Eckhart Tolle explains why self-esteem built on thought and comparison is fragile. He argues the ego constantly needs validation to survive, and real peace comes from dissolving that mind-made self-image entirely.
By dissolving the ego, won't I be dissolving my self esteem? Do I not need self esteem to love myself and others? Yes, self esteem. Many people seem to have a problem with that lack of self esteem. I read a while ago that when the Dalai Lama was younger, he was meeting with a group of Westerners and they were talking about the lack of self esteem. And he just couldn't understand that, what that was. And they tried to explain it. And then he went around the group and asked everybody, do you have that? And most people said yes, it's very strange, self esteem. Now the human species, the only species on the planet, of course, that has a relationship with itself. Where you have a relationship with yourself, that's normal. But the cat doesn't have a relationship with itself, or the bird doesn't have a relationship with itself, or the tree doesn't. So birds, cats, trees, monkeys, flowers, none of them have a problem with self esteem. And even the most ugly looking cat wouldn't have a problem with self esteem. It hasn't created a secondary an image, self, mind created. And once of course, that's created, it walks with you, like next to you, behind you, or wherever it is. You always walk with a mental image of me. And you have a relationship with that. And often you don't like what you see. The image, self. That's poor self esteem. And then you may be in conflict with it, with the self. You may be talking to yourself in the head and telling yourself something about yourself. Some people talk to themselves in the first person, but many more people talk to themselves in the second person. As you, you see, you failed again. You see you are not as good as you see you. Why can't you? And then at times, perhaps the self feels suddenly great about itself. Some people predominantly have low self esteem. In other words, feel bad about the mind made image, me feel bad about that. And then realize that some realization comes in. When they realize that it is mind created. And they realize, and usually in the west it's connected with New age teachings. And they realize that they can do something about their bad self esteem, their image. You can actually change your thinking about yourself. First, you discover that the thinking about yourself is predominantly or to a large extent negative. And then you a little bit of presence is arising, must be because you are able to stand back a little bit and watch and see what you are creating with your thoughts. And then the possibility comes of changing your thoughts, your self esteem through workshops, affirmations, visualization and all those practices. And then after a While that image looks a little bit more comfortable and you feel more comfortable with that thing walking alongside you. But since everything in form, all mind creations, thoughts are subject to polarities, you can't walk with a high continuously with high self esteem and feel great about yourself. There's always a polarity to it and it's usually bound up with what happens or not happens in your life, what feedback you are getting from others. And it is usually comparative. The self esteem is comparative. How do I rate myself in relation to others? And that gives you the indication of where you are on 1 to 10 or whatever it may be. So self esteem is connected with the mind made me lack of it or in good self esteem, but it exists within polarities. Even if you spend a whole year affirming continuously that I love myself, I love myself. And maybe until now you hated yourself and your house is full of little stickers and wherever you look you see I love myself. And you look in the mirror and look into your eyes and repeat that I love myself. To some extent it works. To some extent you have a better relationship with yourself. But there's always a downside. It's hard to sustain that because the other polarity will manifest also in your life. And you go through life when in order to know how you feel about yourself, you need to compare yourself with others. And then you say, oh, I'm actually better looking than this person, so I actually feel quite good about myself. I'm actually much more educated than that person I feel good about or whatever you can get. Well, this person is ill and I'm healthy, so that's good. So you need for self esteem, if you look, you need relativity and you need comparison. And ego is always comparing itself. Is it possible to live without having a relationship with yourself, neither good nor bad? Is it possible to be so completely yourself that the mind made image of me dissolves? Yes, this is why we are here. This is the essence of our gathering. The mind made image is connected to thought, to continuous thinking. It's fueled by, perpetuated by, upheld by the continuous thought processes, many of which are about me and myself. And so I have a through thought, I have a relationship with a thought made entity which sometimes feels quite comfortable and sometimes feels not pleasant. Don't want to have live with that person. And of course it's true, many people live with a self that is very unpleasant, that creates a lot of trouble, a lot of problems, a lot of suffering, that continuously criticizes them, that continuously blames them, that continuously tells them they're not enough and they live with that entity mind made conditioned mind movements conditioned in such a way that they attack you continuously and that's the self that they have a relationship with they would never live with a person like that you would run out of the room you couldn't live with a person for more than a day if somebody you live with did that to you what your self image is doing to you through thought you would have filed for divorce long ago but you can't do that with that because it's your own the mind it walks with you and there you have this complaining and whining and accusing and oh get away and a large part of that is because you're identified with thought there isn't the ability to step back from thought and watch thought watch that this mind made sense of self is also much more focused on the negative than the positive to be free you awaken to who you are beyond your history and your life situation.
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