Eckhart Tolle on Self-esteem and Ego
Well, first there is the ego self-esteem. Which is really, even if you have high ego self-esteem.. there’s always hidden fear underneath it.
It’s always there to compensate for the fear you feel of not being good enough or perhaps failing. So you need to play a role of being big to compensate for fear of failure that’s deep down.
But that’s usually the world calls it.. the world would say he or she has high self-esteem. People who have big egos. But the world doesn’t realize that that’s not true self-esteem.
True self-esteem goes much deeper. It’s finding the source of power and aliveness deep inside. We talked about the lake. Realizing that within the depth of your being, there is that continuous source of intense aliveness and power, which is the stillness out of which everything comes.
From article Eckhart Tolle on Shyness, Self-esteem and Ego.
Image: “Reflecting Stream, Redding Connecticut” by Paul Caponigro - a smaller version is on the page Depth psychology 2 with quotes from the article On the Borderland by Jungian analyst Jerome Bernstein, including: “The Borderland is what I call that psychic space where the overspecialized and overly rational Western ego is in the process of reconnecting with its split-off roots in Nature.”
