Growing up, I never realized just how steeped I was, in the culture of “Avoiding the E*** Eye”, or as I’ve rebranded it: “Avoiding the Envious Gaze”.
Get a new appliance or car or even an item of clothing? Make sure you emphasize that it’s USED.
Make sure you emphasize that you had a COUPON (or these days – a discount/promo code),
Or that there was a SALE, or you got it from a discount store or thriftshop.
I had one relative that (seriously) semi-disowned me because they were under the mistaken impression that I bought our baby’s crib BRAND NEW, at FULL PRICE! (I didn’t – the crib was a floor model that I got discounted because they wanted to make room for newer styles, and I had a discount code for the organic crib mattress). Sigh. When I confronted them about why they had been so standoffish lately, they explained they were salty thinking I was throwing away money frivolously over that crib/mattress. Sigh. Once I brought them into the world of reality, they immediately were all friendly with me and wanted to visit my offspring.
Look, it’s one thing to be prudent and wise with how you spend your money. I still use coupons and discount codes, but I no longer treat it like it’s an Olympic sport and I’m going for the gold!
And once I realized just how the combination mindset of scarcity/poverty and performative envy-avoidance was actually keeping me at a lower/negative vibration without even consciously being aware of it, I decided that I was no longer going to be turning in that performance.
And then I noticed so many subtle ways it creeped in. How many justifications I made for how I spent my money.
And I really didn’t parse it when my mentor/coach pointed out a while ago that it was a milestone for me when I made a reservation for an upcoming St. Patrick’s Day Tea/Dinner – ONLY JUST FOR ME! It was the first time that I booked something just for me and me alone. No sidekicks, no besties, no kids, no partner, to justify the cost. No ‘the experience is for them and I have to come along because I’m driving, I’m the adult’, and I DIDN’T have any coupon for it!
Gasp! OMG! CLUTCH PEARLS!!!
Growing up, there was the usual “We don’t talk about how much income we make” – I was told it was gauche/tacky. And nowadays, I get it that employers don’t want employees revealing hiring/payroll disparities, but also it seems to be a security risk to be revealing that kind of personal data, especially online, (unless you’re trying to prove that your “Get Rich” training program works when you’re trying to recruit folks for that pricey program you’re selling.)
But we also were trained, back in the day, to not “make” others feel jealous of you. Or draw their judgement that you were straying from ‘your lane’ if you splurged, living beyond the limits that others thought you belonged within.
A friend of mine on a fixed income, several years ago seemed to be a little miffed with me when I asked them what kind of undies they bought, because instead of my usual budgetwear, I’d decided to splurge and pay the princely sum of $7 for a famous brand-name pair of undies, thinking that with that elevated price tag, that the quality must be better, and I wanted to see what that was like, on that side of the underwear street. Well, apparently that friend hadn’t ever crossed over from the budgetwear lane and thought that was quite the extravagance. And in the end, the brand-name ones did not hold up well, especially not compared to my tried-and-true budgetwear.
And I bet that was WAY more TMI about my lingerie choices than you ever expected to hear about. 😀 LOL!
Here’s another bit of guidance that came from my mother: “If you have something nice to eat, a nice treat, don’t eat it around others who don’t have any, unless you want to share. If you’re not going to share, find a closet and eat it in there so you don’t “make” others jealous that they haven’t got any.”
Ok, just for the record, I’m not in the habit of eating nice things in front of the destitute. Just want to put that out there.
And back in the day, kindergarten was all about enforced sharing. Candy, birthday parties, those cheapie valentines, playtime toys, etc. Probably still is, for all I know.
And I’ve been on both sides of that “If you’ve got it, don’t flaunt it!” bit.
I remember my first grade teacher, Ms. D-A, seemingly spontaneously (she probably had some kind of permission from the school…maybe…? because I was never given a note to bring home to my mother to sign saying I could be taken off school grounds) decided it was nice weather so she took our class to the local park! Sounds very nice, yes? It was! But while there, there was an ice-cream truck! And she called all the kids over to line up so we could buy ourselves a treat!
