“– My partner is very jealous and seems to make me more important than I really am.”
This is a question addressed to Osho. Here is how he responds:
“– Not jealous — I think he feels that he is inferior. You are using the wrong word. He thinks that you are a goddess and he is worthless. Is that what it is? (she nods) Then it is not jealousy!…
That too is a way of manipulating people — to make them very important. That’s a kind of strategy, a very parasitical trip. When you make somebody very high, you have power over the person because it is your power now to keep him high or throw him down. If anybody — for example, [your partner] — puts you very high on a pedestal, you think he is making you powerful. But he is also becoming powerful, because only he can keep you on that pedestal, nobody else. And he knows that — that you will have to depend on him otherwise you will not be on the pedestal; you will be an ordinary woman. He has made a goddess of you! So it is a very very subtle strategy to keep control over you.
By being dependent on you, he makes you dependent on him…
But woman needs to be equal to man — neither low nor high — and for that man is not ready, because to make the other equal means you cannot control her any more. You cannot control an equal. Low and high can both be controlled but the equal person is free; the equal is equal.
So get down from the pedestal. Just tell him that you are a human being, not a goddess. Now what are you doing? — you must be pretending to be a goddess, so you are cooperating with him. Don’t cooperate! You simply tell [him], ‘I am an ordinary woman as you are an ordinary man. I don’t want to be worshipped like a goddess. I have all kinds of desires as any woman will have. I am just plain ordinary.’ Get down from the pedestal rather than him throwing you; simply get down. You will feel good and you will unburden him also…
You would like to be an alive human being. So you are trying to do two contradictory things. If you want to be a fully warm-blooded woman, a real woman, then get down from the pedestal. All pedestals are a kind of disease I call ‘pedestalitis’.
…Be natural and true and whatsoever happens has to be accepted. If he leaves you, that’s his business. If he remains with you, you will be more free; he will be more free… Tell him ‘I am just an ordinary woman. I don’t want any other respect.’ That is the greatest respect we can pay to each other as human beings! That will help.”
Osho, Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There, Talk #1
Jealousy can have many causes, and the above is only one aspect—but a very important one. Because it reverses the perspective and tells us that if our partner is jealous, this is not only their responsibility. We also contribute to it—guided by our unconscious desire to be special, to be a god or goddess for someone else.
Such a reversal of perspective gives us back the power to change things, by directing our gaze inward—toward the only place over which we truly have control. It also tells us what the healing medicine is: ordinariness. If we manage to swallow it, we can heal from the dangerous illness of pedestalitis.
Because ordinariness is the true path to equality.
And it is also the deepest foundation of inner incorruptibility.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
