فصل 4

CHAPTER 4

RE-COLLECTING OURSELVES

Projection is a fascinating phenomenon they failed to teach most of us about in school. It is an involuntary transfer of our own unconscious behavior onto others, so it appears to us that these qualities actually exist in the other people. When we have anxiety about our emotions or unacceptable parts of our personalities, we attribute these qualities—as a defense mechanism—to external objects and other people. When we have little tolerance for others, for example, we are likely to attribute the sense of our own inferiority to them. Of course, there’s always a “hook” that invites our projection. Some imperfect quality in other people activates some aspect of ourselves that wants our attention. So whatever we don’t own about ourselves we project onto other people.

We see only that which we are. I like to think of it in terms of energy. Imagine having a hundred different electrical outlets on your chest. Each outlet represents a different quality. The qualities we acknowledge and embrace have cover plates over them. They are safe: no electricity runs through them. But the qualities that are not okay with us, which we have not yet owned, do have a charge. So when others come along who act out one of these qualities they plug right into us. For example, if we deny or are uncomfortable with our anger, we will attract angry people into our lives. We will suppress our own angry feelings and judge people whom we see as angry. Since we lie to ourselves about our own internal feelings, the only way we can find them is to see them in others. Other people mirror back our hidden emotions and feelings, which allows us to recognize and reclaim them.

We instinctively draw back from our own negative projections. It’s easier to examine what we are attracted to than what repels us. If I am offended by your arrogance it is because I’m not embracing my own arrogance. This is either arrogance that I am now demonstrating in my life and not seeing, or arrogance that I deny I am capable of demonstrating in the future. If I am offended by arrogance I need to look closely at all areas of my life and ask myself these questions: When have I been arrogant in the past? Am I being arrogant now? Could I be arrogant in the future? It would certainly be arrogant of me to answer no to these questions without really looking at myself, or without asking others if they have ever experienced my being arrogant. The act of judging someone else is arrogant, so obviously all of us have the capacity to be arrogant. If I embrace my own arrogance, I won’t be upset by someone else’s. I might notice it, but it won’t affect me. My arrogance outlet will have a cover plate on it. It is only when you’re lying to yourself or hating some aspect of yourself that you’ll get an emotional charge from someone else’s behavior.

When I began to lead seminars I was petrified. Every week, I would stand in front of a group and try desperately to be myself. Fearful that I would not be liked I worked hard at being authentic. The seminars I was leading at the time were in Oakland, California, where two out of three participants were African-American. I was excited to be going into a new community, and I was committed to supporting participants in their goals. When I began leading my third seminar, one of the participants stood up, and with an edge in her voice Arlene began to share. As soon as she started speaking, strong feelings emerged from deep within me. It was difficult for me to hear what this woman was saying because I was too busy feeling angry. I thought, if all this woman is going to do is give me a hard time she should sit down and shut up. It was unusual for me to find myself reacting to a participant. I went home upset and tried to embrace in myself the qualities I saw in this woman—nasty, angry, aggressive, and mean.

For the next four weeks, every time I led a session, Arlene would stand up and be condescending and a bit rude. I found myself spending much of my free time trying to figure out why this woman got me so upset. No matter how I tried I couldn’t stop judging her. One day, feeling defeated, I called a woman in the seminar whom I worked closely with and asked her why Arlene hated me. Susan replied, “Debbie, don’t worry about her; she’s just a racist.” I hung up the phone, feeling weak and nauseous. I quickly affirmed, “I’m not a racist.” I thought about all my childhood memories of African-American friends in my life. I remembered teaching them how to swim and running track with them. I thought of my father and how he’d fought for civil rights: he had the first black law partner in the state of Florida. I felt sure I was not a racist.

That night, as I lay in bed thinking about the next session of my seminar, I kept hearing Susan’s words, “She’s just a racist.” Over and over these words rang in my cars. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard a voice in my head asking, “What did you think about Arlene the first time she stood up and gave you a hard time?” Suddenly, I felt pressure in my chest and feared the worst. What I remembered thinking was, You stupid black bitch. These words resonated through my body. I thought, It couldn’t be, I’m not a racist. I wouldn’t think that thought, I couldn’t mean it. My heart raced with fear. But I sat alone, confronted with my own racist statement. This was my shadow.

