[Yartonbler]

everyone has high of self esteem (its inevitable), we just have different ways to express it. people who do "selfish" things are in fact trying to esteem themselves more than they already are and perhaps caught this mentality by other "selfish" people that oppressed them. the actual issue is we don't know that we are all worth infinitley the same, but we try to think we are more that the infinite and then get dissaponted when we find out it isn't true and then assume we have no worth, which also isn't true.

we think we are "esteemed" when we get what want, and yet the things that we "want" are things that do not completely satisfy us and we anxiously expect something else (then when we get it, we're tired of it or even disappointed). we assume that something is good just because it "feels good" or that something is bad because it "feels bad", but we miss the point that feelings are all merely a choice on how to perceive things and they are often not based on reason. this self-esteem nonsense would be solved if were to let god esteem us rather than us esteem ourselves because he's the source of all love, the principle of life itself. this is manifested through christ's sacrificed himself for us. this is the ultimate truth that will set you free: not i, but christ. with that said, i don't have to say anything, if it i do, it will be only christ, which is the truth and nothing but the truth. if i make an error, than i still havn't known christ completely.

concerning self-esteem, it's actually when our esteem is too high that we fail to appreciate the grace of love and that it's only by faith in grace that we can really live. sure we are to have respect and love ourselves in order to respect and love others, but can't really do this when we deny the principles of god's love for us. when we don't respect god, we don't respect ourselves, not to say we are some inherent gods, but that when god is in us (and not left outside like some spectator) then we become like god (in his image). god's love is "unconditional" to those who don't know that life has principles that sustain it. for those who do know god's love, they live by these principles because god's love is in them. this is only possible if we surrender ourselves to god and not what your own understanding of what "right and wrong" is.

we have this assumption that we are god in progress and we make can make ourselves into god's image yet we're really making god into our image (an image far from the principles of love). we cannot use god, play god, or possess god as if god were some impersonal force, although god allows us to think we can. we'd like to believe that we're perfect eternal beings, yet often forget its through the grace of god's eternal love and forgiveness. we negate this grace by thinking we "save ourselves" and not realize that we're already saved by faith in this grace. when being saved we are also guided to keep god's principles (what you will or will not do for the sake of the love; the love of god for you imparted to others). when we are forgiven, we're cleansed from all unrighteousness and clothed with christ's righteousness.

there is a bit of subtle and ironic misunderstanding of grace that often causes us to esteem ourselves too high and its often done to escape the fact that we aren't inherently divine. its the its self-esteem boosted too high that makes us think know better that god by defining what's "good and evil", thus defy "death". though it's very true that the principle of life is god's love, in which "sin and death" shouldn't effect us, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. denying that our problems exists does not solve them and it's completely unnecessary if you really believe in the grace of god's sacrifice of himself. we deny death because we're really afraid of it, but thats because we've been lied to about what it really is. death is in fact process in which you keep your focus on your self instead of christ and eventually fall back to the first density of dust in which you were created from and vitalized by the spirit. in this sense "death" isn't a bad thing because serving christ is inevitable whether you're merely unconscious dust or a fully conscious being. the earth may even seem conscious, but that's because it's led by conscious beings and not all of them are very nice.

god fully surrenders himself and all his powers to his creation and it was meant to be natural for us to surrender it back (thus the power flows like blood in our body). yet when we selfishly keep the power to ourself-we self destruct (like a poison or clogged artery). this problem can kill us unless we lay it all to christ, accepting that he died in our place, becoming the antidote for our mortal spiritual disease. when we accept christ, we believe that our old "self" dies along with him and in his resurrection we become a newly restored soul for eternity, the true self in christ that god intended us to be, for when god sees us, he sees christ, his anointed (spirit-filled) child. we aren't really anointed ones if we don't follow the anointed one only begotten son of god. god anoints us with his spirit through christ, we don't anoint ourselves. god is the origin of every healthy vibration of energy and we often distort it by doing our own thing (too much self esteem).

lowering "self esteem" shouldn't be discouraged because its necessary for us to accept grace. in fact, if we accept grace, we allow it to die and have it resurrected to its proper place, which is in christ. this death of self or even the idea of it can feel painful, but it's only because we held it for so long. we only make it more painful by believing that you're too weak of a sinner to surrender yourself to christ, which is another misunderstanding of grace and makes no sense. god's infinite grace is sufficient for us and with his cooperation (through christ) we also have the power to defeat sin and death. do we not know that it is only when we are weak, we become strong? when we reject christ's power for us we're subject to our weaknesses and often try to live up to the principles of love on our own. in self there is no inherent life and there really is nothing good to esteem when christ is missing. every soul is precious and was worth dying for and god is faithful to us by giving us the opportunity to come back to him. the only condition to grace is that you still have to choose whether to take it or leave it. when we constantly resist god's spirit of love, his word will make no effect to us. the only unforgivable sin is to deny god's power of love and forgiveness to change lives. if this disturbs you, then you're safe because it means you're still being moved by the spirit.

