envy

• many Havona pilgrims almost wish they could begin ascension all again

26:10.5For the suc­cess­ful pil­grims on the sec­ond cir­cuit the stim­u­lus of evo­lu­tion­ary un­cer­tainty is over, but the ad­ven­ture of the eter­nal as­sign­ment has not yet be­gun; and while the so­journ on this cir­cle is wholly plea­sur­able and highly prof­itable, it lacks some of the an­tic­i­pa­tive en­thu­si­asm of the for­mer cir­cles. Many are the pil­grims who, at such a time, look back upon the long, long strug­gle with a joy­ous envy, re­ally wish­ing they might some­how go back to the worlds of time and be­gin it all over again, just as you mor­tals, in ap­proach­ing ad­vanced age, some­times look back over the strug­gles of youth and early life and truly wish you might live your lives over once again.

• evils of national e., racial jealousy

52:6.53. Eth­i­cal awak­en­ing. Only eth­i­cal con­scious­ness can un­mask the im­moral­ity of hu­man in­tol­er­ance and the sin­ful­ness of frat­ri­ci­dal strife. Only a moral con­science can con­demn the evils of na­tional envy and racial jeal­ousy. Only moral be­ings will ever seek for that spir­i­tual in­sight which is es­sen­tial to liv­ing the golden rule.

• deep-seated human trait

87:5.6Envy is a deep-seated hu­man trait; there­fore did prim­i­tive man as­cribe it to his early gods. And since man had once prac­ticed de­cep­tion upon the ghosts, he soon be­gan to de­ceive the spir­its. Said he, “If the spir­its are jeal­ous of our beauty and pros­per­ity, we will dis­fig­ure our­selves and speak lightly of our suc­cess.” Early hu­mil­ity was not, there­fore, de­base­ment of ego but rather an at­tempt to foil and de­ceive the en­vi­ous spir­its.

• mental poison; tremendously interferes with spiritual progress

110:1.5The Ad­juster re­mains with you in all dis­as­ter and through ev­ery sick­ness which does not wholly de­stroy the men­tal­ity. But how un­kind know­ingly to de­file or oth­er­wise de­lib­er­ately to pol­lute the phys­i­cal body, which must serve as the earthly taber­na­cle of this mar­velous gift from God. All phys­i­cal poi­sons greatly re­tard the ef­forts of the Ad­juster to ex­alt the ma­te­rial mind, while the men­tal poi­sons of fear, anger, envy, jeal­ousy, sus­pi­cion, and in­tol­er­ance like­wise tremen­dously in­ter­fere with the spir­i­tual prog­ress of the evolv­ing soul.

• Jesus comforted envious Phoenician

133:5.2A great uni­ver­sity still thrived in Athens, and the trio made fre­quent vis­its to its halls of learn­ing. Je­sus and Ga­nid had thor­oughly dis­cussed the teach­ings of Plato when they at­tended the lec­tures in the mu­seum at Alexan­dria. They all en­joyed the art of Greece, ex­am­ples of which were still to be found here and there about the city.

• keep free from

140:8.17Je­sus fre­quently warned his lis­ten­ers against cov­etous­ness, declar­ing that “a man’s hap­pi­ness con­sists not in the abun­dance of his ma­te­rial pos­ses­sions.” He con­stantly re­it­er­ated, “What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” He made no di­rect at­tack on the pos­ses­sion of prop­erty, but he did in­sist that it is eter­nally es­sen­tial that spir­i­tual val­ues come first. In his later teach­ings he sought to cor­rect many er­ro­neous Uran­tia views of life by nar­rat­ing nu­mer­ous para­bles which he pre­sented in the course of his pub­lic min­istry. Je­sus never in­tended to for­mu­late eco­nomic the­o­ries; he well knew that each age must evolve its own reme­dies for ex­ist­ing trou­bles. And if Je­sus were on earth to­day, liv­ing his life in the flesh, he would be a great dis­ap­point­ment to the ma­jor­ity of good men and women for the sim­ple rea­son that he would not take sides in pres­ent-day po­lit­i­cal, so­cial, or eco­nomic dis­putes. He would re­main grandly aloof while teach­ing you how to per­fect your in­ner spir­i­tual life so as to ren­der you many­fold more com­pe­tent to at­tack the so­lu­tion of your purely hu­man prob­lems.