I cried with shame for hours, feeling a deep sense that I had betrayed all my friends in Oakland who loved and trusted me. No matter what I did I was unable to acknowledge, “I am a racist.” Everything I believed about possessing every trait went out the window. I spent hours in front of a mirror saying, “I am a racist, I am a racist,” trying to accept this part of myself, trying to find some comfort.

The more I repeated the words the easier it became. Knowing there was a gift somewhere in those words I began to look for it. Then I remembered my father talking endlessly about equal rights and how none of us would be free until we realized that we were all equal. This passion of my father’s had become a passion of my own. I saw that not wanting to be a racist had pushed me to work hard to form relationships with African-Americans. It also gave me a deep need to support people who were discriminated against. At the time all this took place I was actively involved in raising money for an organization called Prison Possibilities, which helped primarily minority inmates transform their lives. When I finally embraced the idea of being a “racist,” I felt like I had released sixty pounds from around my neck.

The next night, I went to my seminar feeling whole and hopeful. In the middle of the seminar Arlene raised her hand like she did every week. Feeling hesitant, I called on her to share. We were talking about the next community seminar so I was particularly nervous about what she would say. I wanted everyone to continue to participate. When Arlene stood up she smiled and said, “This is a great seminar,” and then she shared her breakthrough experience with all of us. When Arlene sat down I was shocked.

I drove home thinking about the dramatic change in Arlene’s behavior. I didn’t want to get too excited so I decided to wait and see how things went the following week. Next week came, and as the seminar progressed I waited for Arlene to raise her hand. When she stood up Arlene once again acknowledged that the seminar was making deep changes in her life. Then she acknowledged my being supportive of and committed to the Oakland community. At the end of the evening I stayed to talk to several people. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Arlene standing close by chatting with some friends. I turned to her and looked into her eyes and asked, “What happened?” She looked back at me and said, “I don’t know. Last week I walked in the room and I just fell in love with you.” This experience changed my life and proved to me once and for all that when you embrace a quality within yourself, other people with the same quality can no longer plug into you. Then they become free to experience you and you are free to experience them.

Ken Wilber makes a great distinction in the book Meeting the Shadow. He says, “Projection on the Ego Level is very easily identified : if a person or thing in the environment informs us, we probably aren’t projecting; on the other hand, if it affects us, chances are that we are a victim of our own projections.” If you truly understand this you will never see the world the same way again. Think about it this way. If someone walks by you and spits on the sidewalk and you notice but don’t react, it probably isn’t something you need to work on. But if you get upset and think, How could someone be so uncouth and disgusting?, then you are projecting. You may be engaged in some disgusting behavior now or may have demonstrated some disgusting behavior in the past. For some reason disgusting behavior is not okay with you, so you are affected by the behavior of the spitter. All of this might have started when you were small. Perhaps you actually did spit and someone said, “That’s disgusting.” Maybe someone in your family spit and others reacted to it in a negative manner. Whatever happened, you made a decision never to do anything like that, and pushed this aspect of yourself way back into your consciousness. If this person who spits affects you it should trigger your internal alarm. These alarms are clues to uncovering your dark side. With this in mind, you can look at what emotionally affects you as a catalyst for growth, giving you an opportunity to reclaim a hidden aspect of yourself.

At this point many of you might be saying, “This is ridiculous. I don’t want to find out I’m disgusting or arrogant.” You have to remember there’s a gift in each of these aspects. But in order to receive the gift, you first have to uncover, own, and embrace these aspects. There’s an old Sufi story about a philosopher who made an appointment to debate with Nasrudin, a Sufi wisdom teacher. When the philosopher arrived for his appointment he found Nasrudin away from his home. Infuriated, the philosopher picked up a piece of chalk and wrote “Stupid Oaf” on Nasrudin’s gate. When Nasrudin got home and saw this he rushed right over to the philosopher’s house. “I had forgotten,” he said, “that you were to call. And I’m sorry I missed our appointment. But, I remembered our appointment the minute I saw that you had written your name on my gate.” Our indignation over the behavior of others is usually about an unresolved aspect of ourselves. If we listen to everything that comes out of our mouths when we talk to others, judge others, or give advice, we should just turn it around and give it to ourselves. The philosopher could just as easily have written “rude oaf,” “inconsiderate liar,” or “backstabbing coward.” On the other hand, he could have come to a totally different conclusion and been afraid that Nasrudin had been hurt in an accident or had fallen ill. But the words that came to him when Nasrudin was not home were “stupid oaf.” When we have a trait that doesn’t have a cover plate over it we draw incidents into our lives to help us own and embrace that denied aspect. Without being influenced by a single fact other than Nasrudin’s absence, the philosopher projected his own unembraced trait of “stupid oaf.” We project our own perceived shortcomings onto others. We say to others what we should be saying to ourselves. When we judge others we are judging ourselves. If you constantly beat yourself up with negative thoughts, you will either beat up on the people around you—verbally, emotionally, or physically—or you will beat up on yourself by destroying some area of your own life. What you do and what you say is no accident. There are no accidents in the life that you create. In this holographic world, everyone is you and you are always talking to yourself.

