So this is satsang.
Satsang is a Sanskrit word.
It can be interpreted in many different ways.
A gathering of truth is one.
Satsang can also be when we are in the company of a realized master or great soul.
In this case,
We're in a gathering of truth.
And truth is very important on our human journey and on our spiritual journey.
If we don't tell the truth,
Then it's really hard to wake up.
That was basically the foundation of the Buddhist teaching.
Until we admit and acknowledge that we're suffering,
We're never going to do anything about our suffering.
We actually have to start by acknowledging reality of what's going on.
Of course,
As human beings,
We have all of these different experiences that are happening all of the time,
All of these emotions that are rising and falling,
These thoughts that are looping around and all the stuff that we know goes on in this human journey.
And one of those things is jealousy.
Jealousy is a very fascinating thing.
First of all,
It's kind of taboo to talk about.
If you think about it,
It's not something that we readily admit.
If somebody were to ask you how you're doing,
A lot of the time,
Of course,
We say,
Oh,
I'm fine.
If we're not going to say,
I'm fine,
We might say,
Well,
I'm kind of sad,
Or I'm tired,
Or I feel angry.
But usually,
If somebody asks us how we're doing,
We don't say,
Oh,
I'm so jealous today,
Man.
I just feel so jealous.
Most people don't say that.
It's actually funny.
If you think about it,
How many times in your life have you really said that?
Maybe to a few close people,
But in general,
This is a feeling that most human beings experience,
And we really try to tuck it away,
Push it away.
Jealousy itself is not really its own thing,
You could say.
It's like a ball of yarn with lots of different threads in it.
So if you think about jealousy itself,
If you just imagine what that feels like,
I'm sure we can all imagine it,
Because most of us have experienced that feeling at different times in our life.
It has a lot of different components to it.
It may have longing,
It may have grief,
It may have betrayal,
Or rejection,
Or it may have anger,
And hostility,
And suspicion.
It may have feelings of inferiority,
Or lack,
Or sense of failure.
So we can't just point our finger and say,
Like,
This is jealousy,
Because jealousy is not really just one thing on its own.
In the Buddhist tradition,
Jealousy is considered one of the five poisons,
A composite of attachment and aggression.
That's just one way of thinking about it.
In other spiritual traditions,
Envy or jealousy are often spoken about.
For example,
In the Christian tradition,
It's one of the seven deadly sins.
So we can see that in many different spiritual traditions,
Jealousy is spoken about and is referenced as something that really causes us suffering,
Because it does.
And that's actually an interesting distinction between jealousy and envy.
They often get kind of mixed together,
But they're not quite the same thing.
Personally,
The way that I tend to think about it is jealousy is like when you see something that someone has,
And you feel like,
Oh,
That's so jealous.
I wish I had that.
I want that or something.
Whereas envy has a little something more with it.
It has something a little more hostile.
I want that thing,
And that person shouldn't have it.
And in fact,
Not only should that person not have it,
But I don't like that person for having it.
I don't like that person.
So we start to project all of these feelings that we have inside onto the object of our jealousy,
And we turn it into an enemy.
This is a real problem.
If you think about it,
Wars have been started because of this.
The Trojan War was started because of the seed of jealousy.
People have taken over countries,
Trying to get back their love that went off with somebody else.
Or,
You know,
We see this in film.
We read about it in literature.
Shakespeare talked about the green-eyed monster.
So this is a theme that is running through our lives,
And it shows up in a lot of different ways.
And one thing is certain.
It's very uncomfortable,
And it causes us a lot of pain,
Because the feeling of jealousy immediately implies a lack of something.
So if we feel jealous,
The next thought or the next thing to put together from that is that something is missing.
Something is off.
I don't have what I need.
I'm not full from within,
So I need what that person has,
Or I need to take away what somebody else has,
Because there's not enough.
So what are all of these different causes and conditions that I mentioned that contribute to jealousy?
And how can we start to work with it in our lives so that the things that may cause us jealousy start to look different?
The number one thing that I think is really important,
Actually,
For whatever may be happening in our life,
But especially in a conversation like this,
Is that we have to start with the understanding that having this feeling is okay.
You're not bad.
You're not wrong if you feel jealous.
Basically,
It's universal,
And that feeling is showing something to you.
That feeling wants to wake you up.
