Children in the Forest

This is a story of two children in the forest. These two children each have an idea of the things they have seen in the forest. In their ideas, each one believes they have found the most wondrous things within the forest. Each child knows this to be the truth, for they have seen it with their own eyes. One has seen the large rock that glitters in the sun and this is most beauteous to it, and it is amazed and finds wonder in its discovery.

The other has found the cool brook that winds and wends its way through the forest, and within the brook are many fishes, and small things swimming, and this child finds this to be most wondrous.

Each child holds a perception of what they believe, and each child is so certain that they have seen the most wondrous part of the forest, that each is unwilling to accept that there is some other part that is most wondrous also.

When the two begin to speak to each other one says, “I have found the most beauteous thing in the forest.” And the other one listens, knowing that what must have been found is the stream, for that is surely the most beauteous thing. And when the other speaks of its rock and what it has found, the one who has seen the stream thinks, “You have not seen the most beauteous. That is not the most beauteous.” And that one speaks out that that is not the most beautiful thing in the forest, that the most beautiful thing is what I have found.

If the first one who has seen the rock begins to doubt that what t has seen is beautiful, is that low self-esteem? And if the second child insists that its stream is more beautiful, is that high self-esteem?

To judge either of these beliefs will most likely be untrue. It is not the certainty and the surety of the steps of the one you look at that describes esteem. It is the understanding of the steps and why they were taken.

If the second child, the one that has seen the stream — looks upon this situation, and instead of saying it is not the rock that is beautiful but the stream. If it said, “I wish to see this rock you have seen, for I have found the stream to be most beauteous. Perhaps we may both see both things.” Then you may look upon that and say that child has self-esteem, that is confidence. It has looked and it has an understanding that it does not know all things yet. But it also understands that for its purpose it knows the stream. It knows that part which was its purpose and it is able to change, not having to have its stream be the most beautiful, but willing to accept that there can be more than its singular view of life.

That, in truth, is the confidence that you seek. That, in truth, is the self-esteem, the ability of you to say that the part that you are involved in, you have your involvement with. That you can see it and know it for yourself. That you can see it and know it as part of your life. It does not have to be the same as someone else’s.

Each day you allow your self-esteem to be attacked, because you are not creating it. And that is the most wondrous thing of self-esteem. No one else can make a judgment of your self-esteem. Others can look upon it. Others can judge it. They can say you have it and you are a victim of low self-esteem, or they may say you are a victim of high self-esteem. But only you can have self-esteem. Only you can know it, and that is created by the amount you are willing to estimate that you are part of whatever is involved around you — how much of you you will give to it and how much you will receive from it.

You have a concept in your society that self-esteem is a mark of overachievers and underachievers. But I will give you a thought, overachievers and underachievers are both that way from fear. They are not that way from any other thing.

Those who are overachievers are afraid that they are not achieving or not doing enough and that they will not be seen by others to be valuable.

You are not less because you are not as much as another thinks you should be. You are only less because you are not what you think you should be.

Those that are underachievers are very often afraid of all the pain they have felt from their perceived mistakes, and having those things they have done be perceived by others as failures, as not of value.

If you can perceive that you have failed because another has said you have failed, you are giving up your ability to estimate your value. And that becomes low self-esteem.

If you look to others and have them judge you, whether you have done enough or not, and you do not stop until you have someone else tell you that you have done enough, is that any greater esteem and estimate of self? Is it truly higher self-esteem to be stubborn in your life, that you must be right and another must be wrong?

It is most wondrous that you use this thing of self-esteem in your world as a way to justify stubbornness. You perceive very often that one who has very high self-esteem is one that always perceives themself right, that they have a certain confidence that they are right. But yet it does not occur to you he may have to defend being right because he is so afraid of being wrong. That is most wondrous also.

Balanced place is that you can never truly be wrong. You can not be attached in a balanced way to the events around you. You can not be involved as much it is that perhaps balance would say that you should be. You can perhaps not give as much of your energy as you have committed to do and agreed to do. But you cannot be wrong. You may be part of something or you may be apart from it, but you still are not wrong.

The esteem that you hold for yourself must be the estimate of you with relationship to all other things around you.

So, I will give you most wondrous thing. If you are afraid to join closely with another, that fear comes from an uncertainty. That uncertainty has grown out of a place where you do not know your part of whatever it is that you are involved with. If you simply do one thing, and that is to look upon your life and say how closely you will be involved with it, then you, as the child in the forest, will not look upon the rock as something less, but will be willing to accept that perhaps the rock is beautiful too. And you will not be like the one that looks upon the rock and cannot accept that the stream is something of value. You will be willing to look at this situation and say, “Is this not most wondrous? Not only can I have the rock but I may explore the stream, I can give myself that experience as well. I do not have to be locked into one form of beauty. I may see many.”

You do not have to do that from the doubt that your view is the right view, you may do it from the joy and the ability of you to see more than one thing.

The child part of you that experienced the thing that was fearful and angering, forever judges things that are similar to that. That judgment causes you to have an estimate of yourself at a given moment in your life, that is somewhat less than what you may estimate your involvement can be. You estimate that the closest you can be to another person is perhaps only so close. And that is because being this close to them has been painful in your past. So you estimate that while it looks like you could be this close that it will be painful, you try to guess what will happen. And in your guessing of what will happen, very often you keep yourself away from the true experiences of your life.

The child then looks in the forest and guesses that if he sees the stream that he may be right, or he may be wrong. The child that says, “I know the rock is the most beautiful because I found it.” is the child that does not have the experience of both the rock and the stream.

Life is not a thing to be solved. It is a most wondrous mystery to be enjoyed. It is place to play. But you hold the judgments against yourself, and those judgments make you have an estimate that you cannot be of value to another. Or make you have an estimate that the only value you can be is to yourself.

In this thing then, to find a place where you can estimate yourself in truth to the true nature of your involvement, is to find a place where you can stand in the forest and accept that you do not want to see that of the stream, that you are satisfied with the rock. And in speaking in that way perhaps that child may speak, “Yes, but I find the rock so fascinating to me now that the stream does not bring pleasure. The thought of the stream at this time is a distraction from the pleasure that I find in the rock. Later perhaps I will have the stream. I will not say it is not beautiful, I will only say that I will wait for that form of beauty.”

Your estimate then may also say, “No, I will not be involved in that. My life is full as it is. I do not need more, I do not want more. I do not desire more. I wish to have it as it is for this time, but that does not mean at some other time I will not have more.” You are not less because you are not as much as another thinks you should be. You are only less because you are not what you think you should be.

That is the time when you become unconfident of yourself — when you perceive that you could be more, when you perceive that you want to be more, when you perceive that you desire to be more — and yet you take no steps because of fear that to be more will be more burden upon you.

So, good self-estimate is that which is the ability to look upon a thing and to say, “Yes, I will be involved in that — yes I will, or no I will not.” To stop, to be in that which is in some amount of your own confidence, to confide in yourself that is not what you desire to do, that that is not what you want. Very often it is that you think in your life that because another says you should be a certainty of way that you must be that way. That happens more as a result of doubt of what you should be involved in, than doubt of self. It happens more as a form of believing that all things that you are, are things that are imposed upon you from outside of you. It is most wondrous. All things that you are, are what you will allow yourself to join with.