In your dealings with people, can you detect subtle feelings of either superiority or inferiority toward them? You are looking at ego, which lives through comparison.
Envy is a byproduct of the ego, which feels diminished if something good happens to someone else, or someone has more, knows more, or can do more than you. The ego’s identity depends on comparison and feeds on more. It will grasp at anything. If all else fails, you can strengthen your fictitious sense of self through seeing yourself as more unfairly treated by life or more ill than someone else.
What are the stories, the fictions from which you derive your sense of self?
Eckhart Tolle
from Stillness Speaks
Chapter: The Egoic Self