Esther and Jerry Hicks: Jerry: Well, I guess I usually talk about my own experiences because they are the ones where I’m surest about what happened and how I felt. I remember that, as a little child, I had such self-confidence…
I didn’t know a stranger. I felt capable of accomplishing just about anything. But then, as the years went by, I began to accept the criticism of others, I began to feel criticism toward myself, and I lost that self-confidence. I became almost introverted.
Today, when I see little children coming in with that bravado and high self-confidence, I remember feeling that way. But then, little by little, I see them get what I call “chopped down” as their self-confidence diminishes. Would you clarify why we experience this erosion of self-appreciation and how we can prevent it? And how can we uplift others to a higher degree of self-appreciation?
Abraham: You are right—it is really only through your own experiences that you can understand anything, for this reason: Your life has caused you to expand, to launch rockets into your Vibrational Vortex of Creation; but true knowledge, or understanding, is experienced only when you allow yourself to catch up with and merge with those rockets. No knowledge is ever experienced by your trying to catch up with rockets that have been launched by others. That is why words do not teach. It is only your own life experience that teaches.
That is why you are so fiercely independent in the beginning: not wanting to take other people’s word for things, wanting your own experience, wanting to make your own decisions, wanting your own freedom to choose. None of that wanting ever recedes or becomes less. In fact, it becomes more! The reason why the bravado that you are born with usually fades is because you allow yourself to become distracted from your Vortex. In other words, you allow others to convince you that it is more important to you to pay attention to how they feel than how you feel.
Every emotion that you feel is an indication of your relationship with your Vortex. When you feel confident, that means that your current thought is a perfect match to the way the Source within you, from inside your Vortex of Creation, is feeling about you. When you feel embarrassed, that means that your current thought does not match the way the Source within you is feeling about you. So, when parents or teachers or friends project an attitude of disapproval toward you (in an effort to evoke a more-pleasing-to-them behavior from you), if you respond to their disapproval by modifying your thoughts, words, or behavior to please them, you have distracted yourself from your own true Guidance and from your own true Source of confidence.
And so, it is not that your self-confidence erodes, but rather that you are disallowing the continual replenishment of it. As you seek approval from them, you are distracted from your fountain of Source Energy renewal. Again, “looking for love in all the wrong places.”
For you to uplift others, you must direct them to their own fountain of replenishment. You do not help them by asking them to respond to your approval or disapproval. Many people think that the way to uplift others is by showering them with your own approval. But if they are looking to you for the refreshment of their being and you have other things to which you want to give your attention, they will be in trouble. Or if they are looking to you and you yourself are not connected to your own Stream of replenishment, so you have nothing to give them, they are again in trouble. But if you help them understand that they have a Source of refreshment that is independent of all other humans, and that they have only to understand the nature of their own Vortex of Creation and align with it often, now you have offered them true upliftment that will serve them, independently, all of the days of their lives. To help you get into the Vortex, you can use our new Getting Into The Vortex Cards.
