Jealousy and Envy: Healing Poisons
Excerpt-Thomas Moore
Even though care of the soul is not about changing, fixing, adjusting, and making better, still we have to find a way to live with our disturbing feelings, such as jealousy and envy. These emotions can be so sickening and corrosive that we don’t want to leave them raw, wallowing in them for years and getting nowhere with them. But what can we do short of trying to get rid of them? A clue is to be found in the very distaste we feel for them: anything so difficult to accept must have a special kind of shadow in it, a germ of creativity shrouded in a veil of repulsion. As we have so often found, in matters of the soul the most unworthy pieces turn out to be the most creative. The stone the builders reject becomes the cornerstone.
Both envy and jealousy are common experiences. They are entirely different feelings, one a desire for what another person has, the other fear that the other person will take what we have, but they both have a corrosive effect on the heart. Either emotion can make a person feel ugly. There is nothing noble in either of them. At the same time, a person may feel oddly attached to them. The jealous person takes some pleasure in his suspicions, and the envious person feeds on his desire for what others possess.