• admission of

160:1.7Suc­cess­ful liv­ing is noth­ing more or less than the art of the mas­tery of de­pend­able tech­niques for solv­ing com­mon prob­lems. The first step in the so­lu­tion of any prob­lem is to lo­cate the dif­fi­culty, to iso­late the prob­lem, and frankly to rec­og­nize its na­ture and grav­ity. The great mis­take is that, when life prob­lems ex­cite our pro­found fears, we refuse to rec­og­nize them. Like­wise, when the ac­knowl­edg­ment of our dif­fi­cul­ties en­tails the re­duc­tion of our long-cher­ished con­ceit, the ad­mis­sion of envy, or the aban­don­ment of deep-seated prej­u­dices, the av­er­age per­son prefers to cling to the old il­lu­sions of safety and to the long-cher­ished false feel­ings of se­cu­rity. Only a brave per­son is will­ing hon­estly to ad­mit, and fear­lessly to face, what a sin­cere and log­i­cal mind dis­cov­ers.

• prevented by intimate contact with others

160:2.72. Union of souls—the mo­bi­liza­tion of wis­dom. Ev­ery hu­man be­ing sooner or later ac­quires a cer­tain con­cept of this world and a cer­tain vi­sion of the next. Now it is pos­si­ble, through per­son­al­ity as­so­ci­a­tion, to unite these views of tem­po­ral ex­is­tence and eter­nal prospects. Thus does the mind of one aug­ment its spir­i­tual val­ues by gain­ing much of the in­sight of the other. In this way men en­rich the soul by pool­ing their re­spec­tive spir­i­tual pos­ses­sions. Like­wise, in this same way, man is en­abled to avoid that ever-pres­ent ten­dency to fall vic­tim to dis­tor­tion of vi­sion, prej­u­dice of view­point, and nar­row­ness of judg­ment. Fear, envy, and con­ceit can be pre­vented only by in­ti­mate con­tact with other minds. I call your at­ten­tion to the fact that the Mas­ter never sends you out alone to la­bor for the ex­ten­sion of the king­dom; he al­ways sends you out two and two. And since wis­dom is super­knowl­edge, it fol­lows that, in the union of wis­dom, the so­cial group, small or large, mu­tu­ally shares all knowl­edge.

• material irritant of immaturity

160:3.5This new gospel of the king­dom ren­ders a great ser­vice to the art of liv­ing in that it sup­plies a new and richer in­cen­tive for higher liv­ing. It pre­sents a new and ex­alted goal of des­tiny, a su­preme life pur­pose. And these new con­cepts of the eter­nal and di­vine goal of ex­is­tence are in them­selves tran­scen­dent stim­uli, call­ing forth the re­ac­tion of the very best that is res­i­dent in man’s higher na­ture. On ev­ery moun­tain­top of in­tel­lec­tual thought are to be found re­lax­ation for the mind, strength for the soul, and com­mu­nion for the spirit. From such van­tage points of high liv­ing, man is able to tran­scend the ma­te­rial ir­ri­ta­tions of the lower lev­els of think­ing—worry, jeal­ousy, envy, re­venge, and the pride of im­ma­ture per­son­al­ity. These high-climb­ing souls de­liver them­selves from a mul­ti­tude of the cross­cur­rent con­flicts of the tri­fles of liv­ing, thus be­com­ing free to at­tain con­scious­ness of the higher cur­rents of spirit con­cept and ce­les­tial com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the life pur­pose must be jeal­ously guarded from the temp­ta­tion to seek for easy and tran­sient at­tain­ment; like­wise must it be so fos­tered as to be­come im­mune to the dis­as­trous threats of fa­nati­cism.

• keep free from

165:4.1As the apos­tles bap­tized be­liev­ers, the Mas­ter talked with those who tar­ried. And a cer­tain young man said to him: “Mas­ter, my fa­ther died leav­ing much prop­erty to me and my brother, but my brother re­fuses to give me that which is my own. Will you, then, bid my brother di­vide this in­her­i­tance with me?” Je­sus was mildly in­dig­nant that this ma­te­rial-minded youth should bring up for dis­cus­sion such a ques­tion of busi­ness; but he pro­ceeded to use the oc­ca­sion for the im­par­ta­tion of fur­ther in­struc­tion. Said Je­sus: “Man, who made me a di­vider over you? Where did you get the idea that I give at­ten­tion to the ma­te­rial af­fairs of this world?” And then, turn­ing to all who were about him, he said: “Take heed and keep your­selves free from cov­etous­ness; a man’s life con­sists not in the abun­dance of the things which he may pos­sess. Hap­pi­ness comes not from the power of wealth, and joy springs not from riches. Wealth, in it­self, is not a curse, but the love of riches many times leads to such de­vo­tion to the things of this world that the soul be­comes blinded to the beau­ti­ful at­trac­tions of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom of God on earth and to the joys of eter­nal life in heaven.

