Marvellous jealousy
“Dear David, it’s Cristina, I’m writing to you because my 20-year relationship has now collapsed and the biggest problem is our huge, bloody jealousy. Do you have any advice for me to work on it?”
Sweet Cristina, I can assure you that it is not as it seems, and I am not going to give you any real advice, just an invitation to observe better.
I imagine you already know this: each individual can spend entire periods of his or her life closed in on himself or herself, hermetically sealed. Each individual can set about building solid walls that protect him or her from everyone else, from the world. And when this happens nothing and no one can touch us, that is true, but we also soon discover that the price of such an enclosure is always imprisonment. Nothing can get in and you cannot get out. A very high price, which sooner or later becomes unbearable, then we abandon it.
Once out of prison, though, where to start? It seems difficult to get back in touch with Existence: it is so big, so immense. Well, the door is relationships. Because when you enter into a relationship your energy spontaneously flows towards your partner and the two rivers meet: they create a flood. In a short time every barrier can fall, every defence dissipate, possession become a common home. And this unexpected gift is so extraordinary, so therapeutic that you feel rich: the dawn of every relationship is a new miracle. Your peripheries vanish and the other appears more and more like a door to new depths. Then comes jealousy.
But mind you: jealousy is not there because of the partner, he has nothing to do with it, she is there for you. Jealousy is there to remind you that you are still hiding the fear of returning to isolation and that Life is asking you to learn to Love unconditionally, to open yourself again, so much so that you no longer recognise yourself. You say: ‘If you don’t want to go back, you have to jump forward!
People, however, are not used to diving into that great Ocean, and so they make jealousy an excess of commitment, of zeal: putting all they can into keeping that little bit of Beauty they have found.
Do not condemn her, there is no need, she is not the biggest problem. It’s just that you suffered so much, then the other came along and reminded you that you could no longer pay such a high price. You considered it a divine miracle, and you were right. But then you hardened, stopped, closed your fists, trapped that blessing. Yet jealousy is there to remind you how precious this opportunity is, how much energy and effort it takes to go through your partner and become reconciled with the whole of Life.
Before you give up, try then to remind yourselves what you really want, to give yourselves totally to each other, to surrender yourselves to total sincerity.
You can feel it with your Heart: jealousy is not an obstacle, but a springboard.
An inundating embrace
