Self-Esteem

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends. Blessings for everyone of you. May your heart be open and may your attention be focused so that you can absorb as much as possible.

I should like to discuss a problem of great importance, especially for all those whose pathwork has brought them awareness of previously undetected reactions in the self. These emotional reactions indicate struggle and confusion regarding their self-esteem, which is of fundamental importance. Self-esteem, self-liking, or self-value -- whatever you call it -- is sorely lacking in every human being who experiences feelings of uncertainty, of fear, of insecurity, of guilt, of weakness, of doubt, of negativity, of inadequacy, of inferiority. To the degree these feelings are present, to that degree self-esteem is inevitably lacking. The problem is that this is not directly recognized. Such ignorance is all the more damaging, for you are then less capable of tackling the problem directly. Only considerable insight into the self, as a result of very hard work, brings the direct awareness of the inner voice that says: "I do not like and respect myself."

People are constantly confronted with an inner conflict about this recognition. The conflict arises from the dualistic perception characteristic of humanity. I have often shown how a misconception splits the truth into two opposing halves that confuse, you and therefore make it impossible for you to make satisfying choices. You are then torn in inner dissension and painful confusion. In this particular case the dilemma is this: How can you accept and like yourself for the destructive traits that exist in all human beings -- no matter how concealed they may be -- without falling into the dangerous trap of self-indulgence and self-justification? Or, on the other side, how can you confront, admit, and then accept those negative, destructive traits -- your weaknesses, your little selfishnesses, your cruelties, and your vanities, that often make you vindictive and unloving -- and still maintain your self-respect? How can you avoid falling into the dangerous trap of destructive guilt, of self-rejection, and of self-contempt?

This is a deep-rooted conflict. Most human beings battle with it, whether or not they know it. It is a typical dualistic confusion that apparently makes admitting an unpleasant truth and self-acceptance into mutually exclusive opposites.

Before I discuss this in greater detail and then offer you a key, let me discuss the conflict itself a little more. Those of you who have recently found this raging battle within yourselves will know exactly what I am talking about. Others who have not yet recognized their self-rejection will have to come to this awareness gradually. Perhaps the only way you can now recognize your self-dislike and your underevaluation of yourself will be an indirect one. You can certainly sense shyness, uncertainty, insecurity, apprehension about being either rejected or criticized, as well as feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. Perhaps you may perceive a peculiar guilt feeling that makes no sense to you. Although this guilt usually hides behind other attitudes, it is rarely so remote that it cannot be clearly perceived once you set out to detect it. Perhaps you are aware of the fact that you are not open to the untold possibilities of blissful fulfillment in life; in other words, that you make do with much less than you could experience. Perhaps you can discern the fact that you stand back in life and that you feel vaguely undeserving, and therefore that you perceive your own possibilities negatively. Perhaps this perception exists only in certain areas of your life, but it still indicates self-rejection.

All these manifestations indicate self-rejection, self-dislike. It should not be too difficult to bridge the gap in consciousness between any of these manifestations with the more profound root, namely that you do not think much of yourself. You may dislike yourself for some traits and attitudes, but this specificity may be even more hidden from your awareness. It is possible that you can first ascertain the vague general feeling of self-disdain without being able to pinpoint the specific traits in yourself that you dislike.

Once you feel that you do not respect yourself and that you lack esteem and appreciation for yourself as a human being, then the next step must be to make this attitude more specific. If you really want to find it, then you will do so, although the recognition of exactly what this attitude is may come indirectly. This is the way the path often works.

On the other hand, you may see quite clearly something in yourself that is truly regrettable, and therefore is undesirable. But then you may fall into the erroneous attitude of defiance and self-justification because you falsely believe that admitting your undesirable traits means that you must dislike and reject your entire self. You fail to differentiate between rejecting one single trait and rejecting the whole person, whether yourself or others. Therefore you fall into the error of justifying, of denying, of falsifying, of rationalizing -- and often even of beautifying -- a very undesirable and destructive trait. Here you have the full-fledged confusion.

