What we want most of all is to love. Because that is what we actually are; love itself. In a world were people seem very far from loving each other this is good to remember.

When we feel we want somebody to love us, it is mostly because we want to be safe enough to love back. We want to feel safe enough to be as open and vulnerable as we can be, so love can come through us. Because it feels so amazingly right and good when love flows through us freely.

When somebody is loving towards us, we often feel good about ourselves, but actually it doesn’t say anything about us. It only says something about the person who loves. And what it says is this; this person loves him or herself.

When we are young we are like little puppies. We just want to run to everybody we see and love them up. But then we get hurt along the way and hide more and more of ourselves. We develop this shame about parts of us and try to pretend those parts don’t exist. We try to be totally perfect, not needy and never jealous.

The way back home to puppyhood is by loving ourselves, all parts of us. This asks us to do some digging and going inward with our attention, and probably lots of feeling and crying.

We realize those hidden parts are absolutely innocent, like little babies that got hurt, when we make deep, open contact with them. Then we want to be as sweet and supportive to those parts as if we are their mother or father. Which is actually pretty accurate, cause they are ours to take care of.

When we hold ourselves in that way, we find that the more we accept ourselves with all our humanness, the more we love others. And anytime somebody triggers us, and we have judgment, it is clear that we got touched in a part we can’t love yet in ourselves.

Life is always a projection of our relationship with ourselves, and always a projection of our relationship with love. Because in the end that is all that we are.