Self: Your consciousness of your own identity.
Esteem: The condition of being honored.
Self-esteem: Honoring oneself.
As we can see, self-esteem is a rather “self” ish condition that we necessarily feel obligated to create artificially when we are insecure. The fact that we must go out of our way to create self-esteem only authenticates its falseness, and whenever we create falseness, we suffer. Much better to investigate our insecurity and see if insecurity is a natural fact of life, and whether our insecurity has some truth as its basis.
Our bodies are made of the substances of the earth. Our bodies eat the substances of the earth; the earth's plants and animals. When our bodies die, these substances return to the earth. We are no different from animals and plants regarding our make up. We differ in that we can understand at high levels, and because of this, we can alter our destinies when this body of ours returns to the soil, instead of merely recycling into another physical existence.
But as far as our physical bodies go, insecurity is certainly called for if we don’t understand things – the body is susceptible to all kinds of dangers. We live a life of protecting it, feeding it, making it comfortable, and worrying about it. The body is a constant hassle, we even have to bathe it once a day to make ourselves presentable to other bodies, otherwise, the body begins to smell badly. So there should be no illusions about the state of the body, no matter how much perfume we use.
As far as our minds go, this is where there certainly is the possibility of greatness, but not in a belief of an identity. The identity does not survive the body; it and the personality disintegrate with the brain. What remains is a record of our actions, karma, and this is what takes form in another physical body or in another world.
If we can overcome “ourselves," and understand that our personality and body do not continue, then there is the real possibility of something quite incredible happening. But self-esteem is only a continuation of the illusion of personality and soul, and neither of these exist, but something else does, and to understand this something else requires the antitheses of self-esteem, it requires self-knowledge.
The difference between self-esteem and self-knowledge is that self-esteem creates a puffed up illusion, where self-knowledge tears down illusions. When illusions are torn down, only then is the possibility of something beyond the physical, which is so subject to dissolution. Only then is there the possibility of eternity. Only then is there the possibility of freedom without limit
E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is co founder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (http://southwestfloridainsightcenter.com/). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers (http://ayeartoenlightenment.com/).