We had an enjoyable class yesterday, which I have tried to summarize below.
We are all familiar with projection, whereby my self-perception becomes projected outward and becomes my perception of others. The following line captures the concept well:
And to accept the limits of a body is to impose these limits on each brother whom you see. For you must see him as you see yourself. (T-26.I.3:7-8)
So if you accept that your body limits you, then you will see all your brothers as limited by their bodies, “For you must see him as you see yourself.”
What is not so well known is the exact opposite dynamic, in which the way we see others determines how we see ourselves.
As you see him you will see yourself. As you treat him you will treat yourself. As you think of him you will think of yourself. (T-8.III.4:2-4)
Notice the direct reversal of projection. “As you see him you will see yourself” is the exact opposite of “For you must see him as you see yourself.” This idea is not just flowery rhetoric. Jesus really means it, so much so that, in personal guidance to Helen and Bill, he said that if, using psychological tests, they diagnosed a brother as mentally ill, and believed in the reality of that mental illness, they would experience that illness inside themselves:
As you see him you will see yourself….If you see one of your brothers, who happens to be a patient, as exhibiting signs of a thought disorder, then you will experience this same disorder in your own perception. For whatever your thought may be about anyone determines how you will respond and react to yourself and everyone about you. (Special message, June 19, 1968)
This opposite dynamic, which I call “reverse projection,” is so important in the Course that the entire system, to a significant degree, is built around it. This is why the Course’s focus is on forgiving others, for by forgiving others we forgive ourselves:
Forgive and be forgiven. As you give you will receive. There is no plan but this for the salvation of the Son of God. (W-pI.122.6:3-5)
Why do we talk so much more about projection than about this concept? My speculation is that projection fits better within the self-focus that is so prevalent in contemporary spirituality. It paints a picture in which my views of others are really only views of myself, so that everywhere I look I see only myself. In the most extreme form, it paints a picture in which other people are only my projections, so that nothing else actually exists but me.
With projection, furthermore, there isn’t necessarily any serious penalty in seeing my brother in a negative light. That’s just the mirror that shows me how I’ve been seeing myself. “Oh, OK, the mirror is showing me I’ve been loathing myself. Interesting.”
Reverse projection, however, doesn’t really fit with this narcissistic orientation. It makes other people much more a part of the equation. It puts them on equal footing. To begin with, it implies that I am not just seeing myself wherever I look. You could say that, according to reverse projection, I am really just seeing my brothers wherever I look, even when I look at myself. As you read that line, can you feel the challenge to the general spiritual mood out there?
Further, according to reverse projection, if I am to grant value, importance, and genuine personhood to myself, then I have to grant these qualities first to my brothers. Likewise, if I am to see myself as a Son of God, I have to first see my brothers as God’s Son. The Course is quite explicit about this: “Your holy Son is pointed out to me, first in my brother; then in me” (W-pII.357.1:2).
Therefore, whereas projection opens the door to the idea that others are merely our projection screens, or worse yet, our projections, period, reverse projection firmly closes that door, requiring that we grant others any positive quality that we wish to grant ourselves.
If reverse projection is true, the implications for our lives are massive. Normally, my motivation is to put others down so that I can feel lifted up, to judge others so that I can feel innocent, and to dismiss others in honor of my cosmic importance. If I really grasp reverse projection, however, I will pour my energy into seeing others as inestimably valuable, supremely important, and purely innocent—as shining and untainted Sons of God Himself, fully worthy of my love, my respect, and of all else that is mine:
The holiness in you belongs to him [your brother]. And by your seeing it in him, returns to you. All of the tribute you have given [your] specialness belongs to him, and thus returns to you. All of the love and care, the strong protection, the thought by day and night, the deep concern, the powerful conviction this is you, belong to him. Nothing you gave to specialness but is his due. And nothing due him is not due to you. (T-24.VII.2:4-9)
What is the basis of this idea? Personally, I can’t just take it on faith. I need know why the mind works this way. In reviewing relevant passages, I saw two rationales for this idea:
First, the integrity of the mind. Several of the passages chalked the idea up to the inability of the mind to create compartments within itself that contain something truly different from the rest of the mind’s belief. Whatever the mind believes in one area will wash through all areas, becoming a general decision about the nature of everything. Here is perhaps the best passage for this view:
You cannot perpetuate an illusion about another without perpetuating it about yourself. There is no way out of this, because it is impossible to fragment the mind. (T-7.VIII.4:1-2)
Because “it is impossible to fragment the mind,” anything I think about you will automatically generalize to my view of myself.
Second, the equality of the Sonship. The passages that expressed this view imply that we all possess an innate recognition that, whatever we are, we must be fundamentally like each other. Despite surface differences, we can’t be really that different. Here is a passage that seems to express this:
You cannot know your own perfection until you have honored all those who were created like you. (T-7.VII.6:6)
The logic here seems to be: Since others were created like you, you can’t really see yourself differently than how you see them. Therefore, until you honor their perfection, you will not know your own.
Finally, these two rationales—the integrity of the mind and the equality of the Sonship—seemed to come together somehow. In both cases, there is an innate recognition that the part cannot be separate and different from the whole. Part of my belief can’t really be kept separate from all of my belief. Part of the Sonship can’t really be different from the rest of the Sonship. There is, in other words, a unity of part and whole that we just can’t escape. Here is a passage that seems to include both the integrity of the mind and the equality of the Sonship:
You can think of the Sonship only as one. This is part of the law of creation, and therefore governs all thought. You can perceive the Sonship as fragmented, but it is impossible for you to see something in part of it that you will not attribute to all of it. (Original version of T-7.VI.1:1-2)
What I get from this is that we possess some innate knowing of the unity of part and whole. This knowing is part of the very fabric of the mind, “and therefore governs all thought.” I can’t use my mind to escape the nature of mind. Just as anything I do with water will be wet, so anything I do with mind will express the nature of mind. I am therefore “doomed” to experience my decision about each small thing as a decision about everything, and more the point, to experience my perception of each and every person as a perception of myself.
As I said, the practical implications of this are truly massive. I tried to capture those implications in something I wrote recently, a commentary on Lesson 359:
The principle is this: We realize we are basically like others; maybe not exactly the same, but at least roughly so. Therefore, whatever we decide they are, we will also decide we are.
It is impossible, therefore, to say, “You suck. You suck. And you suck. You all suck. Human nature sucks. Thank God I’m the exception.” Can we really give our conviction to that kind of blatant inconsistency? Isn’t it more likely that after “Human nature sucks,” we whisper to ourselves, “I guess that leaves only one option for my nature”?
Therefore, our strategy for happiness must be to go around releasing everyone from their belief in their sinfulness. If we can tell them, “All those sins of yours were really just mistakes,” then we can heal all their pain, we can replace all their misery with joy, we can open all their prison doors. And if we do, we will one day look inside ourselves and realize that all the while we were doing that, we were secretly saying to ourselves, with mounting joy, “I guess that leaves only one option for my nature.” And then we will look up and find our own prison door standing open, beckoning us to walk out into the fresh air and sunshine.
Towards the end of the Text, the Course tells us that if we learn the idea of projection (in this case, “You never hate your brother for his sins, but only for your own”) so well that it becomes habit, we will shorten our delay of happiness “by a span of time you cannot realize” (T-31.III.1:4). I can’t help but think the exact same thing is true, and perhaps even more true, of reverse projection.
[Please note: ACIM passages quoted in this article reference the Foundation for Inner Peace (FIP) Edition.]
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