Here is how to find the key that will enable you to squarely confront the undesirable attitudes in you without losing respect for yourself or losing the sense that you are a valuable human being. First, you have to perceive life and then to experience life in a new way. Your life -- and you are life because you are alive -- represents all of life, all of nature. One of the earmarks of life is its untold potential for growth, for change, and for expansion. To be more specific, once you perceive life as it is, then you will sense that even the lowliest of all destructive creatures possesses the possibility for change, the possibility for goodness, the possibility for greatness, and the possibility for growth. At any moment, his thinking may change and thus create new attitudes, new behavior, new feelings, and new ways of being. And if this does not happen now, then that alters nothing, for one day things are bound to change and then your true nature must finally emerge. The knowledge of one's true nature having to emerge sooner or later changes everything. It changes your despair about yourself. It opens the door to knowing your potential for goodness, regardless of how malicious you may now be; to knowing your potential for generosity, regardless of how mean you may now be; to knowing your potential for loving, regardless of how selfish you may now be; to knowing your potential for strength, regardless of how weak you may now be; to knowing your potential for integrity, regardless of how tempted you may now be to betray your best self; to knowing your potential for greatness, regardless of how petty you may now be.

Look at nature, at any manifestation of life, and you will see that it is forever changing. It is forever dying and being reborn; it is forever expanding and contracting; it is forever pulsating; it is always moving and branching out. This applies particularly to life that is conscious, and even more so to life that is self-conscious. The power of thought, the power of the will, and the power of the emotions is infinitely greater than any inanimate power. And yet the inanimate power of, say, electricity, and even more of atomic energy, is so great that you have barely begun to gain an inkling of its possibilities both for good and constructive ends, as well as for destructive ones. Where there is life and consciousness, both these possibilities exist.

If in the smallest atom -- so small that it cannot even be perceived with the naked eye -- a power exists to release untold energies either for building or for destroying, then how infinitely more is this the case with the power of the mind. In other words, the power of thinking, the power of feeling, and the power of willing. Just dwell on this significant fact, my friends. Why do you blindly assume that the power of inanimate things is greater than the power of the mind?

The power to think, the power to will, the power to feel, the power to express, the power to act, and the power to decide are the earmarks of consciousness. They are vastly underrated by humanity. A living consciousness, therefore, deserves a respect that can hardly be put into words. It does not matter how this living consciousness manifests. No matter how undesirable and destructive the present manifestation may be, the life that issues from the momentary destructiveness holds all the potentials for turning into constructive channels, for the source of life is truly inexhaustible.

Since the essence of life is movement, and therefore change, then this is what justifiably and realistically gives hope, no matter how hopeless a situation or a state of mind may appear. People in deep depression and hopelessness must be in error, for they negate the essence of life. And those who despair about themselves because they feel that they are so bad, so unacceptable, so destructive, and so negative find themselves in the error of perceiving -- and therefore of experiencing -- life in a fixed way. That is, as though what is now must always be. This is the error of deadness: "This is so! And that is all there is to it!" Such thinking ignores -- and therefore negates -- the flux of true life. Since you are alive, then this fluidity is yours. In reality you are fluid.

The only thing that keeps you from being fluid, and therefore from changing into a state of realistic hopefulness and light -- into the essence of life itself -- is your enclosure, your ignorance of this truth. In other words, your momentary state of consciousness. This state of consciousness is presently fixated in the conviction that both life and your personality traits are static. Therefore, that they must remain that way. As long as you know nothing else, then your state of consciousness will remain fixated in this dark imprisonment.

By merely reading these words you have the possibility of applying them to your personal situation. Where are you hopeless? Why are you hopeless? Do you feel hopeless because of life itself -- perhaps because you believe that the possibilitites for expansion and for happiness are too limited to give you sufficient scope? Or are you hopeless because you feel that you do not deserve, and therefore cannot have, a more meaningful and fulfilled experience of life? The latter thought may smolder secretly beneath your perception of life's limitation.

If you can bring these fleeting impressions into a more concise awareness, then you can ask yourself this question: "Am I hopeless about deserving happiness because I -- possibly quite justifiably -- dislike certain traits in me?" But don't you then also believe that these traits mark you and that they define your entire person? That is the great struggle, my friends: You erroneously believe that what is most obnoxious to you is you. At the same time, this is the cause for the great resistance -- inherent in all human beings -- against changing. For, since you do not believe that you can essentially be anything else but that in you which you dislike, then you have to hold on to it because you do not wish to cease existing. That is the crux of this dualistic confusion. This is why you so inexplicably hold on to your destructive traits. Many of my friends have reached the awareness where they can see this. They actually see themselves holding on to aspects in themselves which they thoroughly dislike. They seem unable to help it, and thus they despair even more. They cannot understand what power propels them to hold on, almost deliberately, to what they hate in themselves.

