Self Image and Self Esteem
Dear friend,
SELF IMAGE
The images we hold in our mind, of who and what we are, you can call self image.
Images in which we invest our belief and attention, become our identity.
An example, often when talking about their family you’ll hear a person say;
“Oh I’m the creative one, my sister is the organised one, my brother is the wayward one.”
Something that happened, a learning experience, becomes an identity, a cage. To exit the cage you have to go against the grain of the family, disappoint the people who made the story up, let them down.
And so we cling to these mind made images of ourselves.
Who would we be without them?
SELF ESTEEM
Self esteem is an emotional experience.
How we feel when we think about who we think we are.
If our self image says there is something faulty about who we are, we feel it in our body. It lurks in the shadows, we’re afraid others will see it. So we repress it. Maybe we overcompensate by being too good or we might give in and try to destroy ourselves before anyone else get’s in there and does it for us.
Repressed emotions are experienced as physical tension and mental agitation. When acknowledged as release.
An outpouring or explosion of emotions during and after which we need gentleness. Sometimes closeness. At others space.
Beyond self image and self esteem is the self.
The part of you that has never changed.
When you are in flow, and time disappears and you’re engaged in an activity that has your full attention. You’re fully present. In the moment. Happy. Joyful. Content.
Where is self image and self esteem then?
On Sunday we were with Scott and Goze and their kids playing chase in the park. Laughing and laughing and falling on the grass helpless.
The false self would stand to the side of the fun and refuse to play.
‘The time for play is gone” it says.
Translated it means, “If you play then I am gone.”
Letting go of the false self for a lot of us is a gradual unlearning that takes place over the course of a life time.
It’s begun when you’re ready to be kind to yourself and others and to this self image you’ve made, and the feelings you have about it.
Kindness is like the balm that unglues the clogged up parts of our Frankenstein’s collage of a personal identity.
Someone will show up who is kind and sees something in you that maybe you can’t.
They may befriend you for no good reason you can see. Wanting nothing from you.
They can come in any form you can accept.
Human, animal, plant, angel, Saint.
Waifs and strays.
Or a tree.
Or a river.
It’s all you anyways.
All of it.
Reflecting
the light
within.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey