Two opposing views on envy. Envy is anger and the cause of misfortune

Envy.

According to Melanie Klein, envy is the opposite of a loving relationship. In her book Envy and Gratitude, she notes that “An envious person feels bad at the sight of pleasure. He feels good only when others suffer. Therefore, all attempts to satisfy envy are futile.”

Jacques Lacan emphasizes that envy and jealousy should not be confused. When we envy, we do not at all strive to obtain this or that object; as a rule, we do not need at all what we envy another person for, since the happiness of another is not tailored to our shoulders at all.
http://nperov.ru/soznanie/kak-izbavitsya-ot-zavisti/

One more opinion.

Ways of manifestation of envy

Energy. A person loses his energy, becomes uninitiative and dependent. The object of Envy, on the contrary, receives it. The LANA chakra, which is responsible for Forms, is blocked, resulting in changes in the human body and relationships with people. The main thing that worries a person is his needs. He ceases to control himself, becomes an executor of someone else's life program, and individuality is destroyed.
Emotional. A person passionately desires something without making any effort. But, unfortunately, this is impossible. When the subject of envy begins to understand this, he becomes susceptible to various states. They can be directed at the object of envy and against oneself: deceit, hypocrisy, reproaches, resentment; or expressed by aggression: masochism, the desire to feel sorry for oneself. The consequence of all this is a loss of strength, a decrease in the chances of achieving what you want.
Mental. It is expressed in a decrease in creative potential, a lack of a sense of joy due to competition, a feeling of inferiority, dependence, and an unwillingness to make efforts to achieve goals.
Physical: a feeling of heaviness in the solar plexus area, suffocation, difficulty breathing, deterioration of vision and hearing, changes in attitude, diseases of the liver, pancreas, and lower back.

Why does envy appear?

A person does not accept himself, his Destiny, denies Divine destiny, is focused on consumer relationships, is lazy, has low self-esteem, does not want and does not know how to study.

How to identify?

You need to be able to distinguish between what a person actually regrets and his selfish demands.
Envy and joy for the achievements of others are not the same thing. If, with someone else’s success, you feel a desire to have exactly the same thing, to do it the same way, to be able to do it just as well, and the lack of all this in yourself only causes a more negative reaction - be careful, this is Envy.
It is much better to be able to rejoice in the luck and success of others, to strive to achieve this through hard work and study.

How to cure Envy?

Envy is the sister of Selfishness. Having settled in a person, it fills his energy structures and relationships with people. It can be compared to a boiling reaction. If this happens, you need to learn to control yourself.

How to do it?

Turn on your consciousness, Envy has appeared in your body. So you will shift your attention to the Heart center, try to observe yourself “from the outside.” If this succeeds, you have already been able to defeat envy by 50%.
When the “boiling” reaches its climax, you are ready to throw out your emotions, do some action to bring yourself closer to the object of Envy - stop, make an effort and don’t do it.

After such steps, you need to try to direct the energy of stress to restore lost vitality.
Inspire yourself that the energy of Envy is now transforming. Observe your feelings. The negative feeling will boil over, it will be replaced by Emptiness (due to the fact that the energy is not lost), and soon you will be overcome by emotional Softness and Purity.
Learn to control yourself, and your vital energy will increase, you will be able to understand the causes of Envy and control this process.

Psychologically, we can distinguish such forms of envy as:

Black envy - This is a desire to either destroy the object of envy or make it as bad for him as the envious person. One of the reasons for this type of envy is the “causal fallacy” (Schoeck, 1969), that is, the perception of a person who has superiority as the cause of one’s own failures and humiliated position. A person completely abdicates responsibility for what happens in his life. His life begins to obey the principle “We don’t need anything, as long as others don’t have anything.”

In this context, we must also remember the phenomenon of “damage” and the “evil eye”. If we ignore esoteric teachings, the following mechanism is observed: a person is envied, he naturally feels the attitude towards himself, tension is created in communication, which requires a large expenditure of psychic energy. As a result, at the end of the day a person feels mental fatigue, called “damage.” But it should be noted that black envy is unproductive and affects the envious person: he suffers from envy more than the damage caused to the person being envied. According to studies, feelings of envy also have somatic symptoms. A person who is consumed by envy may experience physiological symptoms: Peter Kutter (1998) notes that a person turns pale with envy as the blood vessels constrict and blood pressure rises, or turns yellow with envy as the blood becomes saturated with bile. In addition, such people are suspicious and live in constant anticipation of someone else's failure, instead of creating their own success.

White envy - has some benefit both for the one who envies and for society as a whole. The object of white envy becomes a kind of standard and an object of admiration. An envious person in this case is a person who admires the abilities, qualities or achievements of another person. Such an envious person will strive in every possible way to imitate his idol and hope that someday he will become the same.

Whether envy becomes black or white depends on the same comparison mechanisms and the structure of the “I-concept”.

If we are talking about a person starting his own business who is full of hope, he may well look with admiration at the owner of a large corporation, dreaming that in due time he will take this place.

If two businessmen find themselves in this situation, who at one time studied together, and then each went their own way, which led one to wealth, and the other was less fortunate, then we will invariably talk about black envy. This will become a defense mechanism - after all, there is no one else to blame except your own abilities and fate, and admitting this is detrimental to self-esteem. And then aggression and humiliation of a competitor, at least in one’s own eyes, becomes the only defense of the psyche.

They also highlight:

Gentle envy- a person wants to have the same thing as the object of envy, and strive for it without experiencing hostile feelings.

Evil envy- a person strives not so much to get the same, but to deprive the object of envy of his superiority. Such envy arises from a feeling of inability to reach the same level.

Depressive envy- also arises from a feeling of humiliation, but it is characterized by a feeling of injustice, deprivation and doom.

G.F. de la Mora, exploring the phenomenon of envy in different historical eras, identifies two types of envy:

Personal envy - rather, it is experienced in secret and hidden, and is considered shameful. This is either open aggression towards the object of envy, or other forms of rejection of this person.

Public envy- it is more typical for her to create and use stereotypes (“Money spoils character”, “In cramped conditions, but not in offence”, etc.). These are eternal stereotypes "Envious people will die, but envy will never" since they are transmitted and spread in society as part of the worldview. With the help of these stereotypes, one can demonstrate envy and accuse a person of having an object of envy.

According to G.F. de la Mora, the social predisposition to envy is directed against the individual characteristics of the individual. This theory can explain aggression towards people who think outside the box. It happens that a group pushes out a talented person because of unconscious envy of his qualities.

This theory has its limitations, since we should not forget that the accusation of envy is very manipulative. A person who simply expresses his own opinion, different from someone else’s, risks being accused of envy, and then he has a choice: either defend his thought, or succumb to moral principles and retreat in order to show the absence of envy. This manipulation is possible only due to the moral aspect of envy and society’s stereotypes in relation to envy.

Thus, we can say that envy is a feeling of dissatisfaction with oneself, which is largely fueled by social stereotypes about the “sinfulness” of envy.

Feelings of envy can be present in all areas of life.

Robert Plutchik considers the emotional experience and mechanisms of envy as natural experiences and identifies three criteria:

Firstly, they are important for survival, as a stimulus for development and new achievements (present even in animals).

Secondly, they are recognized without introspection.

Thirdly, they are noticeable in all behavior, speech, actions, etc.

