by Victoria Wilson and Lisa Bonnice

What is projection?

The spiritual journey is about becoming inclusive, opening up to and owning all of the disowned parts of us. It is only through our wholeness that we can really thrive in the world. So we look to others to fill in the spaces we feel are missing. We admire someone’s brains or beauty because we don’t believe that we have them. We try to throw out the things we don’t like and give them away to others. We see them as “stupid” or “ugly” because we fear we are those things or may become those things.

In essence, we project – or blame someone else for – our negative attributes when we focus on “their” flaws. We see things in others that we don’t want to see in ourselves. Another version of projection is when we mirror – or give someone else credit for – our positive stuff when we admire “their” good qualities. We see in them what we most want to be, but don’t realize that we already have.

A simple way to look at it is that life gives you feedback. Once you learn to listen to it, you can unravel problems that have vexed you for years. Paying attention to what you project is a way that you can see what your issues are, where your life needs to be healed.

We all have an interior reality and everyone lives his or her life getting feedback in one way, shape or form of that interior life. You can think of life as your laboratory.

Someone once said that whenever you point your finger at someone, you’ve got three pointing back at you. So when you point and say, “You!” you’re actually pointing at yourself saying, “You! You! You!”

We’re constantly projecting our material outwards. That doesn’t mean necessarily that we have “issues” with it, however. You can tell it’s an issue if you overreact, either way. If you feel, “This is the perfect person and I must be with them,” or, “This person is the demon spawn from hell – get me away,” it’s an overreaction. Then you’ll be safe in assuming that it’s an issue.

When you stop to think about how complex we are, you may realize that projection becomes a gift straight from Spirit. It becomes the way that we know what to work on next. Otherwise we wouldn’t know. Many people who are just beginning to open to their spiritual journey try to journal, but just can’t. The concept of journaling is so vast. They don’t know what to do with it, so they don’t do anything. Or they do very little. What we need at that point is structures and boundaries so we can explore. That’s where projection comes in handy.

Projection can be broken down into five stages, from a spiritual standpoint:

1. We look around to find the perfect person to hold our projection.

We find a perfect projection screen. For example, let’s talk about falling in love. What qualities are you looking for? You’re out there shopping. You want intelligence, humor, trust, sensitivity … any numbers of possibilities are out there.

One of the easiest ways to find out what issues you’re working on right now is to make a list of qualities you want to find in a lover or mate. This is what is important to you right now. It does change over time. If you’ve been in a space where you’ve been doing some heavy processing, you’re going to a want someone who’s fun and playful! If you feel like you haven’t been out to lunch in years, you’re going to think, “Wow, I wish I could find somebody to talk to! I want to find someone with a mind, and who’s doing something with it.” A lot of what you’re looking for relates to what’s developing inside you.

Then you meet someone and begin that honeymoon phase, which is wondrous – this person has got it all going on. They’ve got everything! That’s Stage One. Stage One is finding the person to project on. So you’re involved now and you’re projecting and mirroring like crazy.

2. The projection begins to slip. 

We begin to see that the individual is something other than what we have imagined. We don’t want to believe this so we make up stories and excuses. We’ve tacked this image, this projection screen, over them and the corners start peeling off. We run and get a hammer to tack it back on.

Then we begin making excuses for them. We say things like, “You know, he’s a very sensitive person,” or, “She was just tired.” We make excuses for why they’re not being who we thought they were.

This begins happening more frequently, for longer periods of time, until eventually we move to Stage Three:

3. The projection falls off.
   
   We are forced to see what is beyond the projection, the real person. At Stage Three we have a couple reactions to choose from.
   
   We may begin to feel hopelessly betrayed, “That bastard,” or “That bitch! They weren’t at all like they told me they were. They told me they were like this! How dare they!” So you can get trapped in the victimization process and feel betrayed. Then you’ll go all the way back to Stage One with that same person, who is promising to be the way they were before, and then slowly slipping back.
   