When you call someone a name for making a mistake, stop and think whether you would call yourself the same name. If you are being honest the answer will invariably be yes. The world is a giant mirror always reflecting back parts of ourselves. Every trait is there for a reason, and all traits are perfect in their own ways.

Not long ago I noticed that I was asking everyone I know how often they meditate, and for how long. Then I would remind them of the importance of meditating every day and spending at least a half hour a day going within oneself. Eventually, I asked myself why I was being so adamant about the meditation practice of other people. When I examined my motives I realized that I often skipped my own meditation practice. A part of me was starving to spend more time going within and being silent. Since I had a three-year-old child at home, I had somehow rationalized that it was okay every time I skipped my daily meditation. When I realized I was only telling others what I needed to hear myself I was able to take back my projections and honor my unconscious desire. I started meditating more and stopped pushing others to do what I needed to do myself. This is why I often say, “Attend your own lectures.” When I examined my motivation for telling people to meditate, I recognized my own need.

Our shadows are often hidden so well from us that it’s nearly impossible to find them. If it weren’t for the phenomenon of projection they might stay hidden from us for a lifetime. Some of us buried these traits when we were three or four years old. Think about playing in your home when you were small, and imagine hiding a coin. Twenty, thirty, or forty years later, it would be nearly impossible to remember the incident itself, let alone where you hid the coin. When we project onto other people we have an opportunity to finally find that coin.

When my nieces come to visit me from Dallas, I always pay a lot of attention to what they’re eating. When we go out to restaurants I try to steer them towards foods that are low in fat. Then when I think they’ve eaten too much I discourage them from ordering dessert, which they love. Often I tell them we’ll go for low-fat dessert later. During their last visit, we all stood around my kitchen talking about what we project onto other members of our family. We went around the room taking turns and had a lot of fun telling each other which person had the honor of receiving our negative projections. When it was my turn I suddenly realized that this obsession with my nieces’ eating habits was my own projection. I was dissatisfied with my own unhealthy eating, so whenever they came to town I pretended there was nothing wrong with me and everything was wrong with them. I’m tall and thin, so I can pretend I eat well even when I don’t. But as soon as I realized it was not about them but about me, I could deal with the real issue. This made room for me to have a better relationship with my nieces. Suddenly it didn’t matter to me what they ate. We could just go out and enjoy each other’s company.

You can’t just look at areas of your life that you think aren’t working. You want to find all the places where you deceive yourself. One place where I frequently run across hidden issues is with people trying desperately to avoid being like their mother or father in some aspect. If your mother was strict, you might become lenient. If you grew up in a poor home, you might have a powerful drive to be rich. If your parent was domineering, you might be passive or too tolerant of others’ behaviors. If your father was unfaithful, you might become very loyal, and if one of your parents was lazy, you might become a workaholic. I could go on and on, but the point is that acting in reaction to your parents is often just a disguise.

One of my clients hated her father because he was so cheap. Holly had spent her entire adult life trying to avoid being cheap by buying fabulous presents for everyone in her family. And she was always inviting friends out for dinner and shows and paying for everything. Holly was proud of the fact that she was so generous. When I told her that she needed to embrace her own impulses to be cheap in order to forgive her father and let go of her resentment, she was unwilling to see herself that way. For weeks we discussed her life, with Holly noting how generous she was being with everyone. Then one day, Holly called me from the supermarket. She realized she had just spent almost an hour looking at different products, comparing prices and the amount of product in each container so that she could save pennies. It astonished her that she would spend $500 on a sweater without thinking twice but that she wasn’t willing to pay an extra twenty cents for a box of Kleenex. Suddenly the bell went off for Holly. She realized she was cheap just like her dad, only in a different way. The shock of discovering this aspect of herself left her in tears. So much of Holly’s energy was spent on not being like her father. She had hidden her impulses to be cheap for so many years, and suddenly here they were inside her, just as clear as day.