It's like something pulling at your shirt,
Just saying,
Hey,
Hey,
Listen,
Look.
The thing with jealousy is that jealousy is so much about projecting something inside onto the outside.
And so when we feel that jealousy,
It's really hard to rein it in and pull it back and turn the mirror back on ourselves,
Because it's so much easier to just get out the magnifying glass,
Right,
And start looking at everything,
Everything that's causing us suffering,
Everything that's making us feel so horrible about ourselves.
Actually,
If we didn't feel awful about ourselves,
Chances are the external things wouldn't ignite that feeling.
It's not that the external thing is creating that feeling.
It's just shining a light on a feeling or on something that is already there within us.
So starting at the root,
No matter what,
Has to be,
I'm going to approach this with love.
I'm going to approach this with compassion,
With understanding and not crucify myself because I have this emotion.
We have to look at it in a loving way.
We have to look at it with self-acceptance.
Jealousy is not something that anyone creates for us.
Jealousy is our own creation.
And with this creation comes a lot of different things.
For example,
Assumptions.
When we're jealous,
We're automatically making an assumption about another person or another circumstance because we fundamentally misplaced our happiness and assigned it to things on the outside.
I mean,
That's kind of the quintessence of most spiritual teachings,
No matter the tradition.
It says,
You think your happiness is out there,
But actually it's not out there,
It's in you.
So until you realize that what you're looking for is in you,
You're always going to feel unhappy.
You're always going to feel on fire,
Like you need something to fill that hole inside of you instead of filling it from within.
When we have that feeling of jealousy,
Immediately there's that feeling,
Oh,
I need something.
So jealousy can either be that we want something from outside or it can actually also be a feeling of deep loss and sadness of something that we feel like we lost.
But in either case,
We feel that that thing is the cause of our happiness.
If I lost something,
If my partner runs off with someone else,
I'm going to feel really sad and really jealous because I think that that person is giving me my happiness.
If this person is living their life and they look like they have the dream life,
The fairy tale,
Whatever that looks like,
Then I'm imagining in my mind,
I'm making an assumption that those things that that person has are causing them happiness.
So that's the first kind of veil over our eyes is that we automatically think that certain things from the outside are going to make us happy.
And so we grieve when we lose those things or we grieve when we can't have them.
But this couldn't be farther from the truth.
If anyone has ever read People magazine or any tabloid,
It's pretty obvious that to be a celebrity or a person that looks like they have everything is definitely not a recipe for happiness.
It's not always a pretty situation.
Just because you have all the accoutrement,
Just because you have all of the this and that,
The status,
The money,
It doesn't make a person happy.
We see that time and time again,
But yet we forget that.
And so there's that illusion of thinking,
I need this thing,
This thing is going to make me happy because all those shiny people,
They look really happy until you start reading about all of the stuff going on.
When we have certain things,
It's a responsibility and it comes with other things.
Somebody who really wants to be a celebrity,
They might want that,
All the glitz of the whole thing,
But then they're not thinking about the fact,
Well,
That person doesn't have any privacy anymore.
Their entire life is under a microscope.
Their entire life,
They're being followed around by cameras.
They can't just be.
That is a big burden to carry,
But we don't think about that.
The mind just creates all of these stories.
So I think it's really important to check ourselves first when we start to have these feelings and look and see and scan the field and say,
Okay,
What assumptions am I making?
How is this jealousy standing on an assumption or many assumptions?
The main one being that this thing that I want or this thing that I don't have is going to make me happy.
That is a really tricky one because we live in a world that tells us our happiness is on the outside.
If you just go on social media and it's like,
Buy this,
Do this,
You need this,
And our mind is impressionable.
So we start to see that and think,
Oh my God,
If I only had this,
Then maybe I would feel better.
But then we get that thing and we're not.
So checking our assumptions,
Realizing that there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on in the world is really helpful when it comes to jealousy.
The other thing that I think is really fascinating about jealousy is that it really shows us something.
I think it can really show us something.
It can expose our desires.
It can expose and reveal things within us that we maybe weren't even aware that those things are there.
Many of you know that years and years ago,
I went through just a very difficult period of my life.
It was a three-year period where I was dealing with illness and I was really depressed because no matter what I did,
I couldn't get better.
And during that time,
I remember I had no energy.
