Why Do I Project Onto You?
Q: Why Do I Project Onto You?
A: Well, we all do this actually. Can you see the me in you and can I see the you in me? Maybe that is the better question. I’ve been reflecting on the deep stretches of time and space that take us further into the landscape of our relationships; the good ones, the hard ones, the everything-in-between ones. My beyond blood family has always taught me that relationship is a path of awakening and recently I’ve had more personal insights revealed through the mirror of other people in my life…my favorite teachers.
On blame: This can run hard, cold and unconscious. Are we ready to own our own pain? If and when we get beyond the stages of blaming each other for our personal suffering, new internal worlds open up. Worlds of freedom, liberation and possibility beckon us into new levels of human experience called self-responsibility. This does not diminish the fact that we are each responsible and that our actions and words, even emotions and thoughts, can have lasting and impacting effects on everyone in our lives. And sometimes I think about the notion that not only canthey have an impact but that they actually do, from the subtle to the profound. Imagine that wherever you are, as a human on this planet, your thoughts and what you choose to do with those thoughts as you process them through feeling or overthinking them into obsession, actually affect me and vice versa. A myth reads that in superior cosmic races, incriminating thoughts are put on trial as that is as far as their governing laws permit the thought seeds to grow. It is then intercepted before the action is birthed which would be the thought in its grossest form. Obviously, we live in a reality where our thoughts run wild and thus so do our actions. I digress. What would happen if we no longer blamed each other? Simply that?
On projection: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all? Why do we project not only our pain but also our power? Our beauty? Our strengths? Our utter weaknesses and faults?
Maybe it is in the stars…or maybe we can reclaim ourselves through learning more of who we are in the reflection of other without giving our power away. If I can look at you and own my fears and concerns, stay true to myself, and grow through our dynamic with love, then perhaps I can step beyond the constraints of projection and put this inevitable current habitual behavior to good use.
On both: I’ve both blamed and been blamed, I’ve projected and been projected upon. Freedom for me has come from various veins of understanding around all of these experiences. First, self-responsibility is my only source of power. Removing myself from victim mentality, even if I was actually “victimized” has been key. Secondly, as having previously been married to a “spiritual” leader, I was, by default also taking up real estate on a high pedestal in the minds of many of our students. Once I “fell” from grace in those same minds and they were figuratively attempting to drag my reputation through the muddy terrain of social media, I was gifted a deep insight into the false nature of projection and the power within it.
I love to envision all of my relationships as a path of awakening. I witness your beauty, faults and strengths as a mirror to my own and learn more and more about who I am and who I am becoming in the process of us. Thank you for this.