After some time Holly was able to appreciate the gift of being cheap. For Holly, “cheap” turned out to be the part of her that made her want to plan for her future and invest money for her retirement. Until this point Holly had been unable to save money because she was too busy being unlike her father. She was also able to be much more accepting of her father, which brought them closer together than ever before.

Freedom is being able to choose whoever and whatever you want to be at any moment in your life. If you have to act in a particular way to avoid being something you don’t like, you’re trapped. You’ve limited your freedom and robbed yourself of your wholeness. If you can’t be lazy, you can’t be free. If you can’t be angry when something upsetting happens, you can’t be free. If you deal with someone’s behavior by being the opposite, question yourself. If you are constantly annoyed by a particular group of people, find the ways in which you are like them. It’s not only our negative traits that we project onto other people; it’s also our positive traits. Most people whom I work with project their genius and creativity, their power and success. If you want to be like others, it’s because you have the ability within you to be like them. If you are enthralled by megastars and spend time and money reading about their lives, find the aspect you love in them inside of you.

You deserve to have whatever it is you see and truly desire. The only difference between you and the people you idolize is that they are manifesting one of the qualities you desire and probably fulfilling their dreams. When you are not living up to your potential, it’s easy to project your positive traits onto people who are living up to theirs. When you start to fulfill your own dreams and goals you’ll become less interested in what other people are doing. We each need to become our own hero. The only way to do this is to take back the parts of us that are plugged into someone else, the parts of us that we have given away.

For almost a year I have been working with a friend who brings my Shadow Process to Miami. Rachel is young, beautiful, bright, and talented. Whenever Rachel and I are together she makes a big deal out of me, always acknowledging and complimenting me. She is forever telling me how brilliant, talented, and beautiful I am. Although I know that Rachel does love and respect me, I also know that she is projecting her own brilliance, talent, and beauty onto me.

Keenly aware of the process of projection, I have resisted her infatuation. Instead, I have guided her in reclaiming her disowned brilliance, beauty, and talent. After many discussions, it was clear that Rachel believed I possessed some qualities that she lacked. Assuring her this wasn’t true, I asked her to search and name the aspects she attributed to me. We know projection is taking place when someone is emotionally affected by another’s behavior, whether positive or negative. In this case, Rachel is affected by my positive traits. Rachel is seeing her own capacity in me. I am her mirror. Since she is not yet living up to her desired potential, she is only able to see her light shadow through me. This leaves Rachel in a difficult position. If I leave her, these parts of her disappear: they go back into the dark until she finds someone else to project them onto. The qualities in me that affect her are only an image of what is possible for herself.

As long as we deny the existence of certain traits in ourselves, we continue to perpetuate the myth that others have something we don’t possess. When we admire someone, it is an opportunity to find yet another aspect of ourselves. We have to take back our positive projections as well as our negative projections. We have to remove the plugs we’ve attached to others, turn them around, and plug them back into ourselves. Until we are able to retrieve our projections it is impossible for us to see our full potential and experience the totality of who we really are.

If I’m attracted to Martin Luther King’s courage it’s only because I am seeing the amount of courage I am capable of expressing in my life. If I’m attracted to Oprah Winfrey’s influence it is because I’m seeing the amount of influence I am capable of having in my life. Most people project their greatness. This is why actors and famous athletes make so much money in this country. We are paying them to be our heroes—to act out our unfulfilled dreams and desires. People envy these stars without knowing anything about their personal lives. They get lost in their idol’s life as a way of avoiding their own. The deeper truth is that they are projecting an aspect of themselves onto their hero. If you see greatncss, then it is your own greatness you are seeing. Close your eyes and think about this. If you admire greatness in another human being, it is your own greatness you are seeing. You may manifest it in a different way, but if you didn’t have greatness within, you wouldn’t be able to recognize that quality in someone else. If you did not possess that quality you would not be attracted by it. Everyone sees other people differently because everyone is projecting aspects of him or her self. It’s our job to distinguish what inspires us about others and then take back those aspects of ourselves we have given away.