I couldn't do anything and I would just be lying there and listening to chanting on YouTube.
And there were times that I would just see some of these artists and for no reason at all,
I would start to have these negative thoughts about them.
Oh,
Who does that person think he is?
Who does that person think she is?
Why does she get to do this?
And I remember thinking a few times,
Like,
What is your deal,
Carrie?
Like,
Why are you having these thoughts about these people that you don't even know when you're not even singing?
You don't even want to do that.
Well,
I guess I did want to do that.
I didn't know that I wanted to do that.
But the jealousy that I was feeling,
It showed me something.
It made me realize that I had a longing to express something within myself.
And instead of owning that,
Instead of really being with that,
It was much easier for me to just turn it around and put that on others,
To project that onto another person or to blame another person for no reason whatsoever.
So it was very interesting when I got my harmonium,
This instrument,
And I started playing it.
I actually stopped listening to chanting for a long time,
Because I could not get out of the comparing mind at that time.
When I just started,
I really felt like,
How do I sound like this person?
Or I want to sound like that person?
And I realized,
No,
I don't want to sound like that person.
I need to know what I sound like.
I need to know my sound.
So I just stopped listening to it.
And I forced myself to just sit and be with my own sound,
Which at that point,
There was nothing there.
It was so much easier to want to just listen to other people or try to do what they were doing.
But I couldn't do that.
And so it was when I stopped doing that,
And I pulled back that projection,
That I started to discover my own passion and my own purpose.
And whatever was being put outwards just fell away,
Because it was never about anyone else anyway.
It was never about something on the outside.
It was always that feeling that was trying to show me,
That was trying to pull me back to myself and say,
Hey,
Maybe you need to look at this because you're uncomfortable for a reason.
You feel that longing,
You feel that sadness,
You feel that discomfort,
You feel that inferiority,
You feel all of those things for a reason.
So I'm very grateful for experiences like that,
Where I was able to recognize after some time that there was a projection going on or that there was something happening that was estranging me from my own self.
So when we feel jealous,
Naturally we give our power away,
Because our attention is completely going outside to other people.
Our attention is just leaving us,
And it's going into other people's business.
And we think,
If I just focus on that person,
If I just put my energy there,
Then somehow I'll be able to control it.
Or somehow I won't feel so bad about myself.
But really,
All it does,
When we constantly are putting our mind towards what this person is doing,
What that person is doing,
Is that there's nothing left for us.
We've basically deflated ourselves,
And we've lost a connection to our center,
To our power.
It's interesting to observe that.
If you feel jealous,
If you start to notice those feelings arising in you,
Just notice if you feel like you are losing yourself in some way.
I definitely have that experience a lot,
That if I start to feel like I'm being pulled somewhere else,
I literally can feel like I'm shaky,
Like there's no root.
I've wandered from myself,
Because my attention is going there.
All of that attention and energy,
It could be going towards my own life,
My own heart,
My own well-being,
My own awakening.
I'm deflecting that and putting it elsewhere.
It's not something to judge,
It's just something to be aware of.
Oh,
That's really interesting how I'm doing that.
It's really interesting the way my mind is not wanting to deal with these feelings inside.
If I don't know what my purpose is,
If I don't know what makes me happy,
If I don't know what's important to me in life,
And I don't know how to discover that,
It's much easier to look outside at other people doing that and be upset about it.
But instead,
It's an invitation to say,
Okay,
I really need to get clear about what matters to me.
Because when we feel full,
When we feel our own happiness,
When we feel our own love,
Those things on the outside,
They really just don't affect us in the same way.
They just don't.
When we feel complete,
Which of course is not something that happens all the time because of the nature of our conditioning and our mind and this world we live in,
But when we have those moments of really feeling like I have what I need,
I am what I need,
Then that changes everything.
Many years ago,
When I was in my early 20s,
I had been in a relationship for five years and my partner and I,
When I was 25,
We decided to separate.
It was like a mutual thing.
We were just going in different directions and he was a musician actually and he wanted to pursue his musical career and I was going deeply into my spiritual life and I wanted to go back to India.
So he moved away and he started focusing on his music career and I went to India and it was the right decision but for some reason I couldn't let it go.
I was really having a hard time and I felt,
Actually felt really jealous that he knew what he wanted to do with his life and that he was living,
Following his passion,
Doing music.
