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ENVY HURTS

QUESTION: "I am terribly jealous of my brother and his wife. They keep moving from mansion to mansion, and they have everything. He works hard, but she just spends his money on redecorating. They are coming to visit me and I feel ashamed of my home and "organic" garden. I am feeling like a loser. I have always been a spiritual person, but the thoughts I am having are not making me feel very spiritual, or very rewarded for my spiritual lifestyle. I don't want to feel this way anymore. Do you have any advice for me?"

Psychic Advice : The issue here is not with your brother, it is with you: this is about how you feel about yourself and your life. Just because you lead a spiritual lifestyle does not mean that you cannot have money. Your brother seems to know what he wants and how to create it for himself, and his wife seems more than happy to receive it. But you do not feel happy with yourself, with your home, with your garden, or perhaps even with your spiritual lifestyle.

Being spiritual does not automatically mean that you get rewarded. This is like expecting to receive an allowance from the Universe simply for keeping your room clean. It does not work that way. You get spiritual rewards for the spiritual work you do, and you get material rewards for the material work you do. It is rare that you would get paid to meditate, which is why monks lead a spiritually rich but materially poor existence.

There are many spiritual rewards for meditation and adhering to spiritual practices, such as a greater depth of awareness, of intuition, of compassion, greater patience, tolerance and acceptance, and more creativity and inspiration. But all this simply remains on the spiritual level unless it is put into practice on the physical level. You can have an infinite number of great inspirations and ideas that come to you in your meditations, but unless you act on them physically, they cannot manifest and remain an unrealized potential. Perhaps this is what is really frustrating and upsetting you.

Leading a spiritual life can raise your vibration and makes it easier for you to attract those things that resonate on higher frequencies, such as joy and abundance, but only if you allow yourself to receive them. If you are feeling like a "loser", then your self-worth may not be allowing you to feel worthy of receiving abundance. A person's worth is not measured by external things, rather, material wealth is an outer expression of inner self-worth and self-esteem. You must honor your own worth and value, and allow yourself to receive it, which will attract it to you.

Jealousy is a terrible thing for many reasons (it is no wonder it contains the word "lousy"). First, jealousy is not love and prevents love from being expressed; it is an attack and a form of resentment and rage. Second, if you are feeling jealous, it is because you believe that someone else has something that you cannot have, and therefore you stop yourself from having the ability to create that and attract that to you. Jealousy wastes an enormous amount of power, time and energy that could be used to create what you want, instead of envying others for doing just that.

Jealousy also lowers your vibration, and has you resonating on lower frequencies of anger, victimization, and "poor me", which attracts poor experiences to you rather than rich ones. Choosing to feel jealous is ultimately a very poor choice, and manifests nothing but pain and anguish. This jealousy may eventually create a separation between you and your brother because neither of you will enjoy how you feel in the presence of one another: you do not want to feel less than and inadequate, and he does not want to feel guilty and awkward for having what he has worked hard to create. He is happy, you are not, so the issue is yours to fix.

The reason you are feeling like a loser is because you are competing with your brother, and probably with others as well. When you are in competition, someone must win, and others must lose - you are losing simply by choosing to play the game of competition. Every person is unique, and each life offers its own set of unique circumstances and challenges, even when you are in the same family. You have your unique gifts, and your brother has his. You have your problems, and your brother has his. His gifts are not more valuable than yours, and your problems are not worse than his, it is simply a matter of what you are both focusing your energies and attention on. It sounds like he is focusing on his strengths in order to achieve more, and you are focusing on your weaknesses, which is crippling your ability to achieve because it is robbing you of your power and of your belief in yourself.

Life is about priorities. If you really want what your brother has, then you must change your life and your belief systems to make those things a priority for you. You do not have to compromise your value systems, unless you somehow believe that being wealthy and having a lot of nice things is somehow bad, or not aligned with being spiritual. Perhaps you are afraid that others will be jealous of you, just as you are jealous of your brother, and you do not want to be the target of that kind of jealous attack.

You and your brother started life on a relatively even playing field by being raised in the same life circumstances. He has used his gifts to hit home runs in life, while you have benched yourself by not allowing your gifts to shine and be recognized or rewarded. Be inspired by your brother - if he can do it, you can too. You must celebrate his success, which aligns you with it, rather than envying his success, which only denies it for you. Be happy for him, and you will create happiness for yourself as well.

His visit to you is putting the spotlight on things that you are not happy with in your life. Rather than disempowering yourself with shame, use this as an opportunity to change the things that are not working for you in your life and in your home. You may not be able to do it in time for his visit, but make a list of things that you want to change, and then tackle them one by one. You are not changing your lifestyle to impress him, but rather to enrich yourself, because when you are resonating at the frequency of joy in your life, then you attract all that is on that frequency, including success. Joy is a very high spiritual vibration, so you can allow yourself to be successful and spiritual at the same time.

Choose to focus on all that you feel good about in your life rather than what you feel ashamed of. Create focal points in your home and garden that highlight the things you love, instead of drawing attention to the things you would rather not dwell on. During your brother's visit, resist the temptation to apologize or make excuses for negative things, which only emphasizes them. Usually these are things that only you would notice anyway, so why bring attention to them?

Keep in mind that your brother is not coming to visit your house or judge your garden - he is coming to see you. Celebrate that with as much love as you can, and be grateful to him for showing you the reflection of what is possible for you, and for showing you what you want and what you don't want for yourself. The energies of shame, envy and discontentment that have now come to light may have been lowering your frequency and hindering your ability to achieve success for a very long time. Be grateful for this opportunity to become aware of the things that you are not happy with so you can make the necessary changes to create joy and fulfillment in your life.

Remember that manifestation on the physical plane requires action, which is why we call it an act of creation. Your dissatisfaction is a call to action, so take this opportunity to act instead of react.

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