Projection is a defense against fear. It’s not a decision but a reaction; it’s a conditioned response to a perception of circumstance. It’s not personal, is what I’m trying to say.
Noticing projection is healing, and is all we can do. If you notice the projection, and you know it’s a defense against fear, then you can use the projection to learn about that fear and decide: is projection the best defense here? Is defense even necessary at all?
If you see the futility of the defense over and over, then the illusion of its utility begins to lose its stranglehold. And so long as you don’t just adopt a new projection, and you don’t panic, then you’ll be able to look at the fear.
The woman at the well points to Jesus, right? But I am saying, she points to the projection of Jesus and calls it a projection. She brings your attention to the fear because undoing that at its source is the only way to remember peace and the Love of God for all Creation. The woman at the well wants you to be happy, and knows that happiness is possible. But you have to be ready to listen. You have to want the peace more than you want to avoid the fear that obscures the peace.
I do not think that looking at fear is easy. Nor do I think it can meaningfully take place outside of relationships that are devoted to look at it, in order to undo it. A relationship that investigates every defense against it, every pathology affecting it, and every fantasy obscuring it is holy. But it’s hard work, and unsettling. Heaven is given but it lies on the far side of healing many of us aren’t even aware that we need.
Years pass. Lifetimes even.
There’s something else in that story that we need to be clear about. The woman at the well discloses the way to see Jesus, and this is real. But in the story, she is not well-received in her community. In the eyes of the world she is a sinner; in the eyes of the world she is outside the accepted order. In the eyes of the world, she cannot speak for God. God would not allow it.
So the first lie that we have to penetrate is the lie that we can safely ignore her. The first illusion is that we can dismiss her – the woman at the well confounds us by challenging our sense of order, lawfulness, propriety and reason. The nature of the threat she poses – which is what allows us to ignore her – is also a defense.
Therefore, ask: who do I not want to hear from? Who is excluded – so much so I’m not even aware they’re excluded? Whose absence are you allowed not to care about? Who, when they open they mouth to speak, are you allowed to close your ears to? Who can you dismiss?
Where – in your life, here and now – do you practice the lovelessness of “I get it and you don’t?”
Our projection of Jesus is a defense against remembering the Love of God. He does not want that! He wants to be – he made himself – a sign of the Love of God. Paradoxically, when you see him in this way – when he truly does point to the Love of God – then there is nothing left for him or for you to do. You pass beyond the sign to the thing to which it points, which cannot be compassed by our concepts and words. Played with, yes. But fully and finally known – like pinning butterflies to the wall – no.
That’s also part of the fear – the uncertainty, the inherent not knowing. Relationship can’t promise to make you happy but it can promise to not leave you alone in your unhappiness. That’s not nothing in this vale of tears!
Anyway, we are waiting on snow here. The pine trees are very still, and the birds are mostly silent. The woman at the well also says that if you can’t teach somebody how to see Jesus then you haven’t yet seen Jesus for yourself. Leaning shovels against the barn for the snow coming, I reflect briefly on this. Can I tell you how to see Jesus? What is the writing for, if not that? And if I am not doing that – if I have not seen Jesus because I can not teach you how to see him – then what really happened with the woman at the well?
In Advent, the depths of what I cannot say become apparent. And a storm is coming. In the silence, I go inside to make coffee and wait. Any minute now. Any minute.
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I love these thoughts so much, Sean. I respect the way you throw questions back into the lap of the reader. I think that through the process of self inquiry we are much better able to understand God’s purpose for us is, and as far as I’m concerned it boils down to one thing: love and forgiveness. You say,
Therefore, ask: who do I not want to hear from? Who is excluded – so much so I’m not even aware they’re excluded? Whose absence are you allowed not to care about? Who, when they open they mouth to speak, are you allowed to close your ears to? Who can you dismiss?
Where – in your life, here and now – do you practice the lovelessness of “I get it and you don’t?”
It occurs to me that the only person we are ever excluding in any relationship, whether it be a special relationship or casual one, is ourselves, given that we are One with Him, not being separate minds with separate bodies. For that reason, when I percieve judgment in someone else, I am actually making a judgment against myself. I’m trying to ‘exclude’ myself from God which can’t actually be done given that we are, and always have been whole. I got to thinking the other day I made a mistake by being frank and honest with someone. They have made a choice not to forgive me. Finally the the thought occurred to me it matters not because in the Mind of God, who abides in me, my intentions were good. However, even if they hadn’t been, we both still benefited because all events in this so called life of mine happen for the highest good possible. In other words, there is nothing we ever have to worry about. Love trumps what we perceive as a mistake. Respectfully, Sara
Thank you Sara – I appreciate this very much. I’ve been thinking about it pretty consistently.