Here is the answer. You hold on to it because you genuinely believe that this is you. In other words, you believe that you are a fixed state, that you are a fixed unit. Therefore, you conclude that any change is impossible. You do not know the truth that all of the possibilities exist in you. The truth is that you already are what you think you would have to produce artificially, laboriously, and through forcibly contorting your very nature. But since you will not believe this, then you cannot give up holding on to the facets in you that you so dislike, for they seem to represent your essence.

This is a vicious circle, for true self-esteem can come only by your sensing your innate capacity to love, to give of yourself. Yet this capacity cannot be known -- and then realized -- when you take it for granted that it simply does not exist. In other words, when you believe that any state other than the one you express now is intrinsically alien to you, and therefore that your real, final, fixed self is what you now dislike. As long as that is the case, then you remain trapped in the vicious circle.

In order to come out of this negative circle, life must be understood in its essence. No matter how fixed your life may appear, the truth is that it is only one tiny part of the whole story. Underneath all those personality traits that now you believe are fixed, final things, the fluid life exists, like a winter stream under the snow. It is constant. Feelings branch out of it in all directions, spontaneously and wondrously, forever self-renewing. This life pulsates vibrantly. It is movement itself. Above all, it is a life into which you are free at any moment to think new and different thoughts which then create a new and different expression and a new and different personality.

You see, as long as you ignore the true state of life -- hence your own true state -- then you cannot give yourself the fundamental respect that you deserve as a human creature. As long as you confuse life with death, with inanimate matter, then you will despair. And even inanimate matter, as you now know from present day science, has an intrinsic life and incredible movement, once this life is released. Think about this, my friends. Even an apparently dead object is not dead. It contains life, movement, and utter change. Think of the movement, of the life, and of the change contained in every atom of the deadest-seeming matter.

Nothing in the universe actually exists that is lifeless. How much less so with consciousness. Your thinking is a constant movement. The only trouble is that you have conditioned yourself to let it ruminate in habitual negativity, in self-rejection, and in needless limitation. But once you decide to use your thinking in a new way, then you will experience the truth of life's hopeful changeability: its endless possibilities to move in new directions. You can constantly expand your thinking -- that is, take in new ideas, embrace new realizations -- and therefore bring to yourself new will directions, new expansions, new aims, new energies, and new feelings. All of this is personality change. Without your being aware of it, these new ways of thinking and these new ways of feeling will change those attitudes in you that now you dislike so much.

When I talk about new ways of being, I want to make it clear that this does not mean they have not existed in you as a dormant essence. They are new as far as your awareness of them is concerned, for they are all there, constantly ready to be used for the asking. But as long as you enclose yourself within the narrow framework of your limited perception of yourself and of life, then you cannot use what is already there. Therefore, perceive yourself as fertile soil before the seeds are planted. Fertile soil contains an incredible power to bring about new expressions of life. The potentials seethe in it, whether or not the seeds are actually put in. Your entire consciousness and aliveness is the most fertile soil imaginable. This fertile soil is constantly there, with incredible power to bring forth new expressions of life in your thinking, in your feeling, in your willing, in your energies, in your possibilities of action, and in your possibilities of reaction.

Each situation that you find yourself in contains new possibilities for reaction. In other words, you have choices all the time. You can be in a new situation and automatically fall into the old conditioned reflexes -- your habitual negative approach -- without paying attention to what you are doing. Perhaps you moan about the misery of life because this or that has happened to you that you do not like, and you never see the connection between your discontent and your failures on the one hand and your one-sided, negative automatic reactions on the other. As long as you assume that this habitual approach is the only one possible, then you will not grasp the possibilities and the powers in your life.

When you feel unhappy or when you feel hopeless, then question yourself: "Do I not have another way to react to this situation that seems to befall me out of nowhere and to which I choose to react negatively, destructively, making myself hopeless, complaining, and feeling angry about it?" This choice is yours. Your anger and your complaints against the world are wasted, for all that energy could do so much to build a new life for yourself if only it were used properly. You cannot change others. But you can certainly change your attitudes and your thinking. Then life will offer its limitless possibilities to you.

