[ Return to Articles ]

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.