jealousy

• God jealous for man, not of man

4:3.1All too long has man thought of God as one like him­self. God is not, never was, and never will be jeal­ous of man or any other be­ing in the uni­verse of uni­verses. Know­ing that the Cre­ator Son in­tended man to be the mas­ter­piece of the plan­e­tary cre­ation, to be the ruler of all the earth, the sight of his be­ing dom­i­nated by his own baser pas­sions, the spec­ta­cle of his bow­ing down be­fore idols of wood, stone, gold, and self­ish am­bi­tion—these sor­did scenes stir God and his Sons to be jeal­ous for man, but never of him.

• Primates jealous of Andon’s tree house

63:2.1Af­ter An­don and Fonta had de­cided to flee north­ward, they suc­cumbed to their fears for a time, es­pe­cially the fear of dis­pleas­ing their fa­ther and im­me­di­ate fam­ily. They en­vis­aged be­ing set upon by hos­tile rel­a­tives and thus rec­og­nized the pos­si­bil­ity of meet­ing death at the hands of their al­ready jeal­ous tribes­men. As young­sters, the twins had spent most of their time in each other’s com­pany and for this rea­son had never been overly pop­u­lar with their an­i­mal cousins of the Pri­mates tribe. Nor had they im­proved their stand­ing in the tribe by build­ing a sep­a­rate, and a very su­pe­rior, tree home.

• sexual j. not innate

82:4.4Mod­ern sex jeal­ousy is not in­nate; it is a prod­uct of the evolv­ing mores. Prim­i­tive man was not jeal­ous of his wife; he was just guard­ing his prop­erty. The rea­son for hold­ing the wife to stricter sex ac­count than the hus­band was be­cause her mar­i­tal in­fi­delity in­volved de­scent and in­her­i­tance. Very early in the march of civ­i­liza­tion the il­le­git­i­mate child fell into dis­re­pute. At first only the woman was pun­ished for adul­tery; later on, the mores also de­creed the chas­tise­ment of her part­ner, and for long ages the of­fended hus­band or the pro­tec­tor fa­ther had the full right to kill the male tres­passer. Mod­ern peo­ples re­tain these mores, which al­low so-called crimes of honor un­der the un­writ­ten law.

• among primitives, older spouses delighted by new wives

83:5.13The olden taboos on sex re­la­tions with a preg­nant or nurs­ing wife tended greatly to fos­ter polyg­yny. Prim­i­tive women aged very early be­cause of fre­quent child­bear­ing cou­pled with hard work. (Such over­bur­dened wives only man­aged to ex­ist by virtue of the fact that they were put in iso­la­tion one week out of each month when they were not heavy with child.) Such a wife of­ten grew tired of bear­ing chil­dren and would re­quest her hus­band to take a sec­ond and younger wife, one able to help with both child­bear­ing and the do­mes­tic work. The new wives were there­fore usu­ally hailed with de­light by the older spouses; there ex­isted noth­ing on the or­der of sex jeal­ousy.

• when attacked by j., rest in citadel of spirit

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

• mental poison; 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.

• can turn love into hate

177:4.11Ju­das did not re­al­ize it at this time, but he had been a sub­con­scious critic of Je­sus ever since John the Bap­tist was be­headed by Herod. Deep down in his heart Ju­das al­ways re­sented the fact that Je­sus did not save John. You should not for­get that Ju­das had been a dis­ci­ple of John be­fore he be­came a fol­lower of Je­sus. And all these ac­cu­mu­la­tions of hu­man re­sent­ment and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment which Ju­das had laid by in his soul in ha­bil­i­ments of hate were now well or­ga­nized in his sub­con­scious mind and ready to spring up to en­gulf him when he once dared to sep­a­rate him­self from the sup­port­ing in­flu­ence of his breth­ren while at the same time ex­pos­ing him­self to the clever in­sin­u­a­tions and sub­tle ridicule of the en­e­mies of Je­sus. Ev­ery time Ju­das al­lowed his hopes to soar high and Je­sus would do or say some­thing to dash them to pieces, there was al­ways left in Ju­das’s heart a scar of bit­ter re­sent­ment; and as these scars mul­ti­plied, pres­ently that heart, so of­ten wounded, lost all real af­fec­tion for the one who had in­flicted this dis­taste­ful ex­pe­ri­ence upon a well-in­ten­tioned but cow­ardly and self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity. Ju­das did not re­al­ize it, but he was a cow­ard. Ac­cord­ingly was he al­ways in­clined to as­sign to Je­sus cow­ardice as the mo­tive which led him so of­ten to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were ap­par­ently within his easy reach. And ev­ery mor­tal man knows full well how love, even when once gen­uine, can, through dis­ap­point­ment, jeal­ousy, and long-con­tin­ued re­sent­ment, be even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual hate.