   Or you start the process with a new person just like the last. That’s why you feel like you keep getting involved in the same kind of relationship over and over again. What happens is you go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 ...
   
   The trick is to go on to the second choice after Stage Three. You can go on to Stage Four.
   
   That’s when you recognize that what you’ve been projecting onto this person is what you’d like to become. It’s recognition that you’re projecting onto them the qualities that you’d most like to bring forward in yourself now.
   
   It’s either that or regress backward to Stage One, feeling let down and betrayed, and the process begins again.
   
   
4. We recognize that it is our own material.
   
   This is the stage of grief – grieving for the part long lost – grief over not truly seeing another.
   
   If you were looking for trust in a relationship, it usually takes you into that pit of recognizing that you’ve really been betrayed. When we’re looking for somebody trustworthy, we’re really looking to try to trust life again because it’s become hard. So we take it back into our pain.
   
   So you realize that “I was really looking for it to be okay for me to be sensitive or trustworthy or fun.”  “I’ve been waiting for permission to have fun, and how long have I been waiting for somebody to tell me that it’s okay?” We find that recognition of everything, that all the qualities that we’re putting on that other person are the qualities that we’re most wanting.
   
   Stage Four is challenging. It requires someone with a real adult perception. It’s also the part of the spiritual journey that most of us struggle with because every one of us has free will defined ego.
   
   We have to realize that, “As long as I was projecting on that other person, I wasn’t really seeing them.” So there’s a sadness. If you stay with it you will move to Stage Five.

5. Compassion and integration of the projection.
   
   We have compassion for others and ourselves with similar issues. We begin to model the qualities that we once projected onto another.
   
   Stage Five is the integration of these qualities. You embody them. You bring those qualities into your own life that you one time tried to find in someone else. As a result, you’re going to find compassion for someone who’s going through the same issue.
   
   You can tell when a person has really worked through an issue because they have compassion for that issue. Say you’ve really dealt with low self-esteem. You’ll be non-judgmental of people with low self-esteem because you know how paralyzing it can be. For someone who’s really dealt with fear or depression or betrayal, they have deep compassion.
   
   Someone who says, “Oh, I’ve been there. Toughen up. Work your way through it.” is heading for 1, 2, 3.  They haven’t worked it.
   
   Stage Five is so freeing. You can look back and say, “That was worth it. That was incredibly worth it.”

The Navajo Indians believe in walking your path with beauty. If you walk your path with beauty, then you are in harmony with what makes life beautiful. If you’re truly walking with Spirit, then you’re in that space.

Sometimes you’re in that place in your journey where you feel “I’ve got it now, I’ve got it going on. I finally understand.” Then the next thing you know, an issue comes up and you feel like you took a tumble into the darkest pit ever. You think that you’d made up the space you were in, not understanding that when we get to a certain level, we now have more love energy available to go back into a more relative space and free that new issue.

You’re going back to an earlier stage of consciousness, but with a new hyperlink. We have this awareness, this memory, and if you can hold onto the basic core understanding that you had in that larger space you can use that to embrace that issue that’s come to you. But now you have new parts that will help you to solve it. That’s the basic thought behind soul retrieval. Shamans go back into time and bring splintered parts back home.

We really are one heart, one mind. We are all learning to love all these different parts of ourselves. That’s not to say that you won’t run across parts of yourself that are uncomfortable and scary. However, every single way that we can manifest is valid. If we have a limited idea of what’s okay, it’s that limited idea that makes us control freaks. If we follow projection, it will consistently take us more and more into inclusive places, out of being exclusive, into inclusiveness, into being more compassionate and open. If you’re compassionate and open, you can have a pretty interesting and mystical time.