At that time I had no idea music was going to be a part of my life.
I really felt like,
Oh,
I'm here in this ashram.
I can't quiet my mind for one second.
And then I saw him in my mind.
He seemed to be riding off into the sunset with his guitar and I had all these feelings about it.
And every day I would get up at the ashram.
I was there for about six months and I would do my practices and I would do all the things,
But in the back of my mind there was just that feeling like,
Oh,
I'm jealous.
I can't stop thinking about it.
No matter what I did,
I couldn't stop those feelings.
My mind just kept going out,
Out,
Out.
Even though I was trying to do these practices to come in,
The pull outwards was so strong.
And then one day,
I'll never forget it because it was just one of those moments in life.
You know,
Sometimes we have those moments in life where something happens and it leaves a really deep impression in our mind.
But one night I had been there for a few months already and I was really struggling.
And I remember it was nighttime and I just went up to the roof of one of the buildings.
And I was lying on this little straw mat looking at the sky and just being.
And all of a sudden,
Out of nowhere,
This feeling just washed over me.
It was like happiness.
But it wasn't happiness.
It was like a deep contentment.
It was like a feeling of okayness and feeling like full from the inside.
In that moment,
It was very unexpected.
It just came through me and I felt like I have everything I need.
I am what I need.
And it wasn't even a thought.
It was just a knowing that came through me.
And after I was just sitting in that feeling,
I went to look for all of those jealous feelings about my ex and I couldn't find them.
They were gone.
The charge was gone.
And it wasn't because anything at all changed on the outside.
It was because something on the inside had changed.
And I felt a fullness and I felt a connection to myself that I hadn't felt.
And so all of that grasping,
All of that jealousy,
All of that projecting onto this person,
It just came right back into me.
And I felt like it's okay.
He's on his path.
I'm on my path.
I have what I need.
I love this man.
I bless this man.
And that taught me so much.
It taught me so much about jealousy.
It taught me so much about attachment.
Often the thought of attachment is I have to break this attachment.
I have to,
You know,
Cut this attachment off.
But in my experience,
I found that it's the opposite.
That when I fill myself up with love,
When I really feel connected to myself,
Something that I'm attached to just falls away on its own.
It's not like I have to work to cut it and break it.
It just falls away because there's a returning to home.
Another interesting thing about jealousy is what it shows us about our limiting beliefs.
When we're jealous,
Not only are we lost in the comparison trap,
We're lost in our assumptions.
We're lost in our projecting our own feelings out into the world.
But we get lost in certain limiting beliefs about life that may not be as obvious until we have a feeling like that.
For example,
There's not enough.
There's just not enough in this world.
There's not enough.
There's only so many people who can have a good relationship.
So many people who can have this kind of abundance.
So many people who can have success or whatever the things are that people are jealous of.
We have this almost like a poverty consciousness that there's not enough.
And so I need to control what somebody else has because there's not enough for me to have it too.
This is not true.
But this is something that many people fundamentally believe.
Not only do we feel that there's not enough to go around,
But we also feel it's difficult to be happy for another person.
That is another fascinating thing.
Why is it difficult to feel happy for other people?
Why when we see somebody succeeding,
Does it have an effect on us?
When we're in a comparing mind or in a competitive state of mind,
There's that feeling like I want to be happy for that person,
But I can't be.
We're miserly with our love.
We hold it tight because we're living in a real separation consciousness.
Instead of recognizing that we're all interconnected,
Instead of really fundamentally understanding that there is a unity in this life and actually that one person's happiness is my happiness and my happiness is theirs,
We tend to live in the separation.
Me,
You,
My life,
Yours,
My happiness,
Your happiness,
We don't see them as interwoven.
And that's another splinter in our awareness.
That's another basically a function of our ego,
Which is always cutting,
Dividing,
Splitting,
And judging,
Manipulating,
Manufacturing,
All the stuff that the ego does.
It does that separation and that causes us a lot of pain too.
So with any of these subjects,
We can always talk about it and we can cut the weeds with scissors and we can say,
Oh,
Well,
You deal with jealousy by doing this,
By doing that,
Or I think it's both and.
We can actually go to the taproot and see like what is the root of this and try to pull the weed out from the root.
Because if we just give the grass a haircut,
It's going to grow back.
