Self Esteem, Humility, and Reality

"How to Lower Your Self Esteem"

The other day I was listening to a lecture by His Holiness Jayadvaita Swami. He was talking about a course he teaches called "How to Lower Your Self Esteem".

He was taking a shot at pop self-help programs that are designed to raise your self-esteem. His lecture was entitled "Psychology 108" and was designed to counteract the influx of ideas from modern psychology into ISKCON.

Of course, modern psychology, like modern medicine, has some valid and valuable contributions to make, and we have to be careful to not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Fanatical rejection is the flip side of the coin of blind acceptance.

"High" and "Low" Self Esteem Both Miss the Point

I thought about this idea of "How to lower your self esteem". It's a catchy and clever rebuttal. However, I feel while it pushes back on an unwanted and misleading intrusion, in a sense it misses or obscures an important point.

The goal is not to necessarily raise or lower your self-esteem. Nor is the goal to have either "high" or "low" self-esteem. The goal is to have accurate self-esteem.

Self-esteem means "self-estimation". It means your ability to accurately assess yourself in terms of your strengths and weaknesses, abilities and inabilities, and your standing relative to the environment and others within it.

Self-esteem, or self-estimation, is part of sambandha-jnana.

An estimation that is either too high or too low is unrealistic. Sun Tzu explains in his Art of War that by knowing yourself and knowing your enemy you will not face defeat in a hundred battles.

Overestimation leads to defeat, and so does "underestimation"

An unrealistic assessment of yourself leads to defeat. Look at what happened to both Brahma and Indra. They did not have a realistic assessment of themselves relative to Krishna. They overestimated themselves. This is commonly called pride. What it is, in a strictly technical sense, devoid of emotional judgment, is an overestimation of one's ability relative to others.

The symptom or outcome of this is an inability to appreciate the ability and relative superiority of others.

An estimation that is too low can sometime disguise an overestimation, cloaking it in a veneer of "humility".

Underestimation, or "low self esteem" is often a secret resentment that others don't recognize you for the greatness that you are secretly sure you have. It's overestimation that refuses to bow to reality.

Some thoughts and observations

I'm working on the follow-up to "On Leadership" in my spare time (not much of that lately), focused on self-leadership and putting the principles of "On Leadership" into practice. Here are some excerpts from that, that speak to these points:

The first thing you have to do is to get real, as real as you can get, and keep getting more and more real.

The fundamental quality of a leader, and a fundamental factor in personal success and effective execution of leadership is realism. To be realistic in the context of the purpose of leadership means to understand things as they are; essentially to understand the relationship between three things – ourselves, this world, and the Supreme Lord. To be realistic in the context of the practice of leadership means to be able to accurately measure things.

Sometimes people criticize devotees for being pessimistic about material life. Go to a party and drop the line: “We're all going to die,” and watch the faces fall. However, that's a fact. Whereas a pessimist sees the glass of material life as half empty, and an optimist sees it as half full, a realist sees the reality of a glass tipped up and emptying out.

You are not a fatalist. As a leader you are travelling towards a better future, and you are taking others there with you. In this sense some might think of you as optimistic. However, you are not at all blind to the present realities. That's what distinguishes an effective leader from a dreamer. Most people lose their nerve when they understand the full import of their situation. You don't. You don't rely on hiding your head in the sand to maintain your morale, neither do you waste time wallowing in all that is wrong with the world. You need to see things as they are in order to make the right decisions. You may feel the fear, but you do it anyway. That's what distinguishes an effective leader from a whiner.

Basically there are two things that you will be measuring – yourself, and the environment. To be effective you have to accurately measure yourself, accurately measure the environment, and then match the two up.

...

There is a famous story involving Srila Prabhupada and one leader in ISKCON.

Srila Prabhupada, wanting to help this leader deal with pride that had crept in, began to describe to him that the material world represents a covered portion of one small corner of the spiritual sky. Into this covered portion the Lord expands as Karanodaksayi Visnu. He lays down in the Causal Ocean at the bottom of the material world and millions of universes emanate from the pores of His skin as he breathes out. He expands Himself into each and every one of these universes as Garbhodaksayi Visnu. In even the smallest of these universes there millions of planets and stars. Among these millions of stars and planets is one planet with millions of people living in cities. In one of those cities there are so many thousands of buildings. In one of those buildings is (the leader he was speaking to), and he is thinking he is very important.

Don't try to be humble, just get real.

The other day a devotee approached me for some advice. While he was describing his situation to me he said: “I have no good qualities”.

“Yes you do,” I replied. “You have some good qualities and some not good qualities, just like everyone else. You have to be realistic about your situation – that will enable you to deal with it intelligently and effectively.”

Once a devotee fell down at Srila Prabhupada's feet and cried out: “Oh Srila Prabhupada, I am the most fallen!” Srila Prabhupada responded with the humorous dismissal: “You're not the most anything!”

“But in His Siksastakam Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that we should be more humble than a blade of grass!” I hear you say. If there is one thing that we can say about a blade of grass, it's that it is realistic. Have you ever seen a blade of grass with an unrealistic assessment of itself and the environment? A blade of grass is exemplary in knowing its place and its purpose. Overestimating yourself is commonly known as pride. Underestimating yourself is the other side of the same counterfeit coin of unrealism. Don't waste your time trying to imitate a blade of grass, instead follow its example – get real.

Personalities such as Krishnadas Kaviraj and Jiva Goswami have described themselves in very lowly terms. Is this a symptom of their humility? An "unrealistic" assessment of their standing? No, it's a symptom of their reality. Jiva Goswami is a jiva, without Krisha he is nothing - and he knows it. That's reality. As Arjuna found when Krishna left, his Gandhiva bow became impotent in his hand.

Whatever good qualities are there in the jiva are due to association with the reservoir of all good qualities, Sri Krishna. Although the jiva has some inherent qualities due to being of the nature of Brahman, still because of its infinitesimal nature it will be overcome by the illusory energy Maya, if it does not have the shelter of Krishna's internal energy.

So where does that leave us? One devotee accused me of belonging to the group that wanted to drag Srila Gaurakishor das Babaji's body through the streets because he had expressed that desire.

The fact is that these personalities, with a realisitic assessment of their situation, are far beyond me, because they have a realistic assessment of their situation. I have an intermittent theoretical appreciation, but in practice I am unable to hold on to the consciousness of my real situation. A lowly worm in stool does not have any false pretenses, but I do. That makes me lower than a worm in stool in terms of realistic assessment of myself. Unfortunately, I can't even appreciate that.

In a rare moment of clarity I offer my humble obeisances to the lotus feet of Srila Krishnadas Kaviraj for his realistic assessment of our predicament and the clarity of his consciousness.