I wasn’t lining up though. (I didn’t have the 2 or 3 quarters to buy anything, let alone a cavity-causer. (Mom always said that junk food cost too much in dental/doctor bills.)
Some helpful classmate told the teacher that I wasn’t in the queue, so she came over and asked why I wasn’t lining up. Well, I didn’t have the money. She kindly offered to lend some to me and I could pay it back. Uh-uh, I wasn’t going to do that, I didn’t have money to pay her back. She then assumptively asked if I’d spent all my allowance? Uh….BOLD OF YOU to assume I actually got an allowance, ma’am! (no I didn’t tell her that, we didn’t really have memes back then – no internet, we just drew on cave walls after walking the pet T-Rex), so about then, it begins to dawn on her that I was one of the ‘have-nots’ and there were likely very few ice-creams in my world. So she grandly decided to let me have a lick of hers. (This was before Covid, when multiple kids drank out of the same garden hose and no one freaked out.)
So, me being 6 years old, took a good lick of her cone. I wasn’t biting off chunks there, just getting some really good coverage, since the day was warm and it was a bit melty. She shoulda thanked me, because unless she was going to be frenching that thing, it probably woulda dripped on her clothes. But did I get thanks?
Uh-uh.
What I got was her shrieking to every ear within a 1 block radius “OH MY GOD YOU’RE SUCH A LITTLE PIG!!!”
That was very traumatizing for me and really inhibited me for YEARS to come, before I realized she was being a bi**h about it. I ran off ashamed, and then she had to deal with a whole class of kids, minus the one who she scared off, while having to try and round me up. I don’t feel bad for her a bit. 😀
She got one of the kids to go after me while she supervised from afar with the other kids, and I docilely followed the shepherd kid who told me “Teacher says we got to go now so you hafta come back.”
I trailed behind the group, still ashamed. So yeah, it kinda stuck with me about what my mom said about not eating nice things in front of people that don’t have any.
But here’s a couple things:
- The whole “make” concept really, really peeves me. Like, totally butters my biscuit, ya know? I’m going to write a separate post just about that. It’ll be fun, go and read it if you see it!
- The world is not even-steven “fair”. It really isn’t. Like William Goldman (author of “The Princess Bride”, wrote that he was allegedly told by writer Edith Neisser – “Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be.”
- Just going by external observations, we really don’t know what a person’s life may actually be like in terms of lived experience. They may have that gawd-awful-looking Tesla truck (shudder – it’s SO not pretty! Looks like it came outta that post-apocalyptic, sci-fi book “Damnation Alley”) and a fancy home and have a personal chef, but lean in closer and you’ll catch the whiff of cosmetic concealer they use to hide the bruises from their domestic partner or their adopted child with RAD.
Now, notice that I said “even-steven “fair””. SHOULD the world be “fair”? Yes, I think it should be. IS IT? Well, depending on how you look at it, it is and it isn’t. And it may take some time to eventually get that way, even if everyone in the world all pulled together to try and “make” it so. Because “even-steven “fair””, from an energy healing perspective, is just not a do-able thing.
When you take the perspective that no two people have the exact same life circumstances, and combine that with the premise that no two people are the same, and that every human has a soul, and souls may have had multiple lives lived already, and souls are here for different reasons, experiences, learning opportunities, different things to heal, different kinds of “missions” here on the planet, then it really is impossible for there to be a straight-forward “rule” or “standard” of “even-steven” “fairness””.
(Ok, I just want to say here that “playing fair” and not cheating at things, and not withholding the “fully informed” part that’s supposed to go along with “consent” are a different kind of fairness that goes along with being decent to your fellow beings on the planet.)
