I Can Bless with A Miracle or I Can Curse with Projection
By Bryan Hebert
Just before getting off work yesterday, I received a text that my mom had been hospitalized. This was the third time in the last few weeks because of complications suffered after a head injury from a fall she had recently. I was fearful, anxious, and helpless. I was feeling guilty because I live in another state and my siblings are carrying the brunt of her care. I was also feeling shame for not being able to help her out financially. All these feelings just sat within me as though I had a huge hole in my heart, and a churning in the pit of my stomach. I did not want to have these feelings because I knew they were not helpful. I wanted to change these feelings immediately, but I struggled.
As I headed to my partner’s apartment after work to meet him and join two friends for dinner, the sinking feelings just continued to grow bigger and deeper. I decided to listen to a podcast from Exploring A Course In Miracles in The Circle of Atonement Community. A few minutes into the podcast I could not focus on what I was listening to. I lowered the volume, and out loud, I said a brief prayer, “Holy Spirit help me”.
I arrived at Brian’s apartment stressed to the core from the 30-minute drive with a lot of traffic and the battle rumbling in my head. I had also become aware of my ego’s urge to project onto my partner what I did not want to feel by picking a fight with him. I had enough insight into what was happening and enough presence of mind to keep my mouth shut. Throughout the evening the projection urge was stewing in the back of my thoughts and eating away at me.
Arriving back at Brian’s apartment after dinner, my answer to my earlier prayer came, and I decided to tell him what was going on in my head. This gave me the opportunity to have a conversation with him from a heart-centered space, to be vulnerable and authentic. It gave Brian an opportunity to listen and be supportive versus me attacking him at the beginning of the evening for absolutely no reason. The Course (ACIM) has taught me that attack is never justified. I would have created a horrible drama that I would have regretted later. Instead, it was a beautiful conversation that brought a miracle, an expression of love, the healing of my mind, as well as an opportunity for both of us to deepen our relationship with each other.
Here was an everyday miracle opportunity, or ACIM teaching, blessing with a miracle instead of cursing with projection.
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Projection still has this “hurling” connotation, because it involves hurling something you do not want, and regard as dangerous and frightening, to someone else. This is the opposite of the Golden Rule, and having placed this rule upside down, the reverse of miracles, or projection, follows automatically. The correction lies in accepting what is true in yourself, by bringing all that you are into light. [CE T-1.35.3]
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