You don’t have to keep yourself within a projection if you’re with someone you don’t like. You don’t have to eat worms until you enjoy the taste. It’s not necessary. But what you need to be aware of is that if you don’t own it with this person, it will come up again. You have the right to choose the arena. If you look at different patterns with regard to different relationships, you can probably say you had more fun learning from some relationships than from others. Even if it was the “same man” over and over. Some of those “same men” were more fun than others. There is something to be said for using one’s free will. There’s also a time to recognize that if you’re going to withdraw from one particular battle, it will come up again.

With each projection that you deal with, as you own them and as you dig to find the core belief that has not served you, what you then begin to project is the direct opposite of the original projection. It becomes acceptance. We move into acceptance to move into different ways to manifest and become truly accepting people.

When people don’t work to consciously grow and understand themselves, they tend to draw a lot of people to them who play out the different woundings they have been trying to stuff down. Life really keeps insisting that we be whole. It keeps trying to stimulate the areas where we are hanging onto our woundings and limitations so that we will get past them, so we will heal them and we will address them.

Most issues have to do with polarizing – your inner adult is struggling with your inner adolescent. Your masculine is struggling with the feminine. The inner child is being beat up by the inner adolescent. Have you ever been in a relationship where you feel very deeply that you’re persecuted and sad? You’re probably polarized into a feminine child part of yourself. And that attracts bullies and tyrants. It actually pulls that out of others.

When you working with projection, it’s the ego you want to be careful of because the ego’s job is to protect the identity. Every time we own a projection we get pushed to our knees. We go through a transforming experience, which affects the identity. It changes us and is empowering and separates the children from the adults. People who have a fragile, undeveloped ego cannot do this spiritual work. They just can’t – not the transformative stuff.

We have all these different forces on the inside that can minimize and stop us from having a life that is fulfilling and has enough adventure, joy and creativity. We can be betrayed by parts of us that are there to protect us.

Resistance helps build your muscles. It’s the same thing with the psyche. Resistance to different parts of your consciousness builds our strength of character and Spirit to go the distance.

If you have the mistaken idea that it won’t ever be challenging on the spiritual journey, throw that idea right out the window. It’s always challenging. If you’re really consistent on the spiritual journey, you’ll always have the skills that you need. There will be intuitive direction that will show you how to develop the skills required on the journey.

If you had some kind of magic spell to eliminate negative things about yourself, would you use it? It’s kind of like Hitler when you think about it – deciding that whole groups of people aren’t worthwhile. Each one of us has a little Hitler inside when we decide that there are parts of ourselves that have no value, that they have no reason for being there because we don’t like them. Everybody has a reason for being there. More often than not the reason is unknown until we hear its story.

Let’s say that you feel someone is talking down to you. You need to go back in time to find somebody else who used to talk down to you. While journaling ask, “Who else has talked down to me?” Very often somebody doesn’t treat us the way we treat other people, it’s the way we treat ourselves. We do that to self. But if not, then it could be something from your history that you’re trying to get past. When you let it take you back to the real issue, and you want to watch for keywords. As you talk about how it makes you feel, you find those keywords. If this makes you feel a loss of respect, when did you feel a loss of respect before? 

Keep in mind that this person is also projecting onto you. If you can work through your end of it, and stop responding to it, then he won’t get the reaction he needs to continue the behavior. He’ll have to find someone else to project onto. It will be a different energy. There’s something about doing this that your energy changes. Whatever his behavior is triggering in you, it’s changing your energy. Your energy is shrinking and you’re becoming the energy of a younger age, emotionally. Pay attention to whatever age you become, and that’s a key, “How old do I feel?” The age you feel could be the age where it began.

One thing you can do when you’re with somebody with whom you’re really struggling is to heart center and focus on the heart chakra opening, and as you’re sitting talking to him, do a heart to heart connection and you’re really calling on soul when you do that – it opens doors. There’s a sense of safety. We’re inviting compassionate honesty. It’s very powerful.

The beauty of projection is that without others, you might never have known that a part needed healing. Projection then really comes as a gift from another soul.