First your thinking and your attitudes change. Then your feelings follow suit. Then your actions and your reactions begin to respond to new spontaneous impulses. These, in turn, bring forth new life experiences. The more you experience the chain reaction of this process, the more do you also perceive that you are a living, moving, endlessly changing unit of life expression. And no single trait merits evaluating and rejecting your whole self because of it. Once you perceive this, then you can afford the wonderful, relieving luxury of calmly admitting any undesirable, ugly trait without disliking your whole self for it and without losing your sense of being a divine expression, no matter what the traits may be. Only then can you begin to transform these traits.

Paradoxical as this may seem, total self-rejection -- the destructive kind of guilt under discussion here -- is incapable of overcoming anything. You will not understand why unless you see that it is impossible to overcome anything when you believe that you are a fixed, unchangeable blob. You know that according to your belief you must experience, because you cannot see beyond the form that you have built according to your belief. Your actions, then, are determined by your beliefs and they must thus provide proof of their veracity, no matter how mistaken those beliefs are and how many other alternatives exist in reality.

For example, if you are convinced that you cannot change, then you cannot even take a meaningful step in the direction of change. Therefore, you cannot experience change and, consequently, you must be convinced that change is impossible. Your negative conviction about change also makes it impossible for you to summon the effort necessary for bringing about change. The energy, the discipline, the stamina, and the initiative which are essential for affecting a change will be comparatively easy to muster when you know first that a change is possible and then when you know that change means bringing out your dormant qualities. When you know that, then no matter how ugly the traits may be, you will not despair about being unlovable. You will make available the powers in you to surge forward; you will be able to dip into the resources of your innermost being that enable you to overcome any ugly, destructive trait.

The Power that created the universe, with everything in it -- including all that you are -- possesses the strength to change anything. For even the things that should be changed were created by that same Power. Therefore, in essence they must be something other than they appear now. This Power is also in you. Therefore, it must become manifest once you contact it consciously and deliberately. This can be done only when you know of the Source within you. This Source is forever changing, forever moving, and forever expanding with its infinite possibilities.

You see, my friends, the life that is inherent in nature is also in you. Bare will and intellect is sterile. Only the feeling of life, the natural life, can bring you the fulfillment without which life is a sorry affair indeed. This is what we have been talking about and aiming for on this path. Now, why has humanity lost touch with the source of its life, the source of its feelings, the source of its instincts, and the source of its nature deep inside the self? Because you are terrified of your destructiveness and because you do not know how to handle it. So for millennia civilization has denied the instinctual life in order to preserve itself from its dangers. But by doing so humanity has cut off its connection with the essence of life itself. It has not realized that there are ways to eliminate the distorted, perverted natural forces, ways that need not deny life itself. The instinctual life has always been wrongly equated with destructiveness. But as humanity matures, then it becomes capable of learning that the instinctual life does not need to be denied in order to avoid evil. Indeed, it should not be denied, for doing so defeats life every bit as much as the feared evil itself. Only within the deep core of the instincts can God be found, because only there can true aliveness be found. Thus humanity must find other ways to handle its destructive instincts if it is not to annihilate itself by giving vent to those negative instincts.

This lecture will give you an additional tool with which to meet your destructive side. You will learn to value and to nurture the deep instincts that you have always distrusted and to find the truth of the living Creative Spirit in them and through them. Then you will joyfully further your instinctual life. First you will unfold it and then you will integrate it. Hence, you will believe in it and you will trust it. Do not fear it, and therefore deny it, just because you still have difficulty in first meeting and then in accepting your undesirable, destructive traits. If you truly look at them in a dispassionate way, then you will always find that fear and denial are what really opposes the life of the instincts. The instincts are simple and innocent in themselves. Your destructiveness is always a result of pride, of selfwill, of fear, of vanity, of greed, of separateness, of lovelessness, of one-upmanship.

In this way you will find it possible to meet, to acknowledge, to admit, and to accept anything in you, no matter how ugly, and never lose the sense of your intrinsic beautiful aliveness and of deserving your own esteem. This inner state will then be the springboard from which change becomes possible. It will not only be a possibility in the abstract, but an effective way of living day in and day out. It will be a constantly growing movement.

