You Are The Best, Why Compare?🔗

Emotions of fear, desire and guilt are subjective emotions. What I mean by this is that you do not need another person or even an object to create these emotions. Imagine that you are in a sound proofed room with your eyes closed and with nothing to touch, taste or smell. You can still feel the emotions of fear or desire. But to compare yourself with another person and to feel jealous of him, you need the presence of another person. Jealousy is therefore an objective emotion. It needs an object to be activated.

A small story:

One evening a man was sitting with his wife on a park bench. Without noticing them, a young man and his girlfriend sat down next to them. The young man started talking to his girlfriend in a very loving manner.

Hearing this, the wife whispered to her husband, 'I think he is going to propose to her. Maybe you should cough or do something to warn him!'

The husband replied, 'Why should I warn him? Nobody ever warned me!'

Jealousy starts from comparison. We always compare ourselves with others in various fields – looks, wealth, knowledge, name and fame and friends to name a few. When we compare ourselves with others we feel that somebody else has something more than what we have and, we get caught in jealousy.

Comparison is the seed and jealousy is the fruit!

Why exactly do we compare ourselves with others?

First, we compare ourselves because we have never understood ourselves. We are not aware of who we are and what we have.

Second, society has conditioned us from our birth to evaluate ourselves based upon others. From childhood the comparison starts. In school, the grading system introduces a child to competition and comparison with others.

There are standard benchmarks to measure a child's qualities such as mathematical ability, scientific aptitude, artistic skill, athletic ability, musical talent and so on. But, what we don't realize is that when we try to measure a quality using a standardized benchmark, it is nothing but using comparison as the scale to measure the child himself. We are literally punishing all children with the reward systems we use in schools.

The child gets used to judging and knowing himself by looking at others and comparing himself with them. He has no understanding of himself based on what he is. He knows himself only based on others.

A small story:

Once a man was testifying in court about a road accident. Suddenly, the man noticed that the court reporter was writing while he spoke. As the man started speaking faster and faster he noticed that the reporter was writing faster and faster.

Suddenly the man said to the court reporter, ‘Please don't write so fast. I am not able to keep up with you!’

Every judgment you make about yourself is based on some comparison. But why does the idea of the other enter into your mind? It is because you have not looked in and realized who you are. You have not experienced the bliss and tremendous potential you have inside you. You feel incomplete because you have not been able to express yourself as you are. So, the emptiness and lack of fulfillment inside makes you feel inferior to others.

Buddha says, ‘Nothing exists except in relationship.’ Suppose you were the only person on a new planet, how could you compare yourself with anyone? Could you call yourself tall or short, ugly or beautiful, rich or poor, intelligent or dumb? No! When there is no one with whom to compare ourselves, we just are!

Understand, even now, there is no scale to compare you with anybody. Each individual is unique.

Can you compare a lion and a horse? Do we ever compare ourselves with flowers or birds or mountains? Then why do we have to compare ourselves with other human beings!

A beautiful Zen story:

A king once went to a master to ask for a technique to become more powerful than his neighboring kings. He sat in front of the master and started telling him the purpose of his visit. The master listened patiently to the king.

He then told him to go into the royal garden where a rose plant and a cypress plant were growing side by side. He told the king, ‘They are your teachers. They can teach you what you need to learn.’

The king went into the garden, saw the two plants but could not understand what he was meant to learn from them. He went back to the master and asked, ‘What do you mean, master? I am not able to understand what and how these plants will teach me.’

The master took the king to the plants and explained, 'This cypress plant has been next to the rose plant for so many years. Never once has it even aspired to become a rose plant. Similarly, the rose plant has never ever aspired to become a cypress plant. If man had been the cypress plant, he would have compared himself with the rose and felt jealous at the attention that the rose plant was getting from people. Or if man were the rose plant, he would have looked at the cypress plant enviously thinking how peaceful the plant was without the torture of getting plucked by people all day!'

The two plants prospered because they used all of their energy for their own growth instead of using it to compare themselves with the other.

The moment you stop comparing, all jealousy disappears. Instead, you will start feeling contented in yourself and grateful to Existence for having given you so much and for making you unique.

Instead, if you feel jealous of others, you will suffer. You will constantly fight with others openly or inside yourself. If somebody laughs, you think he is laughing at you. If somebody is friendly towards another person you feel lonely and jealous of that person. Actually, you are just waiting for someone to hurt you. The jealousy you allow inside you is like a raw wound. Any action done with no intention to hurt you also touches the wound and hurts.

So when you feel hurt, understand that you have a wound. Don't throw the responsibility of the suffering on the other person. The wound needs to be healed and the jealousy has to be dissolved. Then nobody can hurt you. Be very clear, nobody can hurt you without your silent permission.

You compare yourself to each other because you feel that you are somehow lacking. Honestly, you have no idea of your true, unique potential! If you did, you wouldn't spend one second looking outside yourself for answers about how to live a creative, fulfilling life. All of the confidence, intelligence, and vibrant energy that you need already exist inside you. You have the potential to live like god on earth. Don't believe the limiting things that you have been made to believe about yourself. Just look in! Experiment, explore and discover the truth for yourself. Then you will simply radiate all of these qualities effortlessly.