I’m going to be a little pedantic here and hope you’ll forgive me. I know I can come off as a know-it-all.
Basically, at one level, I agree with you. In relationship, our perception of the other is a perception of our own self. Judging them – or judging their judgment of us – is a way of excluding ourselves from the peace and joy of God. Which, as you correctly point out, cannot possibly be true. Therefore, there is nothing to worry about. It’s all good. Tara Singh used to remind students that that the ACIM Workbook allowed that it was okay to miss a lesson or even more. No big deal! So there are no consequences to our so-called mistakes, oversights, etc. That is truly a cause for joy 🙂
But before I get there something else had to happen – I had to go pretty deeply into my interior experience of fear, my distrust of others, my conditional anxiety and defensiveness. My point in those quoted sentences was less about relationship than something interior that’s upstream of relationship – the willingness to be unloving at all. I think it’s clear when we look at the world – the outside picture of an inside condition, as ACIM puts it – that we aren’t okay. Even knowing it will all work out, or is all an illusion, doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility for trying to bring myself and the world to coherence, okayness, whatever. Knowing it will all work out inspires me to hasten towards that end. And knowing it’s an illusion doesn’t change the underlying currents of fear and love. So the radical love of Jesus – exclude nobody, pray for your enemies, turn the other cheek etc – feels right and even necessary in some deeply coherent way.
For me, doing that work – rooting out the symbols of fear, giving them up to be transformed into symbols of love – is part of what makes me able to be more open-minded and forgiving in the world with my brothers and sisters.
I am talking in a way about psychotherapy with the Holy Spirit – just going within, seeing the hot mess, noticing it without, and saying, help. And the help almost always sugars out in, act more like Jesus in the world. And then I do and it works!
Anyway, thinking aloud here . . . thank you for allowing me to do that, and for sharing this journey. I am so grateful to be able to share and to find folks who are willing to help me figure this out.
I need a lot of help 🙂
Thank you again, Sara.
Love,
Sean
Also, I love Love LOVE your emoticon. Is that the right word? The beautiful happy dog – I love that 🙂
Sean
Dear Sean – Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day reply. I’m humbled by that and appreciate the clarification. i was looking at the message in
The way that I interpret that is that you are willing to do the work required to expose fear in order to correct it since that is not something the Holy Spirit can do for us. This is in the text somewhere, but I cannot put my finger on it at the moment. As a result, you co-create with God the goodness He’s given us to experience.
I do tend to oversimply things, but for me, most of the work itself means simply getting out of Holy Spirits way. He knows how tenderhearted and sensitive I am and encourages me not to make things harder on myself than they need to be. He says,
‘ Sara, I’ve got this. The less you examine fear under your little bity microscope, the better off we will be.’
He knows I only have one fear – the ULTIMATE fear, and as far as I’m concerned, all other forms of fear stem from that one and that one alone. At the end of the day, I get the impression from Him that there is no wrong way and there is no right way to look at fear, all things being equivalent in the mind of God. Again, this is somewhere from the text, but I don’t have it with me at the moment. Therefore, I try to just be equanimous with fear as best I can. I keep a hands-off approach from it and that seems to work pretty well.
Thank you again for replying to my comment. I am a new learner and appreciate your patience with me. I tend to lose things in translation and also segway, so I am told by my beloved husband.
Much love and respect,
Sara. A lover of her little Boykin Spaniel dog I call Maggie.
Maggie is beautiful!!
I think another thing that sort of floats into the light in this exchange is the way that the course adapts itself to the needs of the student, so that what works for over here may not over there, and vice versa, and that is not a crisis but rather very consistent with the course learning goals.
I am definitely a psychological excavator and archaeologist – I dive into the wreck, so to speak. And that makes sense to me and, importantly, works for me. But I recognize that there are other ways to heal fear that may not require that kind of work.
I agree wholeheartedly that there is no right or wrong way to look at fear. Right and wrong almost always feel like a trap to me, like when I slip into that binary – that zero-sum thinking, winner take all – I am missing something fundamental about the nature of God and Love and reality.
Anyway, talking about it is fun 🙂 Thanks for being here, Sara!
Sean
Apologies. That does not read well. I used copy/paste and the entire message became disjointed along the way. Wish me better luck next time.