Any one of you who can truly bring this important topic to bear upon whatever state you are in at this moment will fulfill the next step on this path and will overcome an important hurdle. Many of you may be stuck precisely in this painful inner confusion. Some of you may not know this consciously. Others may feel it vaguely. Still others may be quite aware of this struggle. Most human beings are totally oblivious of the fact that this battle rages in them. This inner battle has created the instinctual restrictions, the fear, the self-alienation, the aridness, and the impoverishment of the soul that cannot thrive in an inner climate of self-rejection. People also ignore the fact that all the religious commands to love cannot be fulfilled until this dualistic split is healed and unification is found. As a result, self-liking is no longer confused with self-indulgence and honest self-confrontation need no longer bring self-loathing. You can find peace only when you can truly accept the ugliest in you and never lose sight of your intrinsic beauty.

Now, are there any questions?

QUESTION: I feel a terrific battle going on right now in relation to my self-esteem. It feels like an atomic explosion. I realize that I am stuck in my own limitations. I realize that I can't stand pleasure. Coming from my habitial state of unpleasure, pleasure seems almost unnatural.

ANSWER: If you can conceive of yourself as the essence of life -- with all of its incredible powers, with all of its possibilities, and with all of its inherent potentials -- then you will know that you are deserving both of your own esteem and of your own acceptance. You will be able to see the traits in yourself that you hate and not lose sight of who you essentially are.

I also suggest a specific exercise that you might find quite helpful. Put down in writing everything you dislike about yourself. Put it down in black and white. Look at those traits when they are written down. Then feel into yourself and ask yourself: "Do I really believe that this is all there is to me? Do I really believe that I must be these traits all my life? Do I believe that I have in me the possibility to love? Do I believe that I hold locked up in me forces that contain all the good imaginable?" By seriously raising these questions, you will get an answer on a deeply feeling level, where the answer is more than a theoretical concept. Then you will experience a new power in you that you do not need to fear, a new gentleness, and a softness that does not need hostility or other defenses. Then you will know how much there is in you to love and to respect.

In your personal pathwork you have recently come across a specific misconception that makes loving impossible as long as you harbor it. Since loving is equated with the terrible danger of being totally impoverished, even robbed of your very life, then how can you want to love? How can you let yourself love? According to this false idea, giving of yourself means losing what you give without ever being replenished. If this were true, then love would indeed be impossible and therefore giving would be a folly. Is it now conceivable for you to see that love comes from the same inexhaustible well as wisdom does, as all of life does? Can you further perceive that you will not need to deny your natural instinct that wants to reach out, that wants to feel the pleasure of feeling love, that wants to feel the pleasure of feeling warmth, that wants to feel the pleasure that comes from giving of yourself? And can you then foresee the next natural, organic step in the chain, which is that if you can love, then you will inevitably love yourself? This is the reason why you fear pleasure. For pleasure not only seems entirely undeserved, but love and pleasure are interchangeable. True pleasure is loving, and without loving pleasure simply does not exist. This is not a reward from outside, or even from your own self. Love IS pleasure and pleasure IS love. The two are interchangeable. If you harbor love feelings, then your whole body is in a blissful vibration. You are filled with certainty, with security, with peace, with stimulation, and with excitement in the most relaxed, pleasurable way. That cannot come through anything that is given to you when you are merely a recipient. It comes only when you yourself vibrate with this feeling. Nor does this mean that you do not also receive love. The giving and the receiving become so interchangeable that often it can no longer be discerned which is which. Both become indistinguishable in one movement.

But if your nature is as yet incapable of allowing the feeling of love, then you must fear bliss, since bliss and loving are the same thing. The misconception that giving means losing what you give causes you to close up, and therefore to contract, in all the situations that bring forth your natural instinct to give. When you deny love and pleasure, then you must inevitably also deny your self-esteem. Your key lies in seeing that your inability to love is not an inborn aspect that you alone harbor forever. It is a temporary block to loving based on a false premise which exists on a deeper level of your emotional experience. You can change this misconception any moment you truly and fully look at it.

Be blessed, every one of you. Be in peace. Be what you are, honestly and truly, so that God manifests more and more in you.

May 23, 1969