Projection
by Tom Baker
Date: March 14, 2010
We have a deep longing. The longing is to be whole. Wholeness is our home and feels like joy. Most of the time we feel our longing for wholeness as loneliness. Even in relationship we often feel the loneliness as not being enough or not having enough. We project that feeling out by seeing the person we are with as not being enough for us. Sometimes we project that feeling out to the world around us and see the lack of enough money or enough friends or enough time or enough soybeans or enough olive oil. This is fear and the projection has the feeling of anger or unrest or frustration or annoyance or righteousness in it. We seek an explanation and we answer that we are bad or something is wrong with us. We project that out and we blame another. They are bad or something is wrong with them. This is the projection of guilt and feels like blame and has the immediate feeling of relief to it but eventually feels like loneliness again. This is the cycle of egoic thinking.
"Any split in mind must involve a rejection of part of it, and this is the belief in separation. The Wholeness of God, which is His peace, cannot be appreciated except by a whole mind that recognizes the Wholeness of God's creation. By this recognition it knows its Creator. Exclusion and separation are synonymous, as are separation and dissociation. We have said before that the separation was and is dissociation, and that once it occurs projection becomes its main defense, or the device that keeps it going. The reason, however, may not be so obvious as you think.
What you project you disown, and therefore do not believe is yours. You are excluding yourself by the very judgment that you are different from the one on whom you project. Since you have also judged against what you project, you continue to attack it because you continue to keep it separated. By doing this unconsciously, you try to keep the fact that you attacked yourself out of awareness, and thus imagine that you have made yourself safe." (Chapter 6, II. The Alternative to Projection, p. 96)
Sometimes we project what we don't like in our thinking onto another and we dislike them for having the quality we secretly abhor in ourselves. Since I dislike my desperate quest to know everything, I project that out and condemn others for being know it all's. I might project my desire to know it all onto the Dali Lama and make him an idol. Making me feel stupid. Pretty soon, however, I will project something else I hate in myself onto the Dali Lama, like his silly giggle which is my self-perceived lack of gravitas, and become disillusioned with my hero. This is a pattern that persists in many marriages. Thus projection can be special negative or special positive, an enemy or an idol. This is how we both go to war and become infatuated with another person. All that happens is that we are disappointed in both ourselves and the other. Our egoic minds call this disillusionment. A Course In Miracles sees it as the beginning of our journey home.
"The Holy Spirit begins by perceiving you as perfect. Knowing this perfection is shared He recognizes it in others, thus strengthening it in both. Instead of anger this arouses love for both, because it establishes inclusion. Perceiving equality, the Holy Spirit perceives equal needs. This invites Atonement automatically, because Atonement is the one need in this world that is universal. To perceive yourself this way is the only way in which you can find happiness in the world. This is because it is the acknowledgement that you are not in this world, for the world is unhappy." (Chapter 6, II. The Alternative to Projection Chapter 6, p. 97)
In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus says, "You have learned how it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say this to you: love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; in this way you will be sons of your Father in heaven, for he causes the sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike. For if you love those who love you, what right have you to claim any such credit? Even the tax collectors do as much, do they not? And if you save your greetings for your brothers, are you doing anything exceptional? Even the pagans do as much, do they not? You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Matt. 5: 38-42.
When Jesus says we must be perfect as our Source is perfect he is simply saying that the Holy Spirit sees us and everyone else as perfect and asks us to practice the same vision. This is true faith. It asks us to believe in God's evaluation of us rather than our own egoic sense of ourselves and others. Perfect does not mean perfect behavior or perfect thinking, it means perfect being.
"The difference between the ego's projection and the Holy Spirit's extension is very simple. The ego projects to exclude, and therefore to deceive. The Holy Spirit extends by recognizing Himself in every mind, and thus perceives them as one. Nothing conflicts in this perception, because what the Holy Spirit perceives is all the same. Wherever He looks He sees Himself, and because He is united He offers the whole Kingdom always. This is the one message God gave to Him and for which He must speak, because that is what He is. The peace of God lies in that message, and so the peace of God lies in you. The great peace of the Kingdom shines in your mind forever, but it must shine outward to make you aware of it." (Chapter 6, II. The Alternative to Projection Chapter 6, pp. 98-99)
We are not aware of the Holy Spirit in our minds until we see the holiness in another. This is evidently what Jesus did. In the clarification of terms at the end of the Manual for teachers Jesus says this about himself:
"The name of Jesus is the name of one who was a man but saw the face of Christ in all his brothers and remembered God. So he became identified with Christ, a man no longer, but at one with God. The man was an illusion, for he seemed to be a separate being, walking by himself, within a body that appeared to hold his self from his Self, as all illusions do. Yet who can save unless he sees illusions and then identifies them as what they are? Jesus remains a Savior because he saw the false without accepting it as true. And Christ needed his form that He might appear to men and save them from their own illusions." (Manual for Teachers, Clarification of Terms, 5. Jesus – Christ, p. 87).
© Copyright Tom Baker 2010