In my opinion and in my own experience Jealousy is an exquisite emotion. It is very sour, but it can leave a sweet aftertaste if you allow it to dissolve and release. Just like a tamarind candy which can taste extremely sour when you suck it tightly in the mouth but once it dissolves only sweetness lingers on.

 

However, with emotions there is no natural timespan for it to dissolve away. Because we tend to revive and renew it constantly by thinking and reliving and regretting and complaining about it all the time. That’s like popping in a new tamarind candy into your mouth before the previous one dissolves so that you only experience sourness constantly.

 

You may also try to change the taste by eating something else! That’s like distracting yourself with something else to forget the jealousy! Like alcohol, drugs, adventure sports, electronic media, etc. But then the sourness never leaves you because you end up thinking about it and reliving it all over again!

 

How to experience the exquisite quality of your jealousy then? By simply becoming aware of it as an emotional experience while also broadening the awareness to perceive the accompanying thoughts behind it. Thoughts in the form of background voice /stance of the mind that says “ …this shouldn’t have happened to me….” “I wish it turned out this way instead…” and all the other stories and narratives around the emotion. This awareness creates a space between you and your experience. You are no longer jealous, now you are the awareness that is experiencing the emotion of jealousy while simultaneously looking at the thoughts and stance around it. This awareness begins to empower you and give you space to just allow and witness as the sourness gently dissolves leaving the sweet aftertaste. When you don’t want to not feel jealous anymore but just want to allow yourself to experience it, paradoxically it gets released!

 

A gentle practice of Energy movements while being aware of the breath, beginning with the gentle deep crossing helps quieten the mind and give you the space needed to let go of the incessant repetitive thought patterns. And then it is easy to sit with the pure emotion, not letting the thoughts add fuel to the raging fire of the emotion and it slowly simmers and dissolves. You only need to stay aware of the thoughts running in the mind, not be the thought or the thinking mind but recognize yourself as the awareness or the template within which the thinking mind and its thoughts keep running. Allow the mind and the thoughts, don’t resist them or push them away, just be aware of them while simultaneously also acknowledging and being aware of the breath happening in the body, aware of the inner body aliveness pulsing and vibrating all over your body. This awareness is enough to help you be free of the recurring thoughts.

 

When you can stay aware and gently allow the emotion of jealousy to dissolve, you experience the exquisitely sweet quality of the emotion of Jealousy because it allows you to connect with the deep core of yourself within. However, if you remain with the sourness letting the incessant thoughts keep fueling its fire, eventually it gives birth to its sister emotion – Heartbreak!

 

While Jealousy is a tangy – sour sweet emotion that is anger and retaliation based, Heartbreak is a heavy – bittersweet emotion that is sadness based and brings about lethargy. This emotion is also continuously fed and kept alive and renewed by the repetitive thoughts – the thoughts about the past, the events and stories leading to the heartbreak and the regrets and pangs about how different it could all have been.

 

Even now it is never too late to quieten the mind by taking the help of the practice of energy movements and cutting off the fuel of thoughts. Without the accompanying hyperactive thinking mind, grounding connection gets reactivated and the emotions themselves gently dissolves and flows down into the earth, leaving the sweet aftertaste of aloneness. In this state of being alone you are not lonely because you are now deeply connected with the core you, the deeper aware you which is Consciousness itself. The one universal consciousness wakes up in you and is now aware of itself within you.

 

To summarize, you don’t focus on the emotion, you don’t resist it. You just stay aware of the thoughts that fuel the emotion and use EM and awareness of breath and inner body aliveness to quieten your mind to cut off the supply of fuel that fires the emotion. The emotion left to itself will get grounded naturally leaving sweetness behind.

 

 

 This article is written by our Meditation Teacher and Energy Psychology Mentor Selvan Srinivasan