[Nesskissabe]

i dont like that idea at all, humans have to give their own lives meanings and boost their own self esteems and not expect some fictional entity (until proven as fact) like god to do it for them.

[cepAceryTem]

dear rocky,
this a fine description of anthroposophical markers to help guide through these times. i recall ra spoke of "lucifer". this article details ahriman also. nina

"good and evil

to sum up this description of the triad of spiritual streams: the conflicts of human and spiritual life do not derive from a simple, two-sided war between good and evil. it was one of the great insights of steiner to renew the ancient teaching of the "golden mean", of good as the middle way between opposing extremes. -- lucifer is too warm, too flighty, too unstable; he inspires human fanaticism, false mysticism, hot-bloodedness, and the tendency to flee earthly reality for hallucinatory pleasures. ahriman is too cold, too hard, too rigid; he tries to make people dry, prosaic, philistine, materialistic in thought and in deed -- and hardens what would be healthily mobile, supple thoughts, feelings, and even bodies. christ, as the exemplar of the regular gods, represents the middle way between the too-much and the too-little, holding the opposites in balance -- and leading mankind to find the healthy middle way. seen this way, lucifer and ahriman are not purely evil; they both bring to human and earthly evolution forces that are needed for good, healthy development and the fulfillment of the gods' plans. evil results only when events get out of balance and run to extremes. -- however, neither do lucifer and ahriman simply oppose each other; in a sense, they work together in opposition to the gods' intent for evolution; they both work to prevent mankind and the earth from progressing together to the new jupiter. lucifer draws human spirits away from earthly embodiment toward his own psychic-spiritual "planet" of light; ahriman pushes the individual human spirit out of the human organism and away from the earth, so that only a hardened, mechanized, ghostly human organism, devoid of free individuality and living an instinctive-but-clever animalistic species-life remains on the hardened "cosmic slag" of the earth (surrounded with old moon forces). mankind's rightful task for the present is to lead lives of healthy, progressive alternation between the earthly and the cosmic (life, death, and rebirth), so as to lead the earth over to new jupiter. -- the profound mystery of evil is that in a higher sense, in the long run, it serves the good. not to imply that we would be justified in doing evil with the rationalization that good would result. "...it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" [matthew 18;vii]

note: this is a deep subject, and i am not altogether sure of my grasp of it. my impression is that steiner was developing and expanding his insights during his career, so that reading just one of his treatments of the subject will not give the whole picture. the picture i have drawn so far is this:

the true picture of the workings of evil might be even more complex than outlined above. steiner did make some statements which might be interpreted as indicating a third stream of spirits of opposition: the "asuras" (a borrowed eastern term), which are retarded archai who work to destroy the human "i", the ego itself. the asuras might be agents of the actual antichrist, the sun-demon, known to occultism as "sorat" (or "sorath"). in some passages steiner does identify the apocalyptic beast 666 as sorat, not clearly differentiating the ahrimanic and soratic principals. while it seems true that the numerological interpretation of the hebrew spelling of "sorat" gives the number 666, still the position of sorat in relation to lucifer and ahriman is not altogether clear (to this writer). a possible solution to this question might follow from the imagery of the apocalypse: michael casts the dragon out of heaven; immediately afterwards arise the two "beasts" -- the first from the sea (lucifer) and the second from the land (ahriman). thus lucifer and ahriman appear on earth as two beings or principles, but they are the progeny of the one spirit of opposition -- the dragon -- in heaven. if we identify the dragon, the antichrist, as sorat, we can picture lucifer and ahriman as the left and right hands of sorat. christ strives to hold lucifer and ahriman in balance so that they serve the good, while sorat strives to keep them out of balance, so that they work for destruction. while lucifer seeks to draw the human "i", the ego to his own planet, and ahriman seeks to harden the earth and the human organism so that no ego can live in a human on earth, sorat -- through the asuras -- seeks to destroy the ego itself, along with the earth. sorat uses lucifer and ahriman as spirits of seduction to mask his own true intention of pure destruction. and sorat manifests in social evolution as pure destruction, especially in the wars and mass murders of our century. (some suggest that he manifests in the human organism as the destroyer of the immune system -- the so-called "aids".) thus, the true picture might look something like this: "
(diagrams did not copy)

http://www.geocities.com/athens/sparta/1105/ahriman.htm

[Yartonbler]

actually, the gods can't boost our esteem because we're already born with esteem. you can't have more love than the infinite love already given to you. it's up to us to consciously accept it and take responsibility for it by sharing god's love. we don't have to create a meaning or purpose for our life because we already have one (to serve others). god isn't well known to us because we humans try to define who god is and limit him to our standards. your "god" will be nothing more than a man-made entity if you do that.

to prove that any entity or thing exists, one does require need to believe that the apparent "evidences" actually proves it. faith in the unseen depends on how you view the obvious. we can't prove god is more than a cosmic force and a being of infinite love if we can't see such love in nature. we're here are under a self-induced curse of service-to-self and it's putting us all to sleep "death". in death there is no conciousness. the only way to break the curse is to serve the creator in faith and appreciation of life through the grace of love.