So ..what is Self-Esteem? There are so many directions that this question could go … for it all depends on the place at which you look at yourself … for the particular experience of the question. Many teachers speak of asking the question “who am I?” And in a way, as long as there is an answer at all to that question … you are trapped. Self-esteem has to do with … recognition patterns … fields of interpretation that the physical form must do in order to interpret an infinite expansive reality.
The infinite expansive reality is that reality…cannot be contained or formed … and so if you can allow yourself to expand far enough outside of the form to the point where you are beyond … the individual expression of the form … you can find yourself … in a kind of freedom. But the freedom is not dependent upon … the forged identity filter … that the object that we call body … must use to filter … it is nearly impossible for said body to not filter.
And so, teachers often send students to places and in directions where they will fail to see … the Illusion. And the only benefit of the perspective of the Illusion … is to see through the … body form into the inevitable falling apart … and preceding back into the oceans from which it emerges.
What is called self-esteem is actually … nothing more than survival filters and mechanisms, and if we stand back far enough, we see that all reactions are related to … issues of an animal … or a plant … that is trying to make its way … through a hostile, or potentially hostile, landscape.
But if you stand back enough, the entire life form could be compared to “seaweed” being taken by the currents of the ocean … simply moving and responding to whatever comes its way. But it is the need to find patterns in the responses to the currents that becomes the issue. And so what is described as self-esteem are simply organizational patterns that have concretized into the flesh and the body into the form … into the networks and patterns of existence.
And so, if it were possible to just be like seaweed responding … what one would call happiness, would, of course, be ever-present because the act of simply responding without a story is very freeing. So this tool … the esteem of the self … can help one begin to discern the patterns that underlie the actions and vibrations of the equation that is formulated in response to the changing circumstances, moment to moment.
But the difference between a human being and seaweed is that the seaweed just responds. But the human stores and records, and looks for patterns … and if the patterns don’t fit, the human will make patterns and make things fit where there is no fitting.
And as for Reality…we could say that reality is simply the cobbling together of pattern-recognition to some form to facilitate what could be called survival.
But this is nothing more than a field of patterns. And most people will never see that their entire life is defined by patterns that they carry with them. Because it is next to impossible to see the pattern from within the pattern. The only way to see the pattern is to step outside of the pattern, which is next to impossible unless you surf to the edges of awareness – of existence … of consciousness … as you do when experiencing my workshops & courses.
As we expand, the grip upon what is called esteem of self ~ is loosened … crashed … broken … destroyed. This is the goal. And it only happens … through expansion. Because if we can see ourselves and the futility of this life … and we speak of futility as that there is a delusion within the human mind that somehow you will survive this life.
And that if we brace ourselves with enough objects … and enough things … that we will somehow be saved or protected. That somehow we will … be beyond … and move into a place of … a delusion that humans love to call eternal life.
Of course, your life is no more or less eternal than anything else that exists in that respect. Everything is eternal, and … nothing is eternal. But the bolstering of objects and things, and … items … are misunderstood, yet they are linked to an idea of eternity. In physical space … time … money is very helpful in maneuvering … but when the body is gone, there is no relationship to that.
And eventually – given enough time – all things will return … to what humans call source. But it is not source in the sense that you use the word, but source as in the … fundamental elements or building blocks of life.
Our biggest delusion can be that we are going to live forever. And this makes us bolster up our lives and pretend to be bigger than you are … because the sense of vulnerability … must be embraced completely in order to experience total freedom. In this respect, you cannot truly live until you die. And even death itself … is to some degree, a hallucination.
It is a hallucination in the sense that even death … is not reality. Does the moon die when you do not see it? Or is it simply not seen? The very ideas that you operate from … that you construct from … are incorrect. And suffice to say, that death and the idea of death, is no more than an idea. It is incorrect. And because people do not come back from this death to tell you about this … all the perceptions are inaccurate.
As we strip away the sense of self from mythology … we can sit in the nothingness of knowing nothing … the Simplicity-ness! This can lead us to the question ~ what are we? And what happens to us when we die? Let us step aside from any beliefs that our parents may have put into our heads … not the memories that we have from our childhood and not the stories we were taught from the church … and if we are brave enough to let all that go … will we have a knowing of what we are… and what about “Awareness”?
The idea that there is an awareness is a delusion in itself. Awareness is nothing more than a different form of mythology that there is something beyond that which sustains us. So our Awareness that we are seeking is nothing more than asking for a different name for a Creator. And if that is the reality that you are seeking, there are so many Releasing Mythologies around Self-Esteem cont. from p. 5 ways in which you can find and tap that reality, but it is not more the reality than a reality, which is no reality.