“I never want to forget that my spouse, with whatever faults he or she may have, is a child of God, and is therefore entitled to my respect and consideration.” (ODAT, August 19)
Being children of God entails a number of related ideas:
- We are spirit (therefore temporarily housed in bodies)
- We are not bodies
- We are all related to each other
- We are all on the same level
- We are of incalculable value
- Our life has a purpose
This neatly takes care of the questions of value, identity, and purpose.
When I feel ‘low self-worth’, I’m really estimating myself to have low worth.
This is not a psychological problem but an authority problem.
I’m presented with the idea that I’m valuable. I either suspend my own judgement in deference to this or continue to fly the flag of my own constructed state.
As soon as I admit that my ‘low self-worth’ represents a fundamental, ontological error in understanding of the universe and my place in it, bang goes the low self-worth. Mine did not need to be unravelled psychologically—in fact attempts to do just this failed spectacularly—but dissolved through the recognition I was simply wrong. To continue to believe in my own negative self-assessment was to assert myself as the Great Judger of Things and People. The problem is moral and spiritual, not psychological. The psychological domain was merely the domain the symptom manifested; it was not the source. The source was moral and spiritual.
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Regarding respect and consideration:
One can’t be too courteous in one’s personal interactions, whatever the message that must be delivered or action that must be taken.
It is embarrassing how much more there always remains to learn about such courtesy.