So we have to keep going back to the root,
To that fundamental feeling.
My happiness is somewhere else and I'm separate from everything else.
Those two thoughts cause us so much pain in many,
Many different ways.
But in that regard,
I think jealousy is an amazing teacher and friend and a mindfulness bell in our life.
When we listen to the ringing of that bell,
We can stop and be like,
Okay,
Let me look at all of these different things.
Let me see how I'm in comparing mine.
Let me see how I think there's not enough for me.
Let me see how I feel like that person's success or happiness means that there's not going to be any for me.
Let me see how I've moved away from my own passion,
From my own purpose,
From my own love,
And I'm trying to get it from outside.
All of these things.
It's really amazing when we can actually see how something on the inside is being projected outside.
Those feelings of inferiority,
Or feeling like a failure,
Or feeling like I'm not enough,
I'm not good enough,
And I need these things.
Those things become so easy to just put out into the world,
And we deflect it.
And I think it can really be valuable to inquire about these things and to learn to love the jealousy when it arises as a teacher.
And I think it's also important to check ourselves,
Because jealousy or envy can really start to spiral out of control and cause a lot of suffering for ourselves and for others.
When I was younger,
Like in high school,
In junior high school,
Like there were times when a lot of the girls in my school,
They would be so mean to me.
I never did anything to them,
So there was no reason to have any hostility towards me.
But I experienced being on the receiving end of that,
And so I didn't know how to handle that.
Back at that time,
The only way I knew how to deal with it was to try to shrink myself,
To try to become small so that I wouldn't make anybody else uncomfortable,
Because I really felt like if I shine or if I'm myself and people aren't going to like me for that,
Maybe some of you have had that experience in different ways.
Sometimes we feel that if I'm really myself,
If I really put myself out there with whatever I am,
Then this person's not going to like me,
That person's going to feel threatened by me,
Or whatever.
So we throw like a sheet over ourself,
Get really tiny.
But ultimately,
Shutting down our own light to make other people comfortable,
We are the ones who ultimately suffer from that,
Because we snuff out who we really are and what we're here to do in this world,
And that hurts.
So that's sort of the flip side of the conversation about how to work with jealousy when we feel that people may be projecting that jealousy onto us.
I think it's good to be aware of,
Because jealousy can quickly start to spin out and start to take other forms.
For example,
A lot of times gossip is rooted in jealousy.
People are talking negatively about another person.
So a lot of times that is coming from the seed or the root of somebody who's jealous,
Who instead of owning their own feelings about it,
Is starting to project and say negative things about another person to make themselves feel better,
Feel more comfortable.
Of course,
It's one thing if you're having issues with someone to share from your heart with people you're close to,
But when it starts to become this like toxic overload,
Where we start projecting negativity everywhere,
We need to pull it back in and look and see like,
What is the root?
What is the seed?
Maybe the seed is,
I feel inferior.
I feel lack.
That person feels like a threat to me,
And I need to do something about it.
I need to take some kind of control over it.
I'm going to be suspicious.
I'm going to assume the worst about that person.
We don't want to go there.
Who wants to live like that?
That's a very low vibrational state,
That state of projection and gossip and judgment and criticism and jealousy,
All of that.
It kind of keeps us in the swampland.
Not that we can't go there as human beings,
Because we do,
But how do we raise ourselves out of that?
How do we lift out of that place of negativity?
Because that is a place of suffering,
And really none of it ever has anything to do with the other person.
So what do we do about all this,
Is the question.
I wish that there was a simple answer,
But really I think it's the lifelong journey of awakening that is what helps to wake us up from this illusion that many of us live in.
The illusion that I've been talking about,
Pulling the projection back in.
It really is true that when we wander from our own love and from our own bliss or joy,
It's much easier to just blame and project and look outside.
It's like that story I told you about my ex-boyfriend when I was in India that time.
It was like for that moment this bliss of my own being just rose up out of nowhere,
And all of the stories and all of the trips and stuff I had going on about him just went away because it never had anything to do with him in the first place.
He was just the catalyst that was holding up that mirror.
So when we realize,
Okay,
I'm estranged from my own bliss,
We have a responsibility to start to reawaken that,
To connect to that,
To come back to ourselves,
And to shift our attention to fill ourselves up again.
