Jealousy ~ A gateway into your lost self

Today early morning as I opened Facebook, I was hit by a wave of jealousy. A Facebook friend who I barely know and who I consider an achiever in her field had posted some photographs with a beautiful description of light having touched her very early on in life. It was liked by a friend who is very dear to me. It was that instant when I saw that “Like”, I felt a flame of jealousy erupt in my heart. My first reaction was to shut FB, which I did. A few moments later I told myself to stop avoiding my feelings and face them. “Be honest with yourself“, I told myself. So I looked up that feed once more and sure enough the jealousy came back. I could feel the flames in my heart almost as if I’d left a matchstick burning on my chest. I started writing.

I went back to that place in my childhood where an essential life transition was viewed as a threat and tragedy by my mother. In the fire of those moments, I got terrorised. I was about 15. Without thinking I took on the feeling that somehow I was responsible for this mess. In the heat of anger my mother had vented so. And out of obedience (which is what love translated to), I took it on. I held myself responsible for bringing tragedy to my family which I can now see was clearly not the case. Furthermore, I made a silent vow. I denied my natural worth, my inherent talent in order to punish myself for it. “I must pay a price for the tragedy I have inflicted on people I love“, was the unquestioned, deeply subconscious thought I harbored. And so I did. I believed, to the point of promising myself, that I shall not be good enough to deserve anything good in my life. That I shall deny myself happiness, a family and creative success. And so the self-denial began and stayed all these years. I would strive to achieve a little, but never a lot, denying my desire to do something big, which meant denying even a project like writing a script or a book. I would not complete and leave it midway.

Today jealousy rankled me out of my hiding place. When I saw this acquaintance doing so many beautiful things and truly manifesting her dreams, this denial came up. “This can’t be happening“, said jealousy. And yet it was. As I uncovered this incident, this point where I had made a vow, I let myself go into the depths of this self-denial. I felt the pain of never allowing myself to succeed, never giving myself the permission to stand up for myself and speak aloud my desires, that stemmed from deservability. I let myself vent. I let that
“egoistic” 15-year old speak who had taken it upon her that she MUST know everything, and that she always had to be in control – of her emotions, of her reality. She believed that she must be in control no matter what, but because she couldn’t when her mother was enraged, she broke down and became a failure in her eyes. She let herself drown in self-denial.

Life always works in polarities. This excruciating need for success was birthed right there at the point of feeling failed.

I let my hand write comforting words to me in my journal. In it I found myself scribbling kindly to my 15-year old, “God is with you. He supports you. You are capable. You are very talented and capable of creating the success you want”
In another voice, my 15-year old responded, “I made myself God. I made myself responsible for everything that went wrong in the lives of those around me. I constantly felt guilty that I had done something wrong. I hated myself constantly!” Sharing this both of us entered silence. I saw life differently. I saw it the way I would have as a 15-year old who no longer denied her worth. She felt capable and reached out to people the way she already had, but this time with great peace in her heart. I saw her enter college not as a lonely, out-to-prove, go-getter 15 year old, but as a radiant, self-confident, knowing 15-year old. She no longer had to know it all. She knew it and I knew it now too.

Thank God for jealousy. It gave me back my adequately talented 15-year old self that I had lost to time. Another mirror had broken and I could see myself without mediums.

Note:

Incidentally I was also going through the 7 Essene Mirrors of Relationships that I felt like revisiting. The jealousy reflects the First Mirror and the conversation with my 15-year old marks the Third Mirror – the mirror of the Lost Self. You can view this beautiful recorded workshop given by Gregg Braden (2 hour long) to see how the relationship mirrors work.