If we consider the stages of a person’s life, it will become noticeable that a feeling of envy is present to one degree or another in the behavior of any person.

For the first manifestation of a feeling of envy, a person is always obliged to his parents, since parents, wishing well and for the purpose of education, always in one way or another set another, more accurate and capable child as an example to their beloved child. Such an example can relate to anything and is present in a child’s life from an early age - a natural reaction of aggression arises in the psyche towards the one with whom they are comparing: “why am I worse”, “they don’t like me because I’m not like him... " Later, with age, such a constant comparison of one’s own self-sufficiency and other people’s victories can be internalized, and a person turns into an envious person, although, in fact, he simply compares himself with others and feels his own inadequacy.

In the world of an endless flow of information, there are constantly many reasons to envy, and even more reasons to suffer from a clear inconsistency with the standard (the object of envy). Many programs about the lives of stars make people of average income envy them, as they realize that they cannot achieve the same benefits. Thus, envy also arises as a result of the ambition of more successful people who, declaring their success, once again assert themselves at the expense of those who admire them.

Another aspect of the illusion and magic of civilization is fashion and appearance, what exists on gloss is only there, but teenagers and others, as a rule, experience envy mixed with admiration for models who seem to have everything .

Envy is always based on identification: people envy those they want to be like, even if this is a myth and unattainable.

In 1999, a number of articles were published about the influence of the ideal image of the Barbie doll on the psyche of girls. Girls identify with Barbie and dream of living up to her. With age, it turns out that Barbie’s parameters are unrealistic: the girl clearly does not meet her requirements in appearance and fans do not shower her with flowers, as expected, everything somehow does not happen by itself.

The image itself, Barbie's philosophy of life, turns out to be so incompatible with real life that this gap between illusion and reality can be the cause of many depressions. All this literally destroys the girl’s idea of the world and her place in it. It begins to seem to her that this happened for her, but for others everything is different - then Barbie is replaced by glossy magazines with ideal models, their retouched bodies and star life.

In essence, envy is a deep feeling of disappointment in one’s achievements, a feeling of inadequacy, imperfection due to the well-known stereotype that envy is something shameful; the hurt self-esteem is also layered with a feeling of guilt for the presence of this feeling of envy.

Envy is a kind of deception, the desire to be happy is transferred to an object or sample that another has, thus forming a dependence on the sample as a symbol of sufficiency. Thus, the circle closes: the suppression of dissatisfaction entails aggression, then envy and guilt arise, imposed by the “Super-I” attitude - this is how a person ceases to feel his own life and only boils in the cauldron of his own passions, it is not for nothing that they say that envy destroys from within .

The cycle of family relationships is often associated with natural envy: with the appearance of a child in the family, when the mother is the whole world for the child, the man envies her and their relationship with the child, the close connection and may feel rejected. With age, the child’s attention switches to the father, as a symbol of activity, activity, connection with the outside world - and the mother already envies the form of relationship that she cannot build with the child. Later, both parents envy the company, which becomes the meaning of their child’s life in adolescence. Then the cycle repeats, but that child takes the place of the parent. This experience is common to all people, but most are afraid to admit it to themselves.

There is a category of people who, having a lot, still envy others - this is not a desire to possess something in particular, but rather a feeling of their own inferiority; the envious person seeks the advantage that he lacks in anyone and anything, just to fill his inner self. emptiness and dissatisfaction with oneself. Such a person envies the feelings and qualities that the one who is envied possesses. This phenomenon is explained by the results of a study by S. Frankel and I. Sherik.

The results of the study by S. Frankel and I. Sherick say that the first deep psychological aspect of envy is that they want to receive not so much a benefit that is inaccessible, but the feeling from it. In the experiment, it was revealed that a child experiences envy of a toy only when his neighbor is interested in it. He wants to get the same pleasure from her (even though he wasn’t interested in her at first).

There must be the ability to contrast the “I” and the object (for libido-aggressive replacement of the object of envy);
There must be a concept of ownership;
There must be the ability to imagine and anticipate the desired end state.

This experiment, in turn, confirms and complements the theory of equilibrium of F. Heider, who believes that a person can be envious because of a thing that belongs to another, although before he himself has never felt the need for it and has not even thought about it - that is, it is possible wanting something just because someone else has it. F. Haider suggested that there is a so-called motive, the desire for the same fate and equal results.

Thus, envy is a reaction to inequality, a desire for justice only in relation to oneself. It is interesting that this motive works only in the context of an equally good, prosperous fate, which confirms the natural egoism of a person.

It is useless to fight envy, since envy is always disguised as other feelings: aggression, irritation, depression.

Ways to get rid of envy can be:

Active methods- such as self-improvement, search for new, own goals and opportunities for their implementation;
Passive methods— people who lack the strength to cope with competition experience depression and apathy.

A more productive, albeit passive way to get rid of envy is reflection, searching for answers to the questions why this particular item is needed and what it will bring for happiness, whose goals are these and what they mean specifically for the envious person: “We are more often upset about what we don’t have than happy about what we have.”

The topic is very complex and controversial. The more you dig, the further the bottom goes.

My conclusion and my opinion at this stage of life.

The blows of envy are very strong. Swing the pendulum once or twice.
1. Physically, a feeling of impact, pressure, burning at chest level from the back. Nausea.
2. We felt that we were leaving this place, it was useless to fight.
3. Recovered, analyzed, understood who it was. They removed this person from the circle of their Trust without pity.
4. We thank the Higher powers for the lesson.
5. We are so free that there is simply no envy from others for us. We watch this game from the side and do not take part in it. We're just watching. Cool)). We don’t envy ourselves and don’t give reasons.

In the modern world, where the boundaries between good and evil are blurred, people need clear moral guidelines, beacons that help them cross the sea of life with the least loss to the soul. After all, the human soul is too weak and sometimes very quickly catches one or another disease. To cure him, you can then “spend all your wealth on doctors” (Luke 8:43), but still not achieve results. However, timely diagnosis is necessary for proper treatment. How to detect and eradicate the sin of envy in your soul? We talked about this with the confessor of the Moscow diocese, Archpriest Valerian Krechetov.

The first step of the path of repentance

– Father Valerian, tell me, can a person be envious and not know that he has this disease?

– This happens all the time.

– When a person admits to himself: “I envy,” does this mean that he has realized his sin and can move on?

– For the most part, alas, the deeper a person sinks into the abyss of sin, the less aware of his sinfulness. And the cleaner a person is, the stricter he treats himself. Holy people, who, according to our understanding, led almost righteous lives, felt very sinful.

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov said: “Better is a sinner who recognizes himself as a sinner than a righteous man who recognizes himself as righteous.” This truth is the main one. If we take the Gospel, it is clear that publicans and adulterers felt themselves sinners and were aware of their sinfulness, but the scribes and Pharisees did not. The latter were immersed in the abyss not of gross sinful pleasures, but of a more subtle sin, which is even more terrible.

About sins relating to the earthly bodily side of our life, such as gluttony, the holy fathers said: “When we do not leave them, over time they leave us.” The time comes when a person does not need anything. In old age, everything unnecessary goes away, and a person leaves some attachments, but the passions that nest in the soul, torment a person regardless of his age, only intensify over time. This is why people commit suicide, although outwardly there seems to be no reason for this.

