High self-esteem: You need an all-embracing world view

Self love or high self-esteem is promoted by an all-embracing world view. Photo by De’Andre Bush.

In this piece I explain how lack of self-worth is rooted in cultural notions of good and evil; due to them we are sort of broken in two and coming to terms with the “evil” part is important for our healing process. An all-embracing world view provides a very good framework for that. I therefore propose that you consider evil to be an “unpleasant good”.

Did you ever think: “I hate myself”? Personally I tend to repeat that over and over in some cases, for instance if I feel stuck or unable to succeed in some endeavor. 

Actually I question myself too much in all kinds of situations. Then other similar lines of thought go through my head, like: “I am afraid to be wrong” and “the others won’t like me”. 

I am not alone in this regard. Mostly all of us seem to have some self-esteem issues. Giving advice on personal development, it is therefore also very common to say that we should “love ourselves”. 

But why don’t we do so in the first place?

Psychological issues are often assumed to be founded in childhood experiences but, if most of us have self-esteem issues, then it doesn’t seem to be only a matter of how we were raised.

In order to properly understand it, I think we have to apply a broader perspective and I believe that cultural notions of good and evil lie at the heart of this widespread problem. 

Good versus evil causes an internal split 

Actually, my reasoning on this matter is rather simple: We celebrate light and hate darkness. But since darkness is part of ourselves, logically we cannot avoid some measure of self-hatred.

“Repression” hide unwanted parts of ourselves. Photo by Philbo.

The judgmental “good versus evil” kind of thinking is inherently unloving. It introduces a split between the worthy and the unworthy and promotes “conditional” love; that’s love which is only granted if we behave in the right way. 

The split is internalized in the course of socialization where we learn to see ourselves with the eyes of others. 

From there comes “repression”. The father of modern psychology, Freud (1856-1939), said that we repress unwanted parts of ourselves; that is, they become subconscious and so we cease to recognise their existence.

Repressed material may for example include greed, jealousy, anger and hatred.

However repressed, those feelings still influence our lives in unfortunate ways, for instance we “project” them and thereby put the blame on others. 

Therefore psychological therapy involves rediscovering the repressed material in order to get a more balanced self-perception and to become whole again. 

No judging promotes high self-esteem 

You may think that there is no other option except to deem some kind of behavior as “good” and “praise worthy” whereas other kinds must be deemed “bad” or “evil”. 

However, even if this morality is normal and habitual for us, there is in my opinion a higher kind of ethics in modern holistic spiritually like Martinus Cosmology.

Here darkness is named “the unpleasant good”. As such it is meaningful and easier to accept. 

The holistic approach is so to speak “all inclusive”. 

It involves several arguments for an all-embracing attitude of tolerance and forgiveness towards ourselves as well as others, for instance:

• Life experience depends on contrasts. Using white paint on a white canvas is pointless. We need the dark hues as well and so they are unpleasant but good.

• We all do what we can based on what we have learned. To judge therefore resembles blaming the kids in first grade that they are not yet in higher school classes. 

• Due to the law of karma, we make our own destiny. Whatever you experience it mirrors who you are and what you created; and so you gain self-knowledge. 

• To be confronted with suffering, or the so-called evil, is how we learn both wisdom and compassion. It is therefore good and beneficial to our own development. 

I think one of the great benefits of this system of thought, or world view, is that it allows us to love unconditionally which heals the split inside us and promotes high self-esteem (as well as love for others). If everything is very good, as Martinus claims, then so are YOU.

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Read my personal story about how I was taught self-loathing in a previous life: SELF-LOATHING: HOW I WAS TAUGHT TO FEEL GUILTY IN A PAST LIFE.

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Self-loathing: How I was taught to feel guilty in a past life

In some versions of Christianity sinners are warned against hell and damnation. Photo by Marc Schaefer.

Maybe in a previous life, I was taught to feel guilty and to believe in a version of Christianity where sinners are warned against hell and damnation. This is my personal story.

At a small gathering with a few of my closest friends, one of them, O, told us about a nuisance that tormented him for long periods of his life. He described it as a recurring pain in his forehead and also came up with a possible explanation: “It may be caused by an old belief that I am not allowed to feel good”. 

“Furthermore”, he said, “I think that in a past life, I preached sin and guilt and that a remnant of this sense of guilt is left there in my forehead like a dark stain”.

I doubt that O would get into that rather unusual explanation in other settings but the four of us share mostly everything. Since we are spiritually inclined, we are also very familiar with the concept of reincarnation and receptive to ideas about how past lives may have influenced this one.

I had no problems imagining O preaching such a medieval version of Christianity in a previous lifetime. I envisioned him filled with holy wrath taking his audience to task and warning them about the flames of hell and eternal damnation.

Then suddenly, to show what kind of a preacher he once was, he turned towards me, pointed his finger at me and said in a very decisive manner: “You are a sinner!” And more stuff like that. I was sort of paralyzed and felt as if I was taken back in time. I don’t believe in sin at all but for a moment there, I was captured by his words as if I was one of his past followers.

Feeling guilty and unworthy 

I didn’t get any religious upbringing and words like God, sin and hell were hardly even mentioned in my childhood home. Today I do believe in God but my concept of God is very different from the traditional Christian one.

To me God is certainly not wrathful, but all-loving, forgiving and benevolent. To think that sinners are unworthy and subject to God’s judgment, hell and damnation, is far from my beliefs.

Therefore I was baffled by the ease with which I responded to O’s words and suddenly adopted such unfamiliar ideas. 

How could that be? 

Looking for a plausible explanation, I asked myself if traditional Christian dogmas are actually not unfamiliar to me after all, but only forgotten; maybe I was once a true believer of them and maybe I was really present there in the flesh listening to O’s sermon several lives back.

If that’s the case, then, like O, subconsciously I may still hold remnants of those dogmas even if my conscious beliefs about God and the afterlife are totally different now. 

And then my present day self-esteem issues would make better sense; for instance the fact that I sometimes hate myself for no good reason at all.

Hidden causes of low self-esteem

O’s story and my reaction to it made me wonder if self-esteem (or the lack of it) is not just taught in the formative years of our present lives, as psychologists would have it, but also something we carry with us from past lives. 

The story also pointed to how opposing ideas about the self and its relation to God may coexist in our mentality: 

On the one hand a conscious belief that God is all-loving and that each one of us is absolutely worthy of that love, and yet on the other hand subconsciously we may fear to be unworthy and undeserving.

Even if we were not taught to believe in a wrathful, unloving God in this life we may still harbor that unfortunate idea and along with it a hidden “talent” for looking down on, or even hating, ourselves. 

The unconscious God image may possibly lay dormant or it may actively undermine our self-esteem even if our conscious beliefs are well suited to make us feel good about ourselves.

If that’s the case, then I think it is important that we become aware of our subconscious God image and try to counter its negative influence. Being aware of self-hatred, and its causes, makes us better equipped to handle it. Even just naming it has, in my experience, a very beneficial effect. 

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Get to know more about handling self-esteem issues and further investigate the connection between worldview, God image and perception of self: HIGH SELF-ESTEEM: YOU NEED AN ALL-EMBRACING WORLD VIEW