SELF-ESTEEM

When I speak of Self-Esteem, I do not mean the self-infatuation promoted by modern Psychology, which is a deadly sin. True self-esteem is closely related to humility, as counter-intuitive as that may seem to us in this Dark Age of the Soul. The Prideful put themselves in a false position, as they wish really to be regarded as gods by their fellows; as they can never fill these shoes, they become filled with a deep sense of insufficiency, and this turns all their strivings to best their fellows into a hollow mockery. It is this which leads to the posturing and strutting that we are all so familiar with. The Humble person, on the other hand, truly does not regard himself as anything special; he is a child of God, like any other, and whatever his abilities may be, they are to be used in His service. So the Humble live in Reality, rather than the He-Man/Marvel Comics universe inhabited by the Prideful, in which each one tries to play the role of the ultimate Hero, with a throng of admiring on-lookers. One advantage of living in reality is that the universe backs you up; if you know who you really are, everything around you confirms this. By contrast, the prideful man is always getting shot down by reality; his expectations are always unfulfilled, and so he lives continually with wounded Self-Esteem. What is currently endlessly promoted as self-esteem is in fact the cherishing, pampering, and perpetuating of this woundedness; those caught in the current Self-Esteem environment can never even aspire to true self-esteem, because they have chosen to be moral and psychological cripples rather than apply themselves to the hard therapy which leads to healing, freedom, and the proper estimation of the self in the light of Truth.