People, not realizing this painful condition, are even afraid of feeling like sinners, they try to somehow excuse, justify sin, and almost introduce it into law. A sign of spiritual health is awareness of one’s sinfulness even in small things. A sign of spiritual death is denial of one’s sinfulness even after committing the most terrible crimes. Moreover, a person believes that he always does the right thing in everything. Now, for example, they are trying to legitimize obvious debauchery, trying to call open fornication “marriage” in the modern sense. Legalize sin.

The very end point of the fall of man is “the abomination of desolation in the holy place,” when where there should be law and truth, there will be lawlessness and lies.

The first step of the path of repentance is the consciousness that much of what you do is contaminated by sinfulness, or simply sin. The prodigal son from the Gospel parable came to his senses, realized this, and had a feeling of repentance.

– It turns out that most people don’t even realize that they suffer from one sin or another, for example, envy?

– Yes. An example is the Russian revolution of 1917. People were jealous of how others lived and decided to take everything away under the noble slogans of “justice.” In fact, this was an attempt to legitimize envy in order to “legally” take away what belongs to others. Ivan Ilyin wrote a whole work about this. He, a secular writer, philosopher, was a believer and noted all this.

Envy is also a source of war. We see a neighboring prosperous state, which means we need to seize its wealth. This is precisely what the biblical saying “the essence of the path is supposed to be good, but its end is in the depths of hell” refers to. The instigators of revolutions and coups believe that they are doing everything, seemingly, for the benefit of humanity. At one time A.K. Tolstoy said it well:

“...If anyone has an estate.

Take it away and divide it,

Lust will begin...

They want to smooth out the whole world

And thus introduce equality,

That everyone wants to make a mess

For common bliss.

Dostoevsky wrote beautifully that if justice is achieved through blood and tears, this is no longer justice.

– Why can’t there be equality in the world?

– Because, as the Holy Fathers say, if everyone has everything, then there will be no place for love. Do you have excess wealth? Show your love to another, and he will show love to you. There is a deep meaning hidden in inequality. It is inherent in the world from its very beginning. Even the angelic ranks were not equal.

There can be no equality on this Earth. We are all equal before God, but how? If you mathematically compare any number with infinity, then all numbers in front of it are points, nothing. We are all equal before God, but of course we differ from each other, just as, for example, a six is not equal to a nine.

Give three workers a hundred coins each: one will put it in a small bag, the second will drink or play truant, and the third will use it for business and growth - and immediately they will become unequal. What to do? Take it from whom? From the one who increased it, and give it to the one who drank it? To have equality? This is what happens in life.

Chasing ghosts

– Let’s say the communist project, based, according to Ilyin, on envy, failed. But the capitalist idea is based on the same thing: an attempt to catch up with others, to live the same or even better. Seeing beautiful houses and advertisements, people also want to become the owners of these things, because someone else’s beautiful life makes them envious.

– Absolutely right, it fuels envy. Many people are unhappy not because they are actually unhappy, but because they are shown all these riches, they envy, and are tormented because they do not have what they envy.
This is madness. Often a person will dream up something, begin to adjust his life to an invented ideal, but nothing works out. As a result, a person becomes disappointed, essentially, not in life, but in his mirages.

– Does it happen that one person is jealous of a specific person, and another is jealous of the scenery he saw on TV?

– The madness of the modern world is that, as the Serbian saint Justin (Popovic) said, that people have not only left the true spiritual life for a less real temporary life, in which every moment passes and changes, but a person has already left this life into a completely unreal life. Previously, a person surrendered to the power of dreams and imagination, now they have given way to television series and computer games. A person imagines himself to be something, fights, but in reality he just presses buttons.

One person who was once fond of auto racing told me that it is naive to think that it is so easy to fly on turns, in fact it is very dangerous. But young people are naive, they have no experience. They imagine themselves to be strong and dexterous, but in fact, the program does everything for them. By playing, a person does not gain anything. Ephemeral representations of one's own self-sufficiency are created by technical means.

Also, before, a person really had vocal abilities and shocked theaters. And now newcomers chew on the microphone and consider themselves singers, without actually representing anything. The phonogram is a complete deception. They only open their mouths on stage.

Sad state. Despite this, everyone eats food that grows on the ground. And now there are not very many workers. Nobody wants to work on the land; only some grandmothers work out of inertia. The rest think that food can be easily obtained somewhere, and most importantly, bought and sold. This is the main escape from real life: through these baits and deception.

– Apparently people find peace in virtual reality because they are trying to escape from something they don’t like in real life?

- Absolutely right. People are running away from real life and its difficulties. Nobody wants to endure or reconcile. Now, for example, the Year of the Family has been declared, but almost all families have been destroyed. There is not a single, probably with rare exception, normal family.

- Really not? Everyone around me is constantly getting married...

– That’s right, they “constantly” get married: first one, then a second, then a third... We constantly hear about this, we come into contact with it. Take any parish: there are not many families in which the first permanent marriage, carried out by the spouses in complete purity, has been preserved.

– Is this also rooted in envy?

In envy and laziness, in the absence of work on oneself. People are ready to change everything around them, except themselves. They say: “In another family, with another husband I will be different, with another wife I will be different.”

Alas, people rarely change. An intelligent person tries to adapt to the circumstances in which he finds himself. But a fool wants to adapt everything to himself.

You need to take into account the circumstances, but stick to the spiritual core. Often people get scared: “How is this possible?” Everything is possible, especially with God's help.

Holy Fathers about envy

– So envy is the opposite of love?

– That's it. Where there is envy, there is no love. Strictly speaking, envy is a devilish state of the soul that deprives a person of virtue. Envy is sadness about the well-being of one's neighbor, said Saint Basil the Great. The beginning of envy is pride. “The proud cannot tolerate anyone being superior to him and being prosperous, so he is indignant about his exaltation. A humble person cannot envy, because he sees and recognizes his own unworthiness, but recognizes others as more worthy. Envy does not lead to goodness. The highest angel was not content with his position; he was jealous of God and was cast out of heaven. The first man Adam was not content with being in paradise; he wanted to be “like a god,” and was expelled from paradise. Envy gave rise to the cause of the first homicide, and then the Deicide. Out of envy, Cain killed Abel, the brothers sold Joseph to Egypt, Saul sought to kill David, the scribes and Pharisees crucified the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What we sow is what we reap. Where there is no love, there is envy. “...where there is envy and contentiousness, there is disorder and everything evil” (James 3:16). “Envy breeds controversy. Where do you get your hostility and strife? Isn’t it from here that you envy and cannot achieve,” said Jacob, the brother of the Lord.

Envy is the greatest evil for the soul. “As rust corrodes iron, so envy corrodes the soul in which it lives.” “From it comes the passion for glory, for acquisition, from it the lust for power and the love of money.” “Serving this passion not only does not provide joy in earthly life, but also brings suffering in the afterlife.” “After death, the souls of the deceased go through ordeals, the tenth of them is the ordeal of envy, so you must always eradicate envy in yourself.”

“We can avoid envy if we do not consider great either what people call wealth, unfading glory, or bodily health. Let us strive to acquire eternal and true blessings,” – Basil the Great.

A person often believes that he is worthy of something, but another person does not. In essence it is envy. Envy is the desire to have what someone else has. Whether it's fame, success, prosperity or something else.