• keep free from

165:4.4Je­sus thus dealt with the young man and his in­her­i­tance be­cause he knew that his trou­ble was cov­etous­ness. Even if this had not been the case, the Mas­ter would not have in­ter­fered, for he never med­dled with the tem­po­ral af­fairs of even his apos­tles, much less his dis­ci­ples.

• waxing rich by wariness and much pinching

165:4.8Then, as the peo­ple went down by the river to wit­ness the bap­tiz­ing, the first man came pri­vately to Je­sus about his in­her­i­tance inas­much as he thought Je­sus had dealt harshly with him; and when the Mas­ter had again heard him, he replied: “My son, why do you miss the op­por­tu­nity to feed upon the bread of life on a day like this in or­der to in­dulge your cov­etous dis­po­si­tion? Do you not know that the Jew­ish laws of in­her­i­tance will be justly ad­min­is­tered if you will go with your com­plaint to the court of the syn­a­gogue? Can you not see that my work has to do with mak­ing sure that you know about your heav­enly in­her­i­tance? Have you not read the Scrip­ture: ‘There is he who waxes rich by his wari­ness and much pinch­ing, and this is the por­tion of his re­ward: Whereas he says, I have found rest and now shall be able to eat con­tin­u­ally of my goods, yet he knows not what time shall bring upon him, and also that he must leave all these things to oth­ers when he dies.’ Have you not read the com­mand­ment: ‘You shall not covet.’ And again, ‘They have eaten and filled them­selves and waxed fat, and then did they turn to other gods.’ Have you read in the Psalms that ‘the Lord ab­hors the cov­etous,’ and that ‘the lit­tle a righ­teous man has is bet­ter than the riches of many wicked.’ ‘If riches in­crease, set not your heart upon them.’ Have you read where Jeremiah said, ‘Let not the rich man glory in his riches’; and Eze­kiel spoke truth when he said, ‘With their mouths they make a show of love, but their hearts are set upon their own self­ish gain.’”

• Pharisees’ inner souls filled with covetousness

166:1.4When the Mas­ter had thus spo­ken, they cast their eyes upon the ta­ble and re­mained silent. And since no one spoke, Je­sus con­tin­ued: “Many of you Phar­isees are here with me as friends, some are even my dis­ci­ples, but the ma­jor­ity of the Phar­isees are per­sis­tent in their re­fusal to see the light and ac­knowl­edge the truth, even when the work of the gospel is brought be­fore them in great power. How care­fully you cleanse the out­side of the cups and the plat­ters while the spir­i­tual-food ves­sels are filthy and pol­luted! You make sure to pre­sent a pi­ous and holy ap­pear­ance to the peo­ple, but your in­ner souls are filled with self-righ­teous­ness, cov­etous­ness, ex­tor­tion, and all man­ner of spir­i­tual wicked­ness. Your lead­ers even dare to plot and plan the mur­der of the Son of Man. Do not you fool­ish men un­der­stand that the God of heaven looks at the in­ner mo­tives of the soul as well as on your outer pre­tenses and your pi­ous pro­fes­sions? Think not that the giv­ing of alms and the pay­ing of tithes will cleanse you from un­righ­teous­ness and en­able you to stand clean in the pres­ence of the Judge of all men. Woe upon you Phar­isees who have per­sisted in re­ject­ing the light of life! You are metic­u­lous in tithing and os­ten­ta­tious in alms­giv­ing, but you know­ingly spurn the vis­i­ta­tion of God and re­ject the rev­e­la­tion of his love. Though it is all right for you to give at­ten­tion to these mi­nor du­ties, you should not have left these weight­ier re­quire­ments un­done. Woe upon all who shun jus­tice, spurn mercy, and re­ject truth! Woe upon all those who de­spise the rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther while they seek the chief seats in the syn­a­gogue and crave flat­ter­ing salu­ta­tions in the mar­ket places!”