Aaaand I’m just now realizing that I’ve hit about 1500 words. I’m going to keep going, feel free to go along with me, or have a potty/snack break (that sounded a lot better in my head, have those two separately – go potty, wash your hands, THEN have the snack break, and don’t snack on potty-stuff. Ew.) Or feel free to go and do other things. Up to you.
Anyhoo…
So, where was I? Oh yes…
So just looking at the 3D Earth “reality” of physical experience alone, things look pretty darn “unfair”.
However, if you looked through the lens of:
“Malcolm did awful things when he was a buccaneer a couple hundred years ago, and after doing piles of naughty things in a past life, karma can be a negative experience when it catches up to you, plus some of his former past-life victims have some unforgiveness about the whole thing that happened back then, and Malcolm has been having that unresolved situation dragging after him for at least a few past lifetimes, manifesting similar patterns that created new traumas/triggers for him and THOSE manifested additional negative patterns/experiences in subsequent past lives (and this life), and here he is today, folks: a mild-mannered accountant who (in this life, at least) never did anything bad to anyone, who can’t figure out why he, no matter what he tries, has multiple body pains that doctors can’t seem to help him resolve, and despite how good he is with other people’s money matters, he’s perpetually broke. Even if he saves money up, his car goes kaput and the mechanic is the one enjoying his Easter bonus check. And he has no idea why the sight of Johnny Depp gives him collywobbles!”
So, on the surface, Malcolm looks like a really nice guy! It’s not “fair” that he should have all this grief, right? Someone should give him a hand and “make” his life all better FOR him, right?
There was an experiment done (stick with me, it’ll fit, really, this isn’t just meaningless meandering, here) – where a movie director gave a homeless guy $100k, and after six months, the guy was right back where he started. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversal_of_Fortune_(2005_film))
Even if you change the external circumstances, and “make” things “fair” for someone, if there are internal/underlying circumstances that are not cleared up, the same pattern may re-manifest. If you read the wiki article above, you’ll see that the guy definitely, even in this life, had some issues that did not get addressed, even though some folks suggested some things that he did not take them up on.
So my kind of “fair”, is helping folks out with the issues that they’re stuck on. Being a Clairvoyant Tow-Trucktm and a Past-Life Blockage Removal specialist (sometimes the blockages are in THIS life, fyi), I look for what are those underlying/internal energetic imbalances that need to be released, so the same energetic frequencies are no longer re-creating the same patterns that have been lurking in the background, contributing to things that might have resulted thus far in not getting much, if any, traction. Energetically spinning the wheels.
So, looking at “Malcolm” over there, giving him all the money and freebies in the world, and the finest doctors in the land, will not likely make a dent. And fine doctors are now enjoying his winter bonus check. The meds that “should have” worked, didn’t. Ze-ro Traction.
And here comes Malcolm now, with the (free!) bookmark he saw on a community bulletin board at a local chain coffeeshop, wondering what the heck is a Clairvoyant Tow-Trucktm ?
Woah, Malcolm, there is definitely a Past Life that needs some closure here! There are a LOT of folks ‘here’ who have not forgiven or forgotten what happened when you boarded their ship as a pirate, some 200-300 years ago!
After some forgiveness work, grudge-clearing and closure for all involved, some Emotion/Body/Belief Code energetic work to release more things, some other modalities applied, we may just have released the underpinnings of the body pains and made some space for his body to be able to actually have healing happen when he next goes to his doctor for a re-evaluation! (Or the issue may spontaneously clear up on its own, now that angry past-life victims aren’t trying to re-create their wounds on him.) And he’s booked his next session to tackle the money issues and the Johnny Depp collywobbles!
If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare, book a free 20-minute Consultation Call to see how Lara Negami might be a good fit to help you on your healing journey!
(Disclaimer: energy healing is an alternative, complementary modality that cannot diagnose, cure, treat or prevent physical/mental illness or conditions, is not intended as legal or financial advice, and you should seek out a licensed practitioner/professional for those things.)