I noticed that the word "envy" does not have a plural form. There is such depth in this word. It is well known that when the atheists fought with God, they could not avoid reproaching themselves in their own name. The root of the word “atheist” is God, and “without” is just a prefix. From the point of view of simple spelling, they are not something in themselves, they are only the negation of some essence. The entity exists. Also, envy is based on its “dependence” on something, on someone’s will, on someone’s well-being. Envy appears when something is available somewhere. There is nothing to envy in an empty place. But when there is something to do, this dependence appears. The saddest thing is that a person often does not realize this, and suddenly begins to see injustice all around, but in fact he simply feels envy.

– Envy is the desire not to depend on someone who is stronger than you? After all, people who envy more often are poor people, subordinates, weak people, those who depend on others.

– Satan wanted to be independent of God. “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mountain in the assembly of gods (Isa. 14, 13). Pride causes envy and anger, and vice versa. These things are intertwined with each other, like metastases of a cancerous tumor that penetrate everywhere.

Justice is a very complex concept. The concept of truth and untruth in spiritual life is very difficult.

There is the concept of human truth, and there is God’s truth. All human truth is like nothing before God.

Once Vladyka Stefan (Nikitin), Bishop of Kaluga, very interestingly explained to me the meaning of the parable of the unrighteous Judge. Judge of untruth. Who is the Judge of unrighteousness, who neither feared God nor was ashamed of men? This is God Himself. He is not afraid or ashamed of anyone. Why “Judge of Untruth”? Because if we were all judged according to the truth, then everyone would be condemned, but He has mercy on us all the time. He judges mercifully.

Manifestations of envy

– How does envy most often manifest itself in people’s lives?

– Envy breeds hostility. When a person is envious, he begins to look for flaws in another. He cannot say directly, but he feels that something is wrong and tries to justify his feeling.

– That is, he does not understand that he envies another, and begins to condemn him?

– Mostly yes. Envy is black because it tries to denigrate others. Then you won’t want to have what others have. Remember how in Ivan Andreevich Krylov’s fable the fox says about the grapes that she couldn’t get: “Yes, they’re still green.”

– If a person is envious, does he envy many people or someone in particular?

– Just as in the case of virtue, if a person has love for one, then on the basis of this he tries to show the same feelings towards others. Unfortunately, passion has the same property: if he envies one, then he also envies others: it seems to him that he alone is unhappy, and everyone around him is happy.

This begins to manifest itself in speech: “There are only scoundrels around”, “there are a lot of people here”, “there are only fools around”... He starts with one, and then the whole world hates him. I know specific examples. At first a person was irritated by one person, then others began to irritate him, then others, and then - everyone and everything. This is the quality of passion.

– These traits in a person, unfortunately, become aggravated in old age.

- But “teach the old to heal the dead.” But I knew people who were so complacent that everything was fine with them: in their youth, in their mature years, and in old age.

Because a person usually begins to understand something only in old age, and then he wants others to be just like him. As the late Father John (Krestyankin) said to one servant of God: “What do you want to do from your child that which you could not do from yourself?”

Both heaven and hell begin on earth, but this is the internal structure of the person himself, because in the same conditions one is happy and the other is unhappy.

– In the life of a complacent person, everything goes smoothly. He may reach the heights of success, or he may remain in his current state, but he will still be happy, right?

– There is such a wonderful saying. “Do not forget to thank God even in the darkest days of your life, He is waiting for this and will send you even greater blessings. A person with a grateful heart never lacks for anything.

An envious person does not sleep, he suffers, he himself is pitied, because he does not find peace for himself. But a person who has relied on the mercy of God is already here, in earthly life, calm, much does not bother him, does not lead him to impatience or irritation.

– By the way, sometimes they talk about “white envy.” What it is?

– This is not quite the correct expression. Envy, if it is envy, is always mostly black. When talking about “white envy,” they probably want to express the joy that another has some kind of talent.

If I may say so, white envy is a competition in goodness. You rejoice for the other and try to achieve the same perfection. Borrowing from the experience of others is not envy.

– Is there envy of the holiness of saints?

– This is competition. Here you can be jealous and try to achieve what the other has achieved. But here you won’t achieve anything using bad ways.

The Apostle Paul calls: “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ (1 Cor. 4:16). Another thing is that here you need to strive for perfection, for spiritual purification, but not for talents.

When you dream of the gift of clairvoyance, miracles, prophecy, you already envy. Because these gifts, namely gifts, they are given by God. Why the Lord orders this, we do not know. “But what God does, he doesn’t tell anyone.”

– Is this how various sects, religious movements, etc. are born?

– Yes, at least young age is one such example. When they strive not for spiritual perfection, humility and love, but for talents. The Lord even stopped the apostles, saying: “Do not rejoice that the spirits obey you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

Envy gives a person nothing

– Advertising generally plays on human passions. I recently heard an interesting saying: “In our country you can be happy, but only if no one knows about it.” But this applies not only to our country. And all countries are different or similar sides of one humanity.

- In a word, not only is it bad to envy yourself, but it’s not fun when people envy you.

– Moreover, it is very unpleasant. Just Ilyin has a reflection about a very beautiful woman who says: “I’m so tired. Men look at me as a commodity, and women are jealous. They immediately begin to evaluate me and look for flaws. I am equally uncomfortable with both views. I don't think beauty brings happiness. Nobody sees my soul. A woman can and should be beautiful from the inside out. Anyone who doesn’t love such a woman is simply not worthy of her.” Very well said.

– How can a person understand that envy consumes him, harms him and interferes with his life?

– When a person is jealous, he has no peace. As Saint Basil said: “This is perhaps the only passion that does not bring satisfaction to a person. The love of money and gluttony bring at least temporary satisfaction, but envy itself consumes a person.

Remember the sayings about envy. “Where there is happiness, there is envy.” "You can't gain anything with envy." “There is no self-interest in envy.” Self-interest is acquisition. And you won't gain anything by envy.

Envy is a feminine word and has a singular number. Does not have a plural form, i.e. it is always individual.

– A person should stop and think about whether he has had a feeling of dissatisfaction with some people lately. Look for envy in yourself not by name, but by its fruits, roots and branches?

– It is not for nothing that the Gospel speaks of a man who is looking for the speck in his brother’s eye, not seeing the beam in his own. What is a log? It's a trunk. A twig is just a branch from the trunk. So the trunk is passion. We see in others what is in us, what touches and touches us. If not for this, you would have passed by and not gotten caught on this twig. We were hurt by this.

There is such a worldly expression: “A person understands everything to the extent of his depravity.”

Path of Healing

– What should a person do who realizes that he is envious?

– Saint Theophan just says: “We must hasten to arouse good feelings especially towards the one whom we envy, and to show him by deeds. The envy will subside immediately.”

You need to be happy that a person has something. And if you don’t rejoice, it means there is still envy in you.

When your friend is doing well, and you, instead of being happy for him, feel a cold, skeptical mood, you need to think about it.

– Should we praise the other and try to be happy?

– Exactly. Say to yourself: “Well, thank God, a person has this gift, and it’s good. Let him live for the glory of God." In this sense, it is easier for a believer. Well, God gave, and gave.

– If a person realized that he was envious and repented, will this help him? Can this disease be cured by repentance?

– Certainly. Firstly, a person cannot understand anything if it is not given to him from above, as stated in the Gospel. If it is given to him, then it is given, and why is the second question. The whole trouble is that we always forget this gospel truth: a hair will not fall from a person’s head without the will of God. Nothing happens by chance. Chance is the Pseudonym under which God acts in the world - as Pascal said.

