INSIGHT OR PROJECTION?

We are judgmental creatures, aren't we?

Addictively so. It seems we cannot look at another person, or anything else outside of ourselves without a running commentary of evaluation, and a barrage of snap judgments going on in this looney-bin of our minds.

But how accurate are our evaluations? Is it Insight? Or are we projecting our own stuff onto others? How do we tell the difference?

I think it's fairly straightforward (for a welcome change). Unless what you see is something you have already examined and given a deep and grateful "Yes" to within yourself, you are projecting something of yourself onto the other. If there is any sense of rightness or wrongness about what you see, you are projecting. If there is any feeling of hardening, resisting, or contracting alongside what you are seeing, you are projecting. While you are projecting onto the other, you are not seeing the other as he/she/it actually is. You are deluding yourself and depriving yourself and the other of any further possibility. The overall effect on you is a separating of the seer within you from that which is seen. The projector and the projection are two different things.

When you find yourself projecting, own what you see coming back off the screen. Give yourself enough time and space to open up and welcome all of it back  into your self. If there is any resistance to that, acknowledge and welcome the resistance, for that is the truth of that moment. Be grateful for the screen and the process that enable you to see what was hidden within you. Letting go of your snap creations will allow you to return, enlightened, to your natural state of Wholeness -- being all of it.

Insight comes when an unbidden and previously un-thought, un-anticipated realisation arises spontaneously in your heart. Accompanying it is a palpable expansion of the heart, an aura of humility, and a recognition that you are, indeed, looking into a mirror. No matter how unpleasant what you see might be, you feel a one-ness, a "me-too" empathy with what you see, and you are grateful for that expansion. The overall effect on you is unifying. The seer and the seen are one. The image runs both ways -- from film, through projector to mirror and back through projector to film. Both are enriched.