Kim Michaels - The Spiritual Road to Self-Esteem

I wrote this book because those of us who are spiritual seekers face a double challenge when it comes to developing self-esteem. One aspect of our predicament is that many of us have been ostracized or persecuted because of our beliefs. As a result we start out with a self-esteem deficit that is larger than many of the people around us have. The other challenge we face is that we do not seek self-esteem the way most people in our materialistic culture do. We dont buy into the idea that our worth depends on the size of our cars, houses, body parts or bank accounts. Consequently, we need to find a spiritual approach to self-esteem and that is precisely what this book will describe.

I will outline a systematic, gradual path that anyone can follow. This path will take you through the seven steps or stages that most of us follow on the spiritual path. By understanding these stages you will be able to work through your current stage more quickly and make faster progress towards a deeper, more genuine form of self-esteem.

I hope this book will help you attain what I see as the driving force behind spiritual growth, namely breakthrough experiences. What is a breakthrough experience? We live in a society and time when rational, analytical, linear thinking is considered the answer to all of our problems. A breakthrough experience is completely beyond the rational, intellectual and linear mind.

Over many years, I have observed thousands of people who attempted to deal with spirituality and spiritual growth by using the intellectual mind. We also have the ability to step outside the rational mind and have an experience that is completely nonlinear and simply cannot be dealt with analytically. I am not hereby saying that the rational mind is an enemy of spiritual growth. The rational mind is a very necessary tool, both for practical living and for spiritual pursuits. The rational mind can indeed help us increase our understanding of spiritual concepts. This can, if used correctly, set a foundation for what really helps us move forward, namely breakthrough experiences. Such breakthroughs can happen only if we do not get trapped in the analytical mind, wanting to force everything into the kind of mental boxes used by this mind. In order to make full use of a tool, you also have to know the limitations of the tool so you know when to put it down and reach for another tool.

This is also true for the analytical mind. Trying to attain self-esteem exclusively through the intellect will inevitably put you in a blind alley. The simple reason is that the intellect can argue for and against anything. If you constantly have to defend your sense of self-esteem, then you do not have true self-esteem. You will never get beyond the dilemma of the intellect unless you acknowledge that there are some things in life and on the spiritual path that simply cannot be grasped by the analytical mind. If you want to experience these nonlinear phenomena, you must stop analyzing and open your mind to a direct experience, namely what the ancients called gnosis. The concept means oneness between the knower and the known.

A breakthrough experience is when you step outside of, silence or neutralize the rational mind. It is when you have a sense of being connected to a greater mind outside your own self, something that you cannot define but that nevertheless feels completely real. You feel like a new perspective, even a new world, has opened up to you. You feel like you are seeing things the way they are for the first time. You recognize a truth that you know is real, even though you cannot explain why in a rational, linear wayyou just know that you know it. You feel like your life or consciousness is shifting and you know certain things will never be the same. You know you have touched the sublime and that you are flowing with the ever-transcending stream we call life.