– How to deal with envy in the family? It is very common among sisters and brothers who constantly compare themselves to others.

– Nothing happens to a person right away, envy is not immediately black, over time its color worsens. For the most part, it starts unnoticed. In childhood, this is envy of other people's toys, clothes, food, and the fact that others are given more attention. These are little things, but they grow this passion.

I have five sons and two daughters. One day, when I came home in the evening, I noticed that the children were already lying in their beds. There are toys lying on the floor. And I said: “You see, the toys that you argued so much about during the day are now lying quietly. You lie and they lie. And during the day, for some reason, you need to take this toy away from someone else. It's easy to take away - all you need is strength. And giving in is humility.”

Then one day I see two people fighting over a toy, and I ask: “Who has humility?” They did it once, and they both retreated, and the toy fell between them.

I remember a case when one of the sons (he has now become a priest), seeing how the brothers were quarreling, came up and said to one of them: “Give him this toy, because he doesn’t even need it, but he just wants to take it away from you.” .

You need to talk to children about this topic, and talk directly and specifically. They sometimes understand much more than adults. And this education will then prompt the right decision.

If someone else has it, and you really want it too, just be patient a little. The Lord will send it to you too. As one priest told me: “Have patience, and the Lord will send you everything, and even more.”

This probably happens because it is not useful for a person, even an adult, to receive everything at once. The urgency of the moment is a very important thing in all respects.

For example, spouses begin to argue. There is such very useful advice that priests should recommend to their spiritual children: “If you are arguing among yourself, stop and agree that you will go and ask a priest who has spiritual authority for you for a decision.” You know, when they then reach the priest, there is usually nothing left to ask.

At that moment it seems that everything needs to be resolved now, and then everything resolves itself.

Empress Elizaveta Petrovna was a very religious person. When she was presented with documents to resolve some issues, she listened to the opposing sides, but did not give the matter a go right away, but waited until everything somehow worked out on its own. Therefore, her reign probably passed without any major shocks. On the one hand, this would seem to be just an excuse for inactivity, but on the other hand, very often this is the best way out. Don't rush, and certainly don't walk over corpses. Everything will work out on its own, even better than we could have wanted, if we don’t tug at each other, don’t irritate each other, don’t gnaw at each other, don’t scold each other.

There is such advice about proper nutrition: “Never eat or prepare food in an irritated state: this is not only not healthy, but also harmful.” I found this advice in a secular book, although I had long known about it from spiritual books.

If you do something in this state, you complete 1/8, but miss 7/8. Because we don't give room for grace. In the end, it is the Lord Himself who does everything, and a person’s motto should be like that of doctors: “Do no harm.”

The Lord said: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” This means that He is both the Path, the Goal, and the Means to achieve the goal. “All means are good to achieve the goal” is not a Christian principle, anti-Christian, more precisely.

Is it wise to be selfish?

– How can a person understand someone else’s pain? Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is difficult and unpleasant.

– The majority strives for acquisitions, but only a few get everything. Why is the second question.

What does a person actually need? Cloth? After Elizaveta Petrovna, there were, it seems, one and a half thousand dresses left. Solomon had 600 wives and 800 concubines. Where more? But it still turned out that this was “vanity of vanities and vexation of spirit.” It is impossible to eat more than your stomach can accommodate. You can't go anywhere in two cars at the same time. What's next? Power? You also need to answer for it. But then, it also ends.

In this world, everything ends, and a person, in fact, does not need so much. It happens that a person lives, is satisfied with what he has, and is happy. One is happy because he has enough money to survive until retirement, while the other doesn’t have enough money to buy a Mercedes. Happiness does not depend on quantity.

– We talked about the fact that people do not want to work on themselves and indulge their selfishness. How to understand what egoism is?

– Why do you think elders are addressed as “you”?

The meaning in this is very deep. Behind each of us there are many generations. Man is not something completely original. He grew up in society, he was taught by other people. Personality is made up of what has been achieved by many generations. The man says: “My opinion.” Be honest, this is not your opinion, all this existed long before you. There is very little new. Everything new is long forgotten old. What is "I"? Remove all the man's clothes and place him in the forest. He did not invent the house in which he lives, nor clothes, nor dishes. And the body was given to him by his parents. This way you can clearly show that an egoist has nothing to be proud of as his own. Almost everything that is given to him is not actually his.

–But people very confidently continue to exist in their egoism. Everyone wants to live well here and now.

– There are people whom only God himself can heal, but the Lord often does not stop such blind people as they do not want to understand this truth. But, sorry, alas, no matter how hard everyone resists, everyone will die.

D believe in eternal life

- You can object: “But I will die happy, I lived a rich life, I tried everything, I saw everything.”

– Well, then it will turn out like in the Gospel. Read and make your choice. Nobody, you say, came from there? Remember the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. By the way, when the rich man asked Abraham that the Lord would send Lazarus to his relatives, the Lord at first refused... but then he still sent Lazarus. Despite the fact that he said “no,” He willed it too. Lazarus, it was Lazarus who rose again. But they didn’t believe this and wanted to kill him.

The Gospel says everything. As Belinsky said well: “There is a book in which everything is said, everything is decided, after which there is no doubt about anything, an immortal, holy book, a book of eternal truth, eternal life - the Gospel. All progress of mankind, all successes in the sciences, in philosophy, consist only in a great penetration into the mysterious depth of this Divine book.”

And here are the words of Dante: “I affirm that of all human bestialities, the stupidest, the most vile and the most harmful is to believe that after this life there will be no other.”

– In a word, we can say that you can fight envy only by turning to God.

– Without God's help it is impossible to overcome any passion. They are so resourceful that one will constantly be replaced by the other. And a person will never grab the root.

Treatment is repentance and prayer. To understand that you are doing something wrong, you need to pray, ask God to reveal these sins. Confession and Communion are needed.
I'll say it very simply. I grew up in a believing family, went to church since childhood and never attended any entertaining social events. Having become a student, I, together with my classmates, attended “recreation evenings” and there they danced waltzes, tangos, foxtrots... At the same time, I continued to attend services. I often came from church tired, but satisfied and calm. And since the “evening of rest” - broken. This contrast was immediately felt.

Why is it so important to go to the temple of God? Why is prayer important? After praying, compare your state “before” and “after”, and only then draw conclusions.

– Some people treat visiting a temple as a formal duty, not realizing that, first of all, it gives them a lot.

– The same is true with fasting. They say: “Does God really need me not to eat something?” It is not God who needs this, but us. Abstaining from food is beneficial even physically, and for children it is simply training willpower. We do not consider it a crime when we forbid a child to eat at the wrong time. We say: “Wait for lunch, then you’ll eat.” This is normal upbringing. And when this happens in the Church, everyone begins to be indignant.

Man himself needs a temple. The sacraments were given and established here on earth so that through them a person would be strengthened in soul. When a person does not go to church, he simply deprives himself of everything: God’s help, grace...

When a person goes to church more often and begins to fast, his life changes. I know people, quite famous in their field, who, when they started going to church, said: “We feel that our life has become different. Richer, more meaningful." Not to mention the fact that an understanding of many things comes. Of course, pride is always at war and it is difficult for a person to realize something, but it is work. The work and feat of a lifetime. That is why Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev said: “In the world there are heroes, but in Christianity there are ascetics.”

