> Self-esteem can't come from outside
I do have to disagree here. Self-esteem ultimately must come from outside...just not from other people. As a Christian I believe that self-acceptance is rooted in knowing that I have intrinsic worth to God irrespective of what other people think of me. It's not about who I am or what I have or haven't done, but about who God is and what He's done for all of us.
Coming from that, the idea of the acceptance from God is a concept you have in yourself.
Maybe I got this wrong, intellectualizing spirituality is usually a terrible way to share about it.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2009/11/3...
1. In Christianity, God is "present" everywhere only in the sense that there is no possible circumstance in which God would fail to have complete knowledge and power to act. We (Christians) do not believe that God is a sort of ether, like the Force in Star Wars, that contains or flows through everything.
2. Christianity teaches that God is not a material being, so you're correct in saying that God is not "inside, or in any location", because this would be category error, analogous to "what does the color yellow taste like?". Nevertheless, God is "external" to me in the ontological sense: "I am not (a part of) God". This is analogous to saying "my love for fast cars is 'outside' my love for ice cream". If this and (1) were not the case, absurdities would result, like tall people having more God in them than short people.
Given the above, I think projo is correct. My self-esteem is grounded in knowing that God -- a maximally great being -- created me, and loves me enough to submit himself to poverty, hunger, humiliation, and crucifixion on a Roman cross to fix what I broke. To those who "get it", this produces love, humility, and a sense of self-worth.
That's why I'm working on a sort of abstract framework of being that includes a religion with a minimal number of prescribed things to believe in with a goal of self-development. Cultivating love, humility, self-esteem, etc. are all decoupled within the framework/religion to allow people to pick & choose only the parts they need.
The value of an idealized personality we choose to believe we can strive toward is to tap into and/or guide our intuitions in the moment, especially in times of internal/external conflict.
The value of recognizing/acknowledging the existence of uncontrollable higher powers in the world/universe is to instill humility & define one's own limits/boundaries.