Low Self Esteem
“Low self esteem!? I thought the idea was to get rid of self esteem!”

Our view of ourselves, and the views which we hold, are a hinderance to pure perception – but we do have conventional relative abilities, one of which is to become enlightened. Despite this potential, we, as sentient beings, all feel we are never good enough.

This continues from yesterday’s blog about our social, programmed “I”. It was about how childhood traumas (however subtle) eat away at our bodies and minds, and we become trapped in guilt, which sows the seeds for other negative emotions. This, in turn, gives rise to depression and self harm. Self harm – in its many guises – slows our progress.

Remember, the Buddha said, “Not too tight, and not too loose.” So we have to find some divine pride within ourselves to carry us through all experiences. Over eons, we have developed some talents which can be beneficial to our and others’ development: these talents are expressed in degrees of clarity or selfishness.

Who knows – maybe there is a cosmic battle going on between good and evil for those very talents! 🙂

This is what deity practice is all about. Theistic religions have a God, and thus we can have “God consciousness”. In Tibetan Buddhism, we have deities who represent qualities of our true nature, such as compassion: these deities remind us to be compassionate, arising from an understanding of our (and others’) pure nature.

Incidentally, if we can supplicate good powers, then there are those who worship evil powers…daft lot! We can attract either total liberation by giving in to love, or more indebtedness through self-cherishing.

We need to recognise that we get caught up in our programming, which is not us. However, in that very programming is much skill. We always have a choice: if we want something more interesting, then we just need to look more closely at our own inspiration.

Our excellent manure is the food to nourish our fruition 🙂

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