Are You Willing to Eat Your Own Projections?
Last month in Diana’s Forums, she had each member identify what was triggering them most in the news. Each participant identified a person or group of people they were judging and therefore feeling disconnected from.
For example:
- White police officers harming and killing Black men and women
- White people who didn’t acknowledge their privilege
- People not properly social distancing
- People making false statements to police
- People looting
- Lack of COVID leadership from the oval office
When we’re critical and closed to others around us, the drama tax is high. We experience deep disconnection which leads to an us vs. them mentality. At the same time, the understanding, empathy, and compassion required to permanently resolve our collective issues isn’t available to us. Finally, as individuals we never learn to fully accept ourselves.
Rather than continuing to suffer, we have the opportunity to see our critical judgements as gifts. They are reliable pointers to the parts in us that we’re either not aware of or have an aversion to. The practice—which we call “eating the projection”—is to look deeply in ourselves to find how the qualities we see “out there” also live inside of ourselves. When we own and accept our shadows we finally experience the peace and freedom we seek, and can create a world that supports collective well being.
Note: We imagine that we’ll receive inquiries about how what we share above relates to racism and activism. Read a previous newsletter to learn how we break it down. We’re not interested in an either/or game: we can eat our projections and end blame and still face and act when we see injustice.
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Practice
Download our Handout: Eating your Projections
A step-by-step walk-through to recognize that our critical judgements about others are pointers to the parts of ourselves that we either don’t acknowledge or fully accept.
