THOUGHTS ON JEALOUSY

"Don't be upset at what Clara said to you. She is only jealous of you".
 
We are all influenced by what the people around us say to us no matter if they are right or wrong.
 
Jealousy deludes you into seeing faults in the other person that are not there. The jealous person who condemns you is no different in the essential ways from a person who condemns you because they really do see those faults and the faults are there. And you are expected to be upset about critics who have the hurtful truth about you and who are not afraid to say it.
 
Clara may be jealous but she wants to harm you. To say you should not be upset about that is to say you should not be upset at all when anybody would hurt you for whatever reason.

Jane is friends with Anna. She sees Ernie, Anna's husband, with another woman. She informs Anna. People may say, "She was only interested in splitting up that marriage. She was always jealous of how happy Anna and Ernie were."
 
If she was jealous that does not mean her main motive was to satisfy this jealousy. She might have enjoyed imparting the bad news but the jealousy could have been a lesser motive than her wish to help Anna by telling her the truth.
 
To say she was only interested in causing trouble is to judge her as being totally jealous. It is a false and exaggerated judgement. Who can know it was her only motive? To say she was chiefly interested in causing trouble doesn't make much of a difference. Yet these assumptions must be made if her action is to be condemned.
 
If Jane can't do it for any main reason except for jealousy the Church forbids her to tell. Jealous acts are sinful. The Church is concerned about the morality but not about Anna.
 
Society and the Church condemn those who rob banks. They refuse to assume that the robbers wanted the money to better life for their children. They judge like that. They make assumptions. And then they claim to be acting and thinking lovingly towards the robbers!

Mother says, “Son, ignore her. She is the one with a problem”.
 
If you are to hate the sin as Jesus said, - he said you are better losing limbs than sinning - you have to worry about it even if you can’t do anything about it.
 
If you care about the woman, and she has a problem, she needs help or counsel and the advice is really saying that she should be left with her problem even though it could make her do evil again.
 
Also, not to care is not to care about the woman. If everybody took that kind of advice, nobody could be described as bullied. They would be to blame for how they respond emotionally to the abuse so that it is really them doing damage to themselves not the bully.
 
An altruist cannot give this advice.
 
Neither can an egoist. The woman if she values her son because he is her child she will be egoistic in relation to him. But to say hatred should be ignored is to go against that egoism. It is really egotism on her part.