I'm at the cinema watching
a movie playing out on the big screen. The movie contains all the characters, circumstances, relationships, jobs, environments, questions and happenings of a life. Of my life. The next moment I wake up from the dream and realise that I am the projector - all the images on the screen are what I am putting there and I have created every detail, I'm the artist, the sculptor, the painter, the engineer.
I am the one getting in the way of the light that the projector generates to create the colours and shadows that are required for the story to be the way that it is. I am also the light that makes what I'm seeing possible and equally, it's my shape, my form - me - that casts every shadow so that contrast and meaning happens.
This is the mind-boggling part of human growth and development that feels deeply and profoundly true and yet it so often, day to day, gets lost and feels beyond my grasp. I can feel it's reality, I can feel the spirit in me being called to live this invitation and enter daily into this enquiry.
We are creating our world. I am creating my world. You are creating yours. I'm not simply seeing it the way I see it because of the things I think and the things that have happened to make me the person I am. If this were true, it would mean that there is some objective reality that I am seeing in a certain way. This is something different. I am talking about the notion of ultimate responsibility - the understanding that I bring my world into being because of how I am, what I think, how I feel, what my body's like and how I relate to life.
One thing that we can include in this responsibility is the people in our lives. For me this is the big one, the part of my learning that feels the most challenging, and yet I have recently had an embodied experience of the power of this learning.
For a long time, I have learned about projection - that what we see or judge in others (both positive and negative) is a projection of what we perceive in ourselves. Whether we've repressed certain qualities or they are noticeable and very present in our lives, the things we believe about ourselves, that we feel guilty about, have denied or feel fearful over are projected out into our world and the people in it. The people on the screen of our lives will have the pictures we have painted of ourselves printed on them. And we recruit characters to play out the stories we want to live. The world is what we make it.
What happens is that when we feel bad or guilty about an aspect of ourselves, we push it down in our consciousness, which means it then gains power, having been pushed down. This continues to the point where we have to project it (unconsciously) out onto the people in our lives in order that it might be shown to us to be healed. Without the projection, we wouldn't see what our life's healing was all about. The projectors (us) are intelligent - they know what our soul's path of learning is, they project out what needs to be healed, and they know what they are doing. All we need to see is that each projection is our learning, our curriculum. We get to feel empowered, taking full responsibility by coming a learner and accepting every person, situation, relationship and circumstance as our perfectly and individually crafted lesson for this moment of our lives that is arising.
To experiment with this, we can start with looking at our judgements on just one person and taking responsibility for what we think or feel about them. An example of a 'judgement' might be - 'he's unkind', or 'she's pushy'. We can look into ourselves and see what kind of projection we are putting onto them which holds them in this way that we have judged them to be. We see that in doing this, in judging, we give ourselves permission to attack, defend and separate from them in some way. The simple exercise is to look inside ourselves, see where we have judged ourselves for the same thing - it might even be the 'you're my worst nightmare' scenario - what is sometimes called a shadow figure - so it takes some searching, some genuine introspection to find that part of ourselves we have abandoned. But rest assured it's there and it's there to be forgiven in ourselves that we might see the person in front of us with compassion and acceptance.
A sure fire way to know when there is judgement happening - of someone else and therefore ourselves, is to notice when there is something present in you other than compassion, peace and acceptance for someone. This is the indicator that there is a judgement that needs to be healed in you.
Common reactions to this move towards an empowered, accountable way of living is - 'it's them, not me', 'I would never be that way', 'they deserve all they get for being like that' and so on. Of course we can stay in this mindset, this way of seeing. And the frustration, pain, attack and defense will continue on. Or we can choose something different, to enquire and experiment with what happens when we address our own judgements of self and others and watch how the world appears differently, how our compassion arises, and how we no longer need to attract this projection once it's healed.
One thing that I find important to remember is that I am accountable, responsible for all things good AND bad. This means that what I see in the world that is beautiful, wondrous, magical, lovely - this is all a projection of what I am too. When I remember that I am creating this world, my world, I see what an incredible spectrum of life I am and that we all are - our humanity is so wide and colourful and we are the makers, the creators. It's our work to bring the shadows into the light and take our place in this generation of people who create a different world to what's been created in the past. One that makes the move from anger, violence, greed and inequality to one of peace, loving action, generosity and compassion.
This radical movement from 'the world is happening to me' to 'I am creating my world' is a profound and mysterious one. It's one that requires an acknowledgement of just how powerful we are as human beings. In order to see this, all that's required is a little willingness to see, to take responsibility for what we are up to. A willingness to acknowledge what is being brought to life for us, and in us, in order that we might heal and learn.
