You may think that your perceived need for being loved to a greater degree is from your need for more love. It may be from your need for proof of love. You may have set a quota. You may have imposed it.
If you knew how loved and worthy of love you are, you would not look for proof. From your observation that you have less love directed toward you than you require and deserve, you express your need to control. Making demands shows your need to tell the world and the people in it what they owe you.
You become like a dunning bill collector. With love, it is not for you to stamp your foot for more love nor to whine for more. Love demanded is self-serving. Love is not self-serving. Love is self-giving. Love has to give of itself or it is not love. It is something else.
Am I saying that the world has shown you the favor you desire and deserve? It has not. Spare yourself, and certainly do not think that I have withheld love from you, beloveds. If you think that, you are holding a grudge. It is not for you to hold a grudge, big or small. When you hold a grudge against Me, as sometimes is done, you are begrudging yourself.
On the Human level, you cannot ask for love to be given to you according to your assessment for it. The less loved you feel – this is a sure sign that you have been withholding love. The remedy is for you to give more love.
You say you do not feel the love in your heart. Then help someone else feel more love in their heart. Do a kindness that melts their heart into love. If you must feel there is some debt involved with love, then consider the debt yours.
Begin to appreciate love more. It is not that you need to be appreciated more. It is that you are to appreciate more. Appreciate every little thing in life. Appreciate every event and every person who plays in it.
If you were watching a play on stage (which, in fact, you are), you would not be so dismayed at characters who parade their flaws. You would not take their flaws personally. You would see an actor playing a part on stage. You would know that his strutting before you was an orchestrated series of events. It has to be orchestrated one way or another, or there would be no play presented and there would be no play to watch.
Perhaps there is someone on stage who stars for a while and someone else who has a walk-on part, yet each part has its preciousness. Even the villain twirling his moustache is for you to enjoy. You know he is just playing a part. He does not play the same part in every situation. On the stage he is villainous, and at home he sets his children on his lap.
Whatever part any actor plays on the stage, however he may portray himself and however you may perceive him, he is more than what you see. He is not only the character he presents on stage. There is always more than meets the eye.
If a character is difficult, it is true that he needs to reveal more of himself for you to see. On the other hand, if he does not reveal more, all you can do is expand your vision.
The most difficult characters on stage are there for your perception. Even if they don’t know you are in the audience, they are playing the part they play for you. It is, after all, a presentation that they are involved in. They play their part to the hilt. And so, you applaud. You applaud them for being on Earth and showing you a drama that somehow you are involved in and that you are free to understand in more ways than one.