or they decide that being envious is alright, or they don’t even know, unconsciously, habitually they are doing it, ignore it. We have nothing to do with it. And we must never compromise or try to tone down ourselves because somebody is envious about us. A lot of people will be envious when we are seemingly successful. How is he able to do this? How is he able to conduct like this? Or how is he able to influence? All this is connected to jealousy and envy. They need a justification to put the other down or some kind of opinion to put the other down. So, just ignore it. Because they won’t hold water for long. Reality is always better. And people will start noticing the truth sooner or later. People are not stupid. They know what’s going on, so they will see the truth. So, you trust the people, let them see the truth.
And the jealous minds will definitely talk, they will talk bad about us or anybody in the society. And you can see some people are negative by nature. Whatever you do, they will be thinking only negatively. That’s their disposition, their whole disposition is like that. What can you do about it? Unless they want to change, you can’t change them. Just don’t think about all these things. What you can avoid, you avoid. What you cannot avoid, you ignore. This is the way to go.
We should not be envious or jealous of anybody because that’s a perfect illusion. And that’s ignorance. So, we should not be engaging in that. Think about it. This is a question. This is a point which really deserves a deep thought.
Do discuss this with your friends. Contemplate on it, and increase your awareness, step by step.
Wish you success in life. Lots of love.
This is Mohanji for you.
Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali
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