Looking at other people with jealousy, envy, and mean and bitter thoughts isn't new to our world. The concept of giving other people the evil eye has been around for a long time. It's mentioned in almost every religion and culture in the world.
Sometimes we're not conscious of the darker thoughts we think. We might believe that ill will and the feelings connected with it - envy, jealousy, and resentment - are wrong. So when we feel that way, we push those feelings and thoughts aside.
"I remember lying in bed one night, tortured by my marriage, but believing it would violate my religious beliefs to get divorced," a woman said. "I started counting the years until I thought my husband might die. A light came on. I realized that wishing him dead was a lot worse than saying good-bye."
We want to believe there's a balancing force that prevails in the world. And while this force is balancing things out, we'd like to get some of the good stuff too. Hey, God, remember me?
Challenge:
The hardest thing about practicing goodwill is believing that when we're happy for other people - even when they're happier than we are - it will make us the happiest people in the world.
What a great way to live! I have issues with those things and hopefully by working the steps, I will be able to curb my appetite to feel those harmful emotions and have more of a hunger for feeling and spreading love for others rather than feeling harmful emotions. I love being sober and learning more and more about this program because it has given me the opportunity to learn that I am not such a nasty person after all and I do have the capability to feel love for others.
I am not an "evil eye" giver, but have been the recipient of it and it really hurts. I posted about that not long after I came on this board and almost quit AA because of it. I will be working on that with my 4th Step, as I still have a deep resentment toward that person and it is hard to be around her at the meetings without remembering it. But I do know my part in it, and I am hoping that if I need to make an amends I will be able to do so. (But it ain't going to be easy)
