Self-Esteem

Question: By dissolving the ego, won’t I be dissolving my self-esteem. Do I not need self-esteem to love myself and others?

Eckhart: Yes, self-esteem. Many people seem to have a problem with that - lack of self-esteem.

I read a while ago, when the Dalai Lama was younger he was meeting with a group of Westerners and they were talking about 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.” [And the Dalai Lama said,] “Oh, very strange, self-esteem”.

Now the human species is the only species on the planet, of course, that has a relationship with itself. Where [when] 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 that’s created it walks with you, next to you, or 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. That “image-self.”

For the whole transcript go here.