Student Comment: In my darkest moments, I was faced with the fact that I hated the other’s aliveness. I feel like it’s one of the things that, if there’s going to be love and compassion for the other, has to be overcome. I don’t know if it’s just the terror of seeing how dead one is inside that makes it so threatening when somebody else is alive, and maybe this isn’t as universal as I think, and that’s why I’m asking.

“Well, it’s one way that it shows up. I think every ego envies, at an unconscious level, and hates people who it believes are happy. And especially if it’s a kind of happiness that is closed to them,” explains Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. And it’s universal “that you pick a shadow figure to dehumanize because you believe that they are enjoying something you can’t enjoy. . . . So it’s universal in terms of the envy, but the way it shows up is different. But every ego is in a state of competitiveness with every other ego. And that competitiveness creates a negative sense that is almost continuous . . . so that everyone’s comparing themselves to the other.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.