It is hard for me to speak about the conclusion I came to after 40 years of reading various philosophies, that people simply did not understand with any real certainty how the mind itself was designed, or how it generally functions. In ancient times, they simply did not have the language to describe what was going on inside the human mind, or how the physical chemistry of the body and the mind affect each other. We had ideas and generalities, but never with the specificity we have today.
It is hard for a lot of people to grasp this. They think that the ancient people who wrote about breathing, yoga, enlightenment, and compassion had arrived at some complete understanding. That is simply not the case. The evidence is not in how they lived. It is in the words they used, words that became everlasting teachings.
The Buddha spoke about the nature of suffering but did not quite understand that suffering was part of the design in the first place. The very nature of our anxiety system was designed by evolution to help us survive in a difficult world. As we come to understand anxiety, the hormones, the vagus nerve, and the different lobes of the brain, it becomes very obvious why we suffer. There is no mystery.
If we understand that suffering is connected to various forms of unregulated anxiety, then we understand that the end of suffering must come through deeper and deeper states of relaxation, not sleep states, not states where we fail to act when necessary, but relaxed states where we are not reactionary, not triggered, not activating the wrong part of the brain. We can take time to think through our concerns and, when necessary, act to fix them rather than simply react.
Awareness of the nature of your mind, your unique character flaws, and your addictions is not easy. When we turn our attention to these things, they have an immediate impact on our self,esteem. Self,esteem is really just a word we use to describe how we measure and care for ourselves across all facets of life. It also has a great deal to do with how we talk to ourselves. Grandiosity and low self,esteem are the two extreme ends of what the mind looks like in an anxiety state, always judging, always measuring, never at rest.