This is really important to me. This is truth. To me. It didn’t use to be but I made a conscious choice to make it so and now it feels like it’s ingrained in my DNA. Because is nothing but a thought you keep thinking, So choose your thoughts wisely.
Everything that isn’t love is fear. Or as A Course in Miracles puts it:
Every loving thought is true. Everything else is but an appeal for healing and help, regardless of the form it takes.
To me this means that all Trump ever really needed was feeling truly loved for who he is. Or that a violent person could change by a warm hug. Or that the mean boss is just feeling really insecure. Because only hurt people, hurt people. And healed people, heal people.
This does not excuse any kind of evil acts. But it does explain a lot. Another way I love to think about it it:
I will never ever really know if people are doing the best they can, but believing so sure does make my life better.
This has been my experience. When I believe the best about others, my life improves. I realize that they treating me bad has very little to do with me and a lot to do with their own pain. Glennon Doyle always knows how to express things:
When I feel someone's been unkind, I know that all that just happened is they felt the hot loneliness. But they don't know how to be still with it. So they just treat it like a hot potato and pass it on to the next person.
But pain is not a hot potato. Pain is a traveling professor. And it just goes and nocks on everyone's door, and the smartest people I know are the people that say come in, and don't leave until you've taught me what I need to know.
This doesn’t mean you stay and take shit. This doesn’t mean you don’t have boundaries. This doesn’t mean that bad behavior is okay. It just means that right now, there’s a lot of fear in the world. And that the best way we can support each other, the world and ourselves is by spreading light. Martin Luther King Jr sure knew what he was talking about:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I know this perspective is provocative to some. But it’s my absolute experience that my life quality increases exponentially the more I remember this. What does this bring up in you?
With all my love,
Helena