People often wonder how they can be like someone they admire when at this moment their lives may look so very different. For example, they might say they admire Michelangelo but they are sure they are not like him. What they really need to do is focus on exactly those qualities that inspire them to want to be like Michelangelo. It might be his artistic talent if they are unexpressed artists. It might be his courage, his creativity, or his genius. Their talent might not be in art but they have the ability to be as great, as creative, and as courageous in their unique expression of their gifts. They might manifest their talents in music, photography, or gardening.

Any desire of the heart is there for you to discover and manifest. Whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it’s because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing. Deepak Chopra says, “Within every desire is the mechanics of its fulfillment.” This means we have the ability to manifest our heart’s desires and that which we are. If we are not capable of doing or having something we will not have an authentic yearning for it. It’s as simple as that. Goethe said, “If we can conceive it, and we can believe it, then we can achieve it.” The difficult part is working through our fears. Our fears stop us. They tell us we’re not good enough or worthy enough. There is no one on the earth like you. No one with exactly the same desires, the same talents, or the same memories. You have your own individual spin on everything. It is your job to discover your unique talents and then manifest them in your own unique way.

Several months ago, my friend Nancy who had been in a slump for years came to visit. I invited her to hear one of the top motivational speakers in the world. During the lecture we were both quiet; I was busy taking notes. When we got into the car to go home, Nancy turned to me and said, “That guy is such a loser.” Shocked, I asked her why she believed that. She told me she thought he was full of it and that he had no idea what he was talking about. He spoke too fast and looked like a nerd. For the rest of the ride home Nancy pointed out everything she didn’t like about this man’s manner and message. When we arrived home I asked Nancy to come and sit down with me. I asked her if she really believed this man was a loser. She looked at me with certainty in her eyes and said yes. Taking out a sheet of paper, I asked if she’d be willing to look at this issue. She thought about it for a moment and decided to play along.

On one side of the paper I wrote down all the things I knew about this man. He has a successful business as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies. He sells countless motivational tapes, and is paid over $5,000 a night to speak. He has been married for more than twenty years and has three healthy children. On the other side of the page, I wrote down what I knew about Nancy’s life. She was divorced with no children. She had little contact with most of the members of her family. She was unemployed and had been unsuccessful in starting her own business several times. She was overweight and out of shape, and suffered from several ailments. She had debts of more than $50,000, and was currently living hand-to-mouth. Nancy looked at my list. Now I said, “If I brought ten people in and showed them these lists who do you think they would call the loser?” At first, Nancy drew back, horrified that I or anyone was calling her a loser. This was her worst nightmare. But I explained that until she owned this aspect of herself she’d always project it onto other people. Nancy would be unable to hear important, powerful messages from other people because she was projecting her denied thoughts onto them. After a couple of hours, Nancy began to see that deep within herself she believed she was the loser. This thought was so painful to her that she buried it very deep. Her father had told her she would never amount to anything and she had believed him. Since her childhood she had been unconsciously creating situation after situation in her life to prove she was a loser in order to retrieve this aspect of herself which she had disowned. It was always mirrored back to her in the external world but she would deny it, and the cycle would continue. Once Nancy recognized her belief that she was a loser, then she could begin to look for the gift of this aspect and embrace it. Then Nancy would be able to examine how she’d set herself up to lose, and make a new commitment to honor the loser in herself and allow the winner in herself to create a life of abundance. Nancy has since started a new career, and has been enjoying tremendous personal and financial success.

There is an old saying, “It takes one to know one.” We see in others what we like and don’t like in ourselves. If we embrace these parts of ourselves we will be able to see others as they are, not as we see them through our cloud of projection. There is another saying that the three greatest mysteries of the world are air to birds, water to fish, and man unto himself. We are able to see everything in front of us in the outside world. All we have to do is open our eyes and look around. We cannot see ourselves. We need a mirror to see ourselves. You are my mirror and I am yours.

EXERCISES

1. For one week, observe your own judgments about other people. Whenever you are upset by another person’s behavior, write down the quality in him or her that is most upsetting to you. Write down any opinions you have of the people who are closest to you. Be sure to include your friends, family, and co-workers.

This list marks the beginning of discovering your hidden aspects. You will refer to it when you start the process of owning your shadow.

1. Make a list of the advice you give to other people. What are you telling others to do to make their life better? Reflect on whether the advice you give to others isn’t just advice to yourself. Sometimes we tell other people what to do as a way of reminding ourselves what we need to do. Realize that your advice to them may be a way to remind yourself.