One morning this past week the dogs got me up way too early, and there followed the usual daily conundrum- our rescue dog Rosie is afraid to go downstairs. She wants to go outside with us, she wants help, but also she’s afraid of being picked up or touched. This negotiation is particularly challenging when one is bleary eyed in the early morning. I became frustrated and impatient with the dogs. As I went about my morning chores, I noticed I was also angry at the practitioner who couldn’t fit me into her schedule, the wedding inquiry I was playing phone tag with, and the writers of my TV show that had “ruined” the season with their bad decisions. I have a guideline for myself- if I am angry with one person, maybe it’s about them. If I’m angry with everyone that’s about me. At its simplest level, that’s projection.
Fortunately, on this morning, I noticed the pattern of anger I had projected externally around me, and then traced it backwards to its source inside me. In this case, so you don’t worry, I took an early morning walk to the creek all by myself and found myself standing still watching the sun and the quiet birds on the water. The anger had somehow run its course, or was perhaps had been trying to tell me that I needed a quiet moment to myself to move at my own pace, and when I returned home though nothing had changed- the dogs still get up too early and cannot go downstairs, the practitioner still can’t fit me in, the phone tag continued, but things looked different because something had shifted inside me.
All this year I’ve been taking a class called “Practicing Spiritual Direction in a Time of Deepening Shadow” One of our teachers, Don Bisson, shares his training in Jungian Analysis, and defines projection this way: “Projection is a process where an unconscious characteristic, a fault, or even a talent of one's own is seen as belonging to another person or object. It is normal and natural process and can be positive or negative in character. It is always accompanied by a strong emotional reaction to a person, object or situation.”
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| Miss Angie at Grass Roots Music Festival |
Consider shadow puppets -- we never see the puppets, we only see the shadows of the puppets which were made by casting light on them. It might be fun to play around with shadows and light as we play around with projections today. We had these shadow puppets in our gift bags, but any object will do. If you get a good single light source, like a flashlight, you can see how the image changes depending on the angle and intensity of light. The puppet hasn’t changed at all. In this metaphor the light is coming from us- from our own light with which we view the world.
Is there someone in your life right now who really gets you riled up? I invite you to bring to mind a time when someone did or said something that really pushed your buttons- there was a charge of energy, a reactivity. I encourage you to pick an event that wasn’t too challenging, let’s try an easy one. Here’s an easy one for me. Recently someone in my dream group was talking and talking and just not listening or giving anyone else a change to talk. I felt a charge of anger and distaste for them. Now, because I’ve worked with projection a lot, and because I already know that I have a lifelong habit of pouring out all my ideas in words and sometimes getting carried away and not letting other people get a word in, it took only a fraction of a second to close the loop and notice that I was projecting, and why I was projecting, and to draw that projection back to myself. I don’t like the part of myself that talks without listening, it doesn’t feel good to see that in myself, it feels better to see it in my dream friend, and externalize that distaste onto them.
Sometimes it’s not so easy to trace the projection back to our selves. For example, I had a friend who was making bad choices with money, and hearing about her choices got me really riled up. Why? I wondered. I’m so careful with my money that doesn’t sound like me. I’m practically legendary in my family for being so conservative with our family finances, or “penny pinching” as others would say. It took me a while to return that projection back to myself- I put a lot of energy into being careful with money and even so it’s never perfect- no matter how carefully we try to make decisions there’s always that undisclosed fee or service in the final bill, or the purchase that seemed like a good deal but turns out to be a waste of money. I so strongly identify as someone who is careful with money, that it’s hard for me to be relaxed about the times when I inevitably waste money. It’s easier for me to reject that part of myself and see it in someone else. That extra charge of energy reflects that “push” of externalization. 
The same can be true with positive projection. Call to mind now someone you really admire. My seminary professor Jeremy Taylor used to say that if we can notice something in someone else it’s only because it’s also present in ourselves. The trouble comes if we externalize that gift, we may never own or develop those innate talents in ourselves. For example, when my son was little, it was hard to be patient while helping him get ready to go to daycare in the morning while I was getting ready to go to work. I felt like I was the least patient person in the world. I longed to grow in patience. I noticed people who were patient and wished I could be like them. I was actually pretty hard on myself. Recently at the end of a circle discussion, one participant said she appreciated my patience and grace, and her words reached right into my heart. Someone had experienced ME as patient! I was so busy noticing patience happening outside of me, I never noticed it growing inside of me.
But wait, you might say, what about the other person, maybe they really are patient, or bad with money?” Jeremy used to say “Just because something is a projecting doesn’t mean it isn’t true, and just because it’s true doesn’t mean it isn’t a projection.” The invitation to notice projections doesn’t mean that person who we are angry with WASN'T rude or selfish, and my awe for people who care selflessly for others doesn’t diminish their gifts. This shadow puppet really is shaped like a gingerbread man, but when we work with projections, it’s a cool kind of mirror to help us see the parts of ourselves we can’t usually see, to help us grow in self-knowledge.
