Q: With self and ego taking over
periodically, do I analyse and look for answers too much?
A: You're a mess! If I
were you, I'd just give up. I find so many of our people in AA, even in the
Grapevine, writing about self-esteem, building self-esteem. I hear people get
up here and talk all the time about 'you have to learn to love yourself before
you can love anybody else'. I am most grateful this is not the case. I never
spent any time trying to build up self-esteem or trying to love me. I wouldn't
have taken me with a large dowry. I hated my damn guts. But I got busy doing
things our book suggests, and it wasn't trying to learn how to 'self-esteem' me
or to love me so I could love you. I don't think that's the way it is at all.
Francis says, 'For it is better to love than be loved. It is better to
understand than to be understood. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in
forgiving that we're forgiven, and it is in dying to self that we awaken to
eternal life.'
That's exactly what
we've been talking about ever since we've been down here, exactly what we've
been talking about. I don't believe that an image of me would add anything to
my life at all. I haven't any more an image of me than I have of a walrus. I'm
not interested in an image of me, that's not why I'm here. I'm here to share me
with anybody that wants me in love, and let the chips fall where they may. I'm
not even interested in your opinion of what's happened, except when you want to
give it to me. That's not my deal. I love you, and that's all I have to do.
That's what I'm interested in, that's my deal. It's not my deal who you love or
what you love, or what you think. That's your deal. I love you, period. I don't
even have to concern myself with what you think about me. I've got no image at
all of me.
Self-esteem is a term that Modern Psychology has latched onto in it's attempts to understand human emotions "scientifically". However it's a pseudo-scientific concept because basically you cannot measure it. Perhaps some questionnaire could be designed but how to compare individuals, impossible. They made a similar attempt to described what many called love. Wait for it. Unconditional Positive Regard. What has that not made it into the common vernacular?
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