Spiritual Health and Self-Esteem
by Jackie Kosednar
The more you believe you matter, the higher
your self-esteem goes.
All alternative medicine is based on the idea that
a person is more than a body; we are also mental/emotional
and spiritual beings. To be healthy, all three must
be healthy. It is believed that disease starts on
the emotional and spiritual levels before it becomes
manifest in the body. How you think and feel about
life and all your belief systems have a tremendous
impact on your health and any healing process you
are a part of. So does your spiritual life.
To heal a disease, mental or physical, or to just
enjoy good health, the spiritual part of us must also
be healthy. Indeed, you can’t feel good about
yourself when your spirituality is unhealthy or non-existent.
To have high self-esteem a good measure of spirituality
is necessary — a connection to something greater,
a feeling that you are not here by accident but came
with a place to fill and a path to walk. Depression
is believed to be a product of low self-esteem and
lack of a spiritual connection and purpose. If illness
didn’t begin in the spiritual arena, it can
soon impact the spiritual, especially when the illness
is severe or believed to be incurable. Disease is
often a wake up call for people and what they wake
up to is the spiritual aspects of their lives.
There is much confusion about what it means to be
spiritually healthy. Many people connect spirituality
with being religious. The two can be two very separate
things, however. Many people are quite spiritual yet
have little to do with organized religion. Spirituality
is a sensing or knowing that we come from something
much greater than we are, along with a reverence for
that something. It is living with integrity and a
sense of immortality. Many people find this in the
awe of nature. Scientists sense that there is Higher
Intelligence, a quantum field, so great that it created
and runs this Universe, so great that we cannot comprehend
it. We can only study it and record its natural laws.
Yet, all spirituality is based on the idea that this
isn’t all there is; that there are other worlds,
and other places beyond this physical universe.
Religion is the study of tribes whose traditions
come from spiritually inspired individuals. These
tribal spiritual leaders tried to explain or interpret
what the Supreme Intelligence meant to them and how
they thought we could live in harmony with it. Early
religion was the foundation of tribal law and spiritual
ritual. The tribe concluded that God is good and pleased
by goodness. From there, what is believed to be good
or bad is converted into a code of conduct for that
tribe, and many tribes developed religions —
paths to the top of the mountain. Pleasing the Deity
is the way to ensure control of the tribe and bring
about a more harmonious way of life. From here, conscience
was encouraged to develop and guilt was born. It was
understood that we all have innate goodness within
us that would give us inner promptings when we weren’t
being good.
But our spirituality is evolving out of the tribal
arena and into the global. It is now more about a
global code of ethics. Through the eyes of the media,
the world looks like it is on the brink of survival.
Spiritual propaganda predicts the end of the world.
Science threatens us with global warming and pollution
problems. All are coming to understand that world
peace can only evolve when we live and let live. This
means we stop killing to prove a point, that we look
toward making sure we are all fed, housed and have
adequate health care. Collective spirituality stimulates
all of us to look at our behavior and question our
values for the good of the whole, for the survival
of humanity, which is a higher purpose. Spirituality
is probably more important to people now than it has
ever been in our history.
From our evolving spirituality, we see people living
their own religion based on these collective codes
of conduct more than the tribal. Some take pieces
of different religions and combine them or leave the
churches they were raised in to explore other religions.
Millions of people are meditating for health benefits,
even if they don’t have a personal relationship
with the Deity. With the advent of the Internet, people
are exposed to a variety of religious opinions that
perpetuates this evolving spirituality.
If we are conscious of our inner life, we discover
an inner need for something greater than we are (whether
we seek it or not) and an innate need for peace and
goodness. People with high self-esteem have greater
health. People with high self-esteem also have what
I call Spiritual self-esteem. Spiritual self-esteem
develops when we trust Life and surrender to its process.
It is learning to trust that Life knows what is best
for us and has a purpose for each of us. This comes
when we choose to live from this place in spite of
constant pressure to identify with the world and the
continuous voice of fear that comes from in. Self-esteem
arrives with the certainty that we did not create
ourself and that we are a part of a bigger picture,
that our life means something.
To have self-esteem, you have to believe you matter.
When you believe you matter then you know that what
you do matters and that the world matters, in spite
of its major dysfunction and differences. When you
matter then your body matters and you take better
care of it so you stay well. The more you believe
you matter, the higher your self-esteem goes.
When people believe in and answer to a Higher Power,
the less importance they put on outer authorities.
They don’t follow blindly; they check with an
inner and Higher Authority and walk their own path.
They have spiritual values they try to live up to
and, in the process, become better people with more
self-satisfaction.
This is what personal growth is all about! The personal
growth industry is growing rapidly right along with
the alternative/holistic health movement. As we become
better people we create a healthier and better world
for all of us to live in.