My best friend and I often argue about various issues, many of them very philosophical, and some of them vital. And one of the most acute is the attitude towards envy. We perceive this problem very differently, and everyone defends their position. I believe that envy is a very useful feeling, but he, on the contrary, rejects it in all its manifestations.

I don’t know which of us is right, but both points of view have the right to life. And the strangest thing is that it’s impossible to look for the truth somewhere in the middle.

Envy is a great motivator

My opinion is clear: it’s a useful thing. When we look at the achievements of other people, we dream that the same will happen for us. This is an incentive for growth and development. For example, my brother’s successes make me happy, and I want the same. I also dream of opening my own business, buying an expensive car and building a cozy country house. And this feeling gives me hope that if I work hard, I will also achieve results.

Of course, I’m not talking about the envy that causes people to be killed or destroy this acquired property. This is no longer envy, but anger. But in acceptable quantities, this feeling can make a person move forward.

I think that our whole world is built on envy. After all, it is because of her that we dream of becoming models, bankers, presidents. It's just a desire to be successful and needed, but in order to achieve this, we choose objects to emulate. This is also envy, but it is usually called “white”.

How often does a person see something in an advertisement or just on the street? He begins to desire her, but he knows very well that she belongs to someone else. But if this other person was able to buy it, then it is possible! And then you just have to mobilize all your strength, and such an object of envy can be acquired. And from this day on, a person does not lie on the couch, but begins to work, do something to get what he has planned.

Is it possible to treat such incentives badly? This is an opportunity for development not only for an individual, but also for humanity as a whole. And not everyone can avoid envy, this feeling exists in our brain, so I believe that it should not be destroyed, but simply turned in the right direction.

Envy is anger and the cause of misfortune

My friend's opinion is the opposite. Envy is a negative emotion that can ruin any life. If a person begins to worry that someone else has something better, he cannot sleep or eat. This anger can even develop into serious illnesses.

To envy means to wish harm on another. This feeling is very destructive for energy. And it also affects both: the one who thinks and the one who possesses the thing. You should avoid such thoughts so as not to spoil your psyche and health.

Envy is a bad feeling; it does not stimulate, but, on the contrary, destroys. It's hard to concentrate when your neighbor is doing well. Such feelings haunt us and often lead to cruelty towards others. And this is also a reason for self-humiliation and the development of complexes. How often do people say, if I don’t have this, then I’m worthless, that means I can’t achieve anything.

The feeling of not being in demand, the understanding of insolvency, as well as the inability to accept the achievements of others sometimes become the cause of tragedy. In the 90s there was a lot of crime precisely because of envy. Yes, even today discords exist. Is it worth it to let this happen?

To develop, such feelings are not needed; on the contrary, what is important is the desire for perfection, and not the desire to possess something.

How to deal with envy?

It is unclear which of the two of us is right. But it’s still worth dealing with this strange feeling. How should you behave if this emotion suddenly manifests itself? There can be two solutions: redirect this energy into something positive or try to remove it.

The first way is the simplest. If you are envious, then there is no need to scold the person who is the source of envy. Let this better be an incentive. For example, someone in your circle bought a car that you really want. Don’t be discouraged, decide that you are also capable of such a purchase, and start taking action. Let the power of desire be directed not towards condemnation, but towards realization. Try to invest all your time and energy into ensuring that you have a similar thing.

Relationships can also become a source of envy, for example, an excellent relationship in a friend’s family. But this is not a reason to beat off her husband; you just need to spend energy on creating equally attractive conditions in your family. Don't be angry, but strive for your dream!

The second way is . Today he is very popular in the world, various psychologists work with him. You just need to notice this emotion and start observing it. Try to analyze what causes it, what actions you want to do, when it manifests itself, where it all leads. Usually such questions simply erase this emotion, the experience disappears.

You can work with this feeling through forgiveness. You need to forgive the person for being the source of this emotion and forgive yourself for experiencing this experience. Much has been written about this in Luule Vilma’s books. This method helps to free yourself from unnecessary thoughts and actions, leading to a positive and enjoyable life.

Envy is a complex feeling; it helps some, and hinders others. You just need to learn to perceive it correctly, and then everything will be great.

- That's it. Where there is envy, there is no love. Strictly speaking, envy is a diabolical state of the soul that deprives a person of virtue. Envy is sadness about the well-being of one's neighbor, said Saint Basil the Great. The beginning of envy is pride. “The proud cannot tolerate anyone being superior to him and being prosperous, so he is indignant about his exaltation. A humble person cannot envy, because he sees and recognizes his own unworthiness, but recognizes others as more worthy. Envy does not lead to goodness. The highest angel was not content with his position; he was jealous of God and was cast out of heaven. The first man Adam was not content with being in paradise; he wanted to be “like a god,” and was expelled from paradise. Envy gave rise to the cause of the first homicide, and then the Deicide. Out of envy, Cain killed Abel, the brothers sold Joseph to Egypt, Saul sought to kill David, the scribes and Pharisees crucified the Lord Jesus Christ.”

What we sow is what we reap. Where there is no love, there is envy. “...where there is envy and contentiousness, there is disorder and everything evil” (James 3:16). “Envy breeds controversy. Where do you get hostility and strife? Isn’t it from here that you envy and cannot achieve,” said Jacob, the brother of the Lord.

“We can avoid envy if we do not consider great either what people call wealth, unfading glory, or bodily health. Let us strive to acquire eternal and true blessings,” - Basil the Great.

A person often believes that he is worthy of something, but another person does not. In essence it is envy. Envy is the desire to have what another has. Whether it's fame, success, prosperity or something else.

Envy is the desire not to depend on someone who is stronger than you? After all, people who envy more often are poor people, subordinates, weak people, those who depend on others.

- Satan wanted to be independent of God. “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mountain in the assembly of gods (Isa. 14, 13). Pride causes envy and anger, and vice versa. These things are intertwined with each other, like metastases of a cancerous tumor that penetrate everywhere.

Justice is a very complex concept. The concept of truth and untruth in spiritual life is very difficult.

There is the concept of human truth, and there is God’s truth. All human truth is like nothing before God.

Manifestations of envy

- How does envy most often manifest itself in people’s lives?

- Envy breeds hostility. When a person is envious, he begins to look for flaws in another. He cannot say directly, but he feels that something is wrong and tries to justify his feeling.

- That is, he does not understand that he envies another, and begins to condemn him?

- Mostly yes. Envy is black because it tries to denigrate others. Then you won’t want to have what others have. Remember how in Ivan Andreevich Krylov’s fable the fox says about the grapes that she couldn’t get: “Yes, they’re still green.”

- If a person is jealous, does he envy many people or someone in particular?

- Just as in the case of virtue, if a person has love for one, then on the basis of this he tries to show the same feelings towards others. Unfortunately, passion has the same property: if he envies one, then he also envies others: it seems to him that he alone is unhappy, and everyone around him is happy.

- These traits in a person, unfortunately, become aggravated in old age.

But “to teach the old that the dead can be healed.” But I knew people who were so complacent that everything was fine with them: in their youth, in their mature years, and in old age.

Both heaven and hell begin on earth, but this is the internal structure of the person himself, because in the same conditions one is happy and the other is unhappy.