And that is really the beauty of spiritual practice.
That's the beauty of satsang,
That we can just have these honest conversations,
Not to try to like fix anything because this isn't about something being wrong with us that we have to fix.
This is just about opening the windows and letting the truth out and looking at it together without shame and realizing that we're all in the same boat.
We all have those veils over our eyes where we think we're separate from everyone,
Where we think that life is not kind,
That life wants to strip us of things,
That people are out to get us.
Those thought forms often have roots in a very young period of our life.
So when we look,
We can start to repair that just by bringing love and awareness to those places.
There's a quote I wanted to share with you before we do a practice from the Bhagavad Gita,
Chapter 18,
Verse 47.
It's a very well-known one.
It says,
It is better to do your dharma,
Your work,
Your path,
Imperfectly than someone else's dharma perfectly.
Better to do you imperfectly than someone else perfectly.
That's thousands of years old,
That wisdom.
It's so great and wise.
We may think I want to imitate that person,
Just like me feeling like,
Oh I wish I could be like that kirtan singer.
But actually it's better for me to do my music imperfectly than to do that other person's perfectly,
Because that's what I'm here to do.
The world doesn't need seven billion carbon copies of the same person.
How boring.
And all of us are needed.
Each person is needed.
Amma says that even if a tiny screw is missing from an airplane,
It can't fly.
Everything has value.
Every person.
So what do we need to see about ourselves?
Who we are?
What matters to us?
What we value?
What we long for?
And how may we be assigning meaning and happiness to things that can never really give us that?
What will really give us lasting happiness?
That's the age-old question.
And actually,
Who is the one who feels jealous in the first place?
Who is the one that wants to be happy?
Who is this person?
Who feels jealous?
Who wants to be happy?
That's also a really important question to ask,
Because when you start to ask that,
You realize I have no idea.
I have no idea who this person is.
I'm running after all these things,
But I don't I'm running after all these things,
But I don't even know who I am.
So I thought it would be nice to do just some meditation together to come back to ourselves,
To try to like feel into that place within us for a moment where we really feel like I am with myself.
I'm not wandering all over the planet,
Looking at everybody else's life,
Looking through the windows of their lives,
Wishing I had that or wishing I had this,
That we can actually come in and return to the place within us that's always waiting for us to come back to it.
Our own heart,
Which is overflowing with everything we want and need,
It's just we can't see it,
Because we're always looking that way.
So we gotta go look this way.
And sometimes looking this way is hard.
It's uncomfortable,
Because in order to see our heart,
We sometimes have to move away the brambles and the thorns and all of the weeds that are in the way of all those thought forms and beliefs that are very old,
That are telling us these lies about ourselves.
We have to look at that.
We have to see that.
We have to be willing to go through that kind of uncomfortable,
Dark woodland to get to that open space.
So let us do a brief meditation now.
And see if in your mind and heart you can connect to the stream of awakened beings throughout time who have shown us the path of light.
We are a part of that stream too.
We are also awakened,
But we've just forgotten.
So send a ray of gratitude and appreciation to your soul,
To that light inside that has been guiding you from before you even know.
That light was with you and with all of us before we even took form.
And that light is so much deeper than our mind,
Than our thoughts that are changing,
And our likes and dislikes.
It's deeper than the shame and the guilt and those feelings of unworthiness and failure.
It's just at rest.
So you can connect to that light.
You can connect to that soul within you and just feel in your heart,
Thank you,
Thank you.
That light gives us the strength when we feel we can't carry on,
When our mind is eclipsing that light within us.
There's something that stirs us and moves us forward.
It brings us into a gathering like this so we can remember together.
So if you like,
You can imagine now this beautiful golden light at the top of your head,
Like the afternoon sun,
That golden sun.
It's warm.
That light just fills your whole being down through every pore in your head,
Filling every cell of your body with this light.
And it's okay if you can't visualize things,
You can just feel it,
You can sense it,
Just intend.
When we imagine something,
The visual cortex in our brain doesn't distinguish between whether it's real or not.
So let us imagine this light and respond as if it's truly there.
Give yourself permission to shine that light.
Give yourself permission to exist because you belong here.
May we all awaken to that knowing,
And really experience it in an embodied way.
I don't need anything from outside.
I'm not missing anything.
I'm complete.
