Once, the Angels told me that our need for love and respect makes us weak. I often remember this and witness it frequently. Due to this need for love and respect, we have expectations, distorted perceptions, and reactions to people and situations that cause us to suffer.
The greater this need, the harder it is to navigate relationships. The more vulnerable we are on this topic, the more we will notice and judge in people. The way they speak, their tone of voice, words, body language. With the wrong perception, we will see something in a situation that isn’t there. For example, someone’s tone might seem threatening when the reality is something entirely different. Or someone’s way of communicating might seem disrespectful, yet the truth is something else entirely.
More than once, I have found myself in moments where I created a story in my head that had nothing to do with reality but everything to do with my wounds, past, beliefs. And then, in something innocuous, I see monsters that don’t exist. It’s not easy to admit to ourselves that we live with a distorted perception. Nor is it easy sometimes to take full responsibility for what happens to us in life. But it’s the only way to achieve complete freedom.
With Angels, I learned something else—as long as I don’t have peace regarding a situation or person, I haven’t fully taken responsibility for myself, my feelings, and my reality. I recognize that peace and know that when I’m at peace, I’ve done the best I could and knew, and that is more than enough. And that I am enough, that I’m okay just as I am.
Accepting ourselves with everything we are creates that peace. As long as it isn’t so, there is that need to receive it from someone or something.
It’s also easy to attach ourselves to praise, someone else’s accolades. We are free when we accept everything that happens around us as information without reacting to it. As long as we react, we are not free and create stories in our heads that are far from reality as it is. Whether we are attached to what we consider negative or what we see as positive.
The fact is that we are all good, bad, saints, and villains to some degree. As long as we live in duality, that is how it is. And so we strive for enlightenment, awakening in Unity. Because we KNOW that duality is an illusion. Everything we live is a projection of the mind—we are literally like a TV broadcasting some program from the background. And with all we know and what science is proving today, we still fail the simple test. Because we have a great need to be loved, accepted, respected. At the same time, we bestow the same only under certain conditions, with certain rules. Aren’t we hypocrites? Yes, we are. But we are also just human. We live in our movies, some of us directing crime stories, some romances, some adventure films or fairy tales. And we believe in these films, immersed in them, believing someone else is directing and producing the movie we call our life.
Yes, my life. How is it possible to call something mine and believe someone else can control it at the same time?
Responsibility liberates. Responsibility for direction, production, and everything else that creates the movie. And detachment. Detachment arises when everything we expect from life and the people in it we give to ourselves and are ready to give to others without reservation.
Love and respect start with me towards you, there is no other way. My expression of love and respect may not appeal to a mind that expects me to speak the same language. We easily condemn differences. Because we don’t understand them. Because we fear them. Because they make us uncomfortable. And today, we wage wars due to these differences. We hate, we judge, we label someone or something.
In the end, everything is just information. How we react to something or someone is our responsibility. Always and continuously. Simple. It’s not always easy. But the path of loving, respecting is not cheerful spirituality. On this path, we sweat, have blisters, feel hunger and thirst, are ugly and filters-free, and we fall… Yet as long as we are willing to get up again and move towards it, I am certain our destination is secured for all of us. Awakening, enlightenment, being in Unity in one way or another.
So next time you believe someone doesn’t love or respect you, or hasn’t given you what they should have, or is wrong and doesn’t deserve your love and respect—pause. Let go of the need to be loved and respected, to be understood. Give all of that to yourself. The reward is peace. Love. Loving yourself and everyone around you regardless of circumstances. The reward is the stability that comes from within, from the awareness that everything is okay, that you are okay and that everyone around you is okay. And then this simple sentence becomes a reflection of practical, deep spirituality: It’s okay.
It’s okay.
With love,
