Think of the last time you felt a hot flash of envy. Someone else’s relationship. Someone else’s body. Someone else’s freedom, their income, their calm.
What did you do with it?
Most of us do one of two things. We shame ourselves for feeling it, or we shrink the other person to make the feeling go away. Neither one gets you anywhere.
There’s a third option nobody taught you.
Envy Is Information, Not a Flaw
You were taught that envy is ugly. Petty. Something spiritually evolved people don’t feel.
That’s not true, and it’s not useful.
Envy is your mind pointing at something you want and haven’t let yourself want out loud yet. It’s specific. It’s precise. It doesn’t show up randomly.
You don’t envy strangers doing things you don’t care about. You envy the exact thing sitting closest to a desire you’ve buried.
That specificity is the map. Most people just never read it.
Why We Bury the Desire Instead of Reading It
Somewhere along the way, wanting things openly got labeled as greedy, needy, or ungrateful.
So instead of admitting “I want that,” you convert it into “I resent them for having that.” The desire stays hidden. Only the discomfort shows up.
Research on social comparison, going back to psychologist Leon Festinger’s work in the 1950s, shows humans are wired to measure ourselves against others constantly. It’s not a personality defect. It’s how the brain calibrates where it stands.
The problem was never that you compare. The problem is what you do with the information once you have it.
Reading Your Own Map
Try this the next time envy shows up.
Instead of asking “why do they get to have that,” ask “what does this show me about what I actually want.”
Someone’s freedom to travel might be pointing at your own need for more spaciousness in your life, not their itinerary.
Someone’s calm might be pointing at how loud your own nervous system has been for years.
Someone’s relationship might be pointing at a kind of intimacy you’ve been afraid to ask for.
The other person is rarely the point. They’re just the mirror that happened to catch the light.
Personal Note
I used to feel a version of envy every time I watched someone else lead a ceremony with total ease, no hesitation in their voice, no doubt on their face.
For a long time I let that feeling turn into quiet self-criticism. I thought it meant I wasn’t ready, or wasn’t enough.
It took me a while to realize the envy wasn’t telling me I was behind. It was telling me exactly what I wanted for myself. Once I could name that out loud, the resentment had nowhere left to live.
How Working with Plant Medicine Opens This
Psilocybin has a way of dissolving the story you’ve built around why you can’t have what you want. It doesn’t hand you permission. It removes the noise that was blocking you from seeing the desire clearly in the first place.
Kambo works differently. It purges what’s stagnant, including the resentment that builds when a desire gets buried instead of named. People often report feeling lighter around a specific person or situation after working with Kambo, not because anything external changed, but because they stopped carrying the comparison.
Both medicines, in their own way, bring you back to the same question. What do you actually want, underneath the feeling.
Something to Listen To This Week
“Little Lion Man” by Mumford & Sons. A song about facing the parts of yourself you’d rather not look at directly.
Action Prompt
Name one person you’ve felt envy toward recently. Write down exactly what you envy about their life.
Now cross out their name and read the sentence again as a statement about what you want.
That’s your map. Start walking it.
Now We Want to Hear From You
What did your envy point you toward this week?
See you next Monday.
