On the Topic of Self-Esteem

Hi Carina,

We in the West are plagued with that critical voice in the back of our heads, telling us that we're not good enough, or we're bad. It is reflected in the fact that we are always told to "become somebody" instead of being somebody (implying that who we are now is somehow not good enough). And if we tell people that we're working on loving ourselves the way we are, people think it's narcissistic. How to combat this attitude? That's the tough part.

Steve



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Dear Steve,

I appreciate this topic. It seems to be one of the most common issues that people deal with. I'm seeing lots of pages popping up on Facebook that send out daily cheerful messages letting people know how great they are -- just as they are. These messages wouldn't be coming by the volume (and be being eaten up by the voracious readers) if the readers weren't convinced that self-esteem is something to be reaching for.

What if self-esteem and self-loathing are two sides of the same delusion?

Consider this: Having high self-esteem (in the way that our culture touts it) is as much a costume -- a role -- as having low self-esteem is. Both are built on foundations that lack inherent truth. That is, they are both passing, impermanent, in the world of form.

I know well that voice in the back of the head that says I'm bad. It's a specter that likes to hold my head underwater so I can't breathe and tell me that all of who I am is a failure. I'm happy to say that I don't experience it that often, but I do, and it is a convincing voice, to be sure. Here's the okay thing about it: none of it's true, nor is it fixed. It's a wave of energy passing through, and it can knock down everything in its path, or I can inhale, exhale, and surf it.

Neither is preferable nor better or worse than the other. That is, if you're being bowled over by thoughts and emotions, so be it. Can you consciously allow the knocking around? Surrender to the noise of the moment and just let it do its thing? You'll find in here the paradox of then being able to surf the next wave.

A thought comes in: "I'm so fucked up . . . I hate myself," and there are several ways the mind can go. It can join up with the thoughts like jumping on a box car and riding down the track with the train. Or you can turn around and face the thought, almost looking backward, to see what the source of the thought is. And then you see, it's nothing. Thoughts arise out of nothing.

When you are noticing thoughts coming up and rolling by, rather than running after them or trying to attack back (both actions are magnetic for attaching to your thoughts), you dis-identify with the content of the thought. And then it's just another ephemeral flower, bloomed and now dying. And we are still here.

In this moment, you are giving yourself access to true self-esteem, true confidence. In a non-dualistic sense, there is no such thing as a self to have confidence in. True self-esteem comes from stillness and a relaxed knowing of the deeper essence of consciousness, the field out of which all individuals and our corresponding egos and ego trips arise.

So when you're able, when you're sitting back in the spacious place of observation, and you hear, "I'm a horrible person," you can benefit yourself most greatly by taking a breath right then. Inhale, exhale, drop out of the mind and feel the rippling sensations in your body. That wave is moving and if you allow it, it will move on out, and there will be calm before the next one comes.



In this culture, so set on having us constantly striving and wanting, driving us to do more and shift more and change more and heal more and lose more and earn more, we are terribly misguided to hitch our wagons to stars with no foundation. True worth, which is ultimately neutral and spacious, comes from calming and quieting the external chatter and breathing with the waves that inevitably arise in any human's experience.

All of the experiences we have that seem negative -- and all of those that seem positive, too, for the excitement of good times and success is simply the other side of the despair and failure coin -- have within them the golden opportunity to come into that self-loving space, that tender space that sees the poignancy in human experience and opens and welcomes it, transmuting the fear of wrongness into the great space of awakening.

This has been great to contemplate. Thank you so much for writing.

Carina

If other questions arise from this writing, please email
carina@nowstayopen.com