In the life of a complacent person, everything goes smoothly. He may reach the heights of success, or he may remain in his current state, but he will still be happy, right?

- There is such a wonderful saying. “Do not forget to thank God even in the darkest days of your life, He is waiting for this and will send you even greater blessings. A person with a grateful heart never lacks for anything.

- By the way, sometimes they talk about “white envy.” What it is?

- This is not quite the correct expression. Envy, if it is envy, is always mostly black. When talking about “white envy,” they probably want to express the joy that another has some kind of talent.

If I may say so, white envy is a competition in goodness. You rejoice for the other and try to achieve the same perfection. Borrowing from the experience of others is not envy.

- Is there envy of the holiness of saints?

- This is competition. Here you can be jealous and try to achieve what the other has achieved. But here you won’t achieve anything using bad ways.

The Apostle Paul calls: “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ (1 Cor. 4:16). Another thing is that here you need to strive for perfection, for spiritual purification, but not for talents.

- Is this how various sects, religious movements, etc. are born?

- Yes, at least young age is one such example. When they strive not for spiritual perfection, humility and love, but for talents. The Lord even stopped the apostles, saying: “Do not rejoice that the spirits obey you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

Envy gives a person nothing

- Advertising generally plays on human passions. I recently heard an interesting saying: “In our country you can be happy, but only if no one knows about it.” But this applies not only to our country. And all countries are different or similar sides of one humanity.

- In a word, not only is it bad to envy yourself, but it’s not fun when people envy you.

- Moreover, it is very unpleasant. Just Ilyin has a reflection about a very beautiful woman who says: “I’m so tired. Men look at me as a commodity, and women are jealous. They immediately begin to evaluate me and look for flaws. I am equally uncomfortable with both views. I don't think beauty brings happiness. Nobody sees my soul. A woman can and should be beautiful from the inside out. Anyone who doesn’t love such a woman is simply not worthy of her.” Very well said.

- How can a person understand that envy consumes him, harms him and interferes with his life?

- When a person is jealous, he has no peace. As Saint Basil said: “This is perhaps the only passion that does not bring satisfaction to a person. The love of money and gluttony bring at least temporary satisfaction, but envy itself consumes a person.

Envy is a feminine word and has a singular number. Does not have a plural form, i.e. it is always individual.

A person should stop and think about whether he has had feelings of dissatisfaction with some people lately. Look for envy in yourself not by name, but by its fruits, roots and branches?

- It is not for nothing that the Gospel speaks of a man who is looking for the speck in his brother’s eye, not seeing the beam in his own. What is a log - it's a trunk. A twig is just a branch from the trunk. So the trunk is passion. We see in others what is in us, what touches and touches us. If not for this, you would have passed by and not gotten caught on this twig. We were hurt by this.

There is such a worldly expression: “A person understands everything to the extent of his depravity.”

Interviewed by Valeria Efanova

Envy, one of the most common and acute human experiences, manifests itself at a very early age. Even small children are overwhelmed by this feeling; As soon as a child sees something he likes in someone’s hands, his first instinct is to grab it and take it away. Over the years, the objects of envy, of course, change, but its very nature remains unchanged. As we grow up, we no longer envy the toy in someone else's hand, but something else appears instead - say, a substantial bank account. In general, envy is so universal that we often either do not notice it or do not think that it creates problems for us.

It is possible that initially envy - black envy, as it is sometimes called - arises from a feeling of deprivation, but most often it is associated with the instinct of the owner: someone has it, but I don’t; I want too! Often there is a desire to receive something not because you want to have it, but because someone else has it. In children, such an instinct is not always directed towards a specific object. Once in a huge toy store, a kid with eyes burning with greed asks to buy him all the toys simply because they are there. His request does not mean that he dreams of each of them. Many people have the experience of buying a gift (for a child or an adult, it doesn’t matter), made only for the reason that they have been begging for it for a long time or even demanding it. But how often it happened that as soon as they fulfilled a request, before their eyes the long-awaited thing was put aside, immediately losing all interest in it! Sometimes they never touched it again, because it was not needed in itself - or rather, it was needed only because someone else had the same one.

Envy is indiscriminate. It can be caused by anything, fueled by the awareness of the status of the desired thing as the property of another, as a sign of distinction of a certain community, as a symbol of belonging to any social group. The object of envy has little to do with the real needs of a particular person; rather, it indicates the place that person would like to occupy in society. In some primitive civilizations, women knock out their front teeth to be considered beautiful. This may seem crazy to us, but you don’t have to look far for an example from our own reality: go to any sports club and you will certainly find a section in which men and women torture their own bodies to give it the desired shape. In order to achieve the modern ideal of beauty, they deplete their flesh so much that they look not like top models, but like garden scarecrows. The objective result of this physical torture does not matter to them, because people really do not care so much what they look like - they are much more concerned about conforming to the fashion that is widespread in a particular social group. If fashion dictates a certain appearance, then they consider it necessary to achieve compliance with it, even if deep down they do not accept it.

We begin to experience envy if we do not want to lag behind others. In addition, we want to have what others envy.

Sometimes envy is easy to satisfy: you just need to acquire what others have. In this case, the biggest loss is the reduction in the thickness of the wallet. The desire (which sometimes turns into an obsession) to be like your neighbor in everything can be satisfied by buying the same car as his, or even more expensive and prestigious.

But envy may not be so harmless. If a person is unable to obtain a desired object in a conventional way, he may have a desire to take it away from the one who possesses it and become its absolute owner. Envy in this case can become the cause of a crime. It is a sin to covet someone else's wife or property that belongs to another, but it is even worse to try to take possession of it, for then envy turns into greed. Envy can be quiet and passive. Greed is realized envy.

The logic of greed is this: if someone has something that I don’t have, it means that he is superior to me in some way. By taking this item away from him, I am only restoring fair equality. Since I am not able to come to terms with other people's superiority, such “levelling” brings me great satisfaction. If I cannot rise to his height, let me bring him down to my position.

Sometimes I can take away my neighbor’s property even in a completely legal way, but from a moral point of view this cannot serve as an excuse. In a certain sense, seizing someone else's property through legal mechanisms can be even more disgusting. Such acts are not criminally punishable, and since the person who committed them is under the protection of the justice system, he is automatically protected from remorse. ( In the Talmud, Tractate Gitin, 58a, there is a story about a man who, through legal chicanery, took his friend’s wife and property from him. Then he married a divorcee, and took her ex-husband as his servant. Although he did not break the letter of the law, the Talmud states that it was this act that became the drop in the scales of evil in the scales of Heavenly Court, because of which an entire people was sentenced to exile and genocide).

Envy can also take on a public, political character. In most cases, the desire to realize the principles of egalitarianism - the driving force of many political movements - is just one way to satisfy the demand of envy: if I don’t have it, then neither will others. Inequality is primary, and it does not matter whether it is based on an inheritance received or a status achieved through talent or hard work. Not everyone is destined to live in a palace and lead an existence reminiscent of the golden dream of their dreams. Envy can make us want to make everyone equal, destroy palaces, and make everyone's life equally miserable.

The thought that someone has what I want (no matter what it is: property, property or position in society) can haunt us non-stop, keeping us up at night. After a while, it doesn’t matter whether it’s mine or not; There remains only one frantic desire: to take it away from another. Such destructive passion is no longer connected in any way with the original object of envy. At this stage, the very existence of the person who possesses it is annoying.