Rev. Jeremy Taylor, a UU ministry whose life’s work was spent developing and practicing “group projective dreamwork” grounded his practice in the inevitability of projections, and what they could teach us about ourselves. As soon as someone tells me their dream, and I picture it in your mind, it is no longer their dream, it is now my dream. My subconscious is taking their few words and painting in the details. It’s so natural to say “Your dream about waiting at the airport for your plane to come is about how your life is on hold because of covid” and maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. But Jeremy suggests we own our projections by saying “In my imagined version of the dream, waiting at the airport is like how I am in this long period of transition waiting to get moving”
I’ve been doing dream work this way for so long, I now use that technique when someone tells me the story from their waking life. Have you ever noticed that on Facebook you can post a sentence or 2 like “Anyone know a service in Ithaca that gives rides to doctor’s appointments? I have a family member who can’t drive themselves and needs help” and the comments will fill up with really strong opinions and suggestions some of which seem to come out of left field- including sometimes harsh judgements about me or my family member, or some comments so far off base you wonder “did you even read my post?” Those are projections based on the pictures the emerged in my Facebook Friend’s minds as they read just those few words, filling in details that have no relationship to the situation in my life.
Knowing this, when a person asks for advice I will say in my mind, or sometimes even out loud, “in my imagined version of this situation, I can imagine myself wanting to call 211 to get more information.” Or “I imagine I would feel very frustrated that there is not more support for people needing to get to the doctors… is that similar to how you feel?” I’m still surprised when my friend says “no, that’s not it” but I’m ready – knowing that their experience of the world is different than mine. When they say “no that’s not it” I realize I am getting a glimpse of the gap between their experience of the world and my projections onto it.
Angeles Arian lays out for us a process by which projections are created, and then reclaimed or integrated.
The first part happens totally unconsciously, that part where we project without even realizing it.
But then, perhaps our hero on whom we projected perfect integrity, is caught in a lie, and we can make excuses “everyone lies sometimes, or “that’s just fake news” but each time the real human person differs from our projection, it weakens the projection’s power. We might get really angry at that person for what feels like a betrayal of who we thought they were.
Often, at this point, we will just find someone new to project that thing onto. But if we are ready to grow in self-knowledge, and on the look out for projections, this might be a chance to notice the gap. Perhaps we are able to recognize that it is a projection, “and we see that it is our own material. As Arian says this “ is the stage of grief: grief for the lost part of ourselves that has been away for so long; and grief from the recognition that we didn't see the other person for who he or she was, and now recognize the intentional harm that we may have done..”.
Finally we may come to “compassion for and integration of the projection. In this stage we have compassion for ourselves and others with similar issues. We model the quality that we once projected rather than continue to place the projection outside of ourselves. We move into a state objectivity and carry no charge one way or the other about what we once had projected.”
Don Bisson notes that integration includes “a conscious search for the sources and origins of the projection. This will also include the sources outside yourself, like collective prejudices and biases which influenced your projections.”
So whenever you are noticing that charge of energy about someone else, you have the choice of redirecting that light back on yourself. Notice any resistance you feel, the more you resist “no this is not about me at all, it’s ALL bout them” be gentle and just keep returning the light to yourself.
As Don says “The general result of projection is impoverishment of the personality.” Who we are is shrunken, constricted by whatever pieces of our full humanity we can’t own and integrate. What Arian calls “the lost part of ourselves that has been away for so long.” When we integrate our projections we get those lost pieces back. We grow in wholeness, freedom and consciousness.
This practice is important right now not only for our own personal and spiritual growth, but because our projections impact others. As Laurie Penny said in her piece about how women are objectified, that is, when the projections of others keep them from being seen in their own wholeness and subjectivity “There are none so emotionally blind as those who look at a person standing right in front of them and see a mirror, not a window.[i] Racism also arises from projections onto other people we may have never met, or know only superficially -- those unconscious implicit biases that lead us to jump to conclusions about people. Our projections directly contribute to the polarization in our country. This polarization where our side is “all good” and the other side is “all bad” is a collective form of projection.
Projections are rampant throughout the liberal conservative divide. Consider the common projection we northerners often make- that racism is a southern problem. – sure the history in the south is filled with terrible racist things that happened and continue to happen there. But did you know that “The most intense school segregation happens in large Northern metropolitan areas surrounded by white suburbs?“[ii] Someone once stated in a community conversation on racism “we have no racism here in Ithaca” and a person of color gently shared experiences of discrimination and racism over her decades living in my home town.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ admonition in the Gospel of Matthew “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?” [Matthew 7:3] Projecting onto others it can be a way of avoiding seeing ourselves. 
In his book "Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill" Rev. Jeremy tells the story about how he developed created the group protective dreamwork process during his anti-racism work with white people back in 1969. When the group became stuck, Taylor suggested they begin sharing their dreams which included racial themes. The sharing not only shifted the dynamics among the people within the group, but also made a real difference in their work with communities of color, so noticeable was the change in how they showed up to their interracial work that the minister organizing in the black community said when he heard of Jeremy’s use of dreamwork as a tool for anti-racism “it sounds crazy but look at the results!” Jeremy explains the impact this way: “As the repressed seemingly ‘negative’ emotional energies that wore the masks of nasty people of other races in our dreams were admitted more into consciousness in the simple act of sharing and talking about them, the tendency to suppress and project those same energies out onto others in waking life began to diminish.” [p. 109] People looking at their dreams together realized that their dream figures actually had nothing to do with their neighbors in the world community