It is what we all want. What we’re all looking for whether we’re aware of it or not. When we haven’t received this, or don’t receive it, our defenses come out. We react. We defend. We project our feeling of lack onto another by assuming they’re wrong, bad, mean, etc (insert story here). How we feel about ourselves(which is usually how our own inner critic treats ourselves without words ever being spoken and often we are completely unaware this is happening because it can be so very subtle) is ultimately how we treat others, and what we project out onto the world around us.
What if instead of assuming the worst about others (which is really a statement about how we feel about ourselves, as a result of not feeling like we got the love, support, or acceptance we needed (whether we actually got it or not), we assumed the best. What if instead of meeting others with doubt, cynicism, projection of whatever negative version of them we’ve got cooking up in our minds, we met them with the unconditional love, acceptance, and support we so desperately want for ourselves. The unconditional love, support, and acceptance that is already what we are, and they are, at the most fundamental level (the illusion of separate exists only in the mind).
Might we halt an unconscious cycle of blind mind-perpetuated negativity? What if we treated others like we too know that everyone is doing their best. That everyone has had some type of hardship or trauma that we may or may not see, that has caused them to feel lack and deficiency. And that usually people we perceive as difficult are fighting that uphill battle of feeling lack, void, deficient, unworthy.
What if we started acting the way we wanted to be met by others. First toward ourselves (as we cannot meet others with that that does not already exist within), then to those around us. The deepest most fundamental love there is IS unconditional. True change begins at home. It never begins “out there” with others changing as we feel they ought to change. It begins at home. This home. The home within.