There is an old fairy tale where one of the characters was jealous of the other. One day, an envious person was allowed to ask the king for anything on the condition that his rival would receive twice as much. After thinking a little, he asked to have his eye gouged out.

In one of the parables about hell there is the following story: a group of hungry people sits at a table, in front of each of them there is a bowl of delicious soup and a spoon that is too long to bring the soup to their mouth. The only way out for the diners is to feed their neighbor, however, since we are talking about sinners, they remain forever hungry. We have all heard about the famous judgment of King Solomon (Second Book of Kings, 3:16–28). Two women gave birth at the same time, but one of the babies died. Each tried to prove that the remaining child was hers. Solomon suggested cutting the child in half. The impostor said with a grin: “Chop it - let neither her nor me get it.”

Envy does not need to be fed from the outside and grows, gradually turning into hatred that does not find satisfaction until the person causing it is destroyed. In the book “Ha-Yom - Yom” it is said on behalf of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe: “Any hatred is curable, except that which is caused by envy.” ( The opposite of envy is complacency. The Jewish sages, Avot 4:1, praised a person who is content with what he has. However, self-satisfaction can also be a double-edged sword. One who is satisfied with his lot does not strive for more because he has no incentive). The one who is envied cannot even soften the envier, for the kinder and more generous he is, the more envy, and therefore hatred, he will cause. He will be hated not because he is richer or wiser, but because he is more humane.

The ugliest litigation over inheritance is caused by envy that has grown into hatred. Often they are not even connected or almost not connected with what exactly was bequeathed. Even if there is enough property for everyone, for some people the very thought that someone will get more than them is unbearable. Litigation of this kind can drag on for years (between countries - even hundreds of years), but never come to an end. They are not essentially property disputes - it is envy that has become an end in itself, grows, and then devours the soul. Such a struggle, in anticipation of the fall and death of an opponent, can become the only meaning of human existence. Mania can go so far that if the person obsessed with it finally manages to achieve the desired goal, he suddenly realizes that he has no reason to live anymore.

Both satisfied and unsatisfied envy is destructive for everyone who is involved in the field of its magnetism, including the envier himself. He does not necessarily become dangerous to those around him, because not every person, no matter how dark his thoughts and sinful lusts may be, is capable of taking direct action and causing harm to someone. As a rule, it is still limited by moral norms and law. But one thing remains unchanged: unsatisfied envy eats away at the soul.

Envy is usually considered a purely negative feeling, however, like many other emotions, it is not clear-cut. Indulging its appetites are industrial enterprises, entire branches of industry, which can be just as large, and perhaps much more powerful, than those created out of necessity, in accordance with the needs of the population. Here are two examples: cars and fashion. The more developed a country is, the more funds are invested in the “envy industry.” Businessmen do everything possible to create new needs among people; direct and hidden advertising is developed, after which a product is created designed to satisfy these needs.

Often disgusting and destructive, envy can nevertheless contribute to the birth of the great and the beautiful. Maimonides, in the preface to his commentary on the treatise Avot, said that if there were no envious people in the world, our world would not exist. He wrote about people who worked tirelessly, putting their lives in danger, and all this in order to build, for example, a beautiful villa that will last for hundreds of years, although the owner will be able to enjoy the work of his hands for a relatively short time.

Envy is closely related to the spirit of competition, which is even stronger than the desire to possess. When competing, a person does everything better than he would have done without a competitor. Competition forces us to try to be taller, richer, stronger than our opponent. The spirit of competition that makes us strive for victory is embedded in our subconscious. It is inherent even in animals and is a very powerful driving force for us and for them. Even the elements - fire and water, earth and sky - can be represented as forces constantly competing with each other. What little we know about angels suggests that they, too, have some element of rivalry and jealousy.

Envy cannot be ignored, but it can be used for good purposes. Jewish sages believe that all envy is evil, with the exception of the envy of scientists for the success of their colleagues ( kinat-sofrim). Such envy can motivate a person to improve himself and help him rise to a new, higher level. Competition is observed both in sports and in the desire to acquire material wealth, but in the same way it can stimulate a craving for knowledge of wisdom or even the achievement of holiness.

This kind of envy can become a creative force. At conferences, colloquiums and symposia, where a large number of scientists gather, this mechanism is used, among other things, to produce and develop new ideas. Charity is also largely fueled by competition and envy. Of course, there is also a share (sometimes significant) of selfishness, but in general the result of all this is positive.

The Book of Proverbs of Solomon (23:17) says: “Let not your heart envy sinners; but may it always remain in the fear of God.” A person is born with a great potential of desires that we cannot and should not suppress. The problem is not envy, but what it is directed at. Our task is to determine how to manage our emotions and how to control our natural tendencies. They can be used as material for spiritual growth or as a powerful poison that will destroy all living things around. We are envious by nature, but free will allows us to choose the object of envy. You can envy a scoundrel and want to surpass him in vice, but you can also envy those who are intellectually superior to us, nobler and kinder. By striving to surpass them, we grow spiritually.

Unfortunately, people most often envy those who are richer and get satisfaction from comparing themselves with those who are spiritually poorer. There are people among us who are too proud to sin, and we could take their example in this and refrain from the ugly feeling of envy. We may decide that such low feelings do not suit us, that it is beneath our dignity.

This is the difference between envy of spiritual wealth and the same feeling aimed at material wealth. After all, being envious of the first, we will not want our neighbor to have less of it. Although the driving force of such envy remains egoism, it is sublimated egoism. One can argue about the original purity and nobility of this feeling, but it is the same envy that makes people strive for and achieve more, transforms selfish desire into a driving force for transforming our world into a more habitable place. ( But still, evil can penetrate into this sphere. Envy of learning and even of righteousness can turn into a desire to gain a higher social position through an attempt to humiliate a worthy person who is superior to the envier in all respects, in order to appear wiser and more decent than him (see, for example, Maimonides, Mishneh Torah , book “Sefer Ha-Mada”, section “Hilchot Deot”, 6:4).

I would like to end this chapter with a story about good envy. The great Hasidic Rebbe, better known as the Holy Jew, said that he owed all his achievements to a blacksmith. As a child, he lived next door to a very hardworking blacksmith who got up to work every morning at the crack of dawn. One day, hearing the sound of a hammer, the Holy Jew said to himself: “This man works for money. I study Torah, which is much more sublime. If a blacksmith can force himself to lack sleep and get up for work so early, then why can’t I do it?” And he began to get up for classes a little earlier. That same day, the blacksmith, hearing the voice of a yeshivatnik teaching the Torah aloud, thought: “I earn money, but this young man does not receive a penny for his work. If he can get up this early, then I have to get up even earlier.” So he did. Then the Holy Jew began to get up at first light. They competed like this for a long time. Then the Holy Jew said that this rivalry helped him become a scientist.

In such a competition, neither the blacksmith nor the Holy Jew lost anything, both only won. Envying each other, they looked for a way to make the most efficient use of time and competed in this in absentia, each doing their own thing. They even developed a spirit of competition, a desire to win, a desire to be first, and this forced two people of different professions and leading different lifestyles to achieve more.

Notes:

See Tikunei-Zohar, p. 196.

"Midrash Rabbah", ch. Breishit 12:8.

Babylonian Talmud, “Bava Batra”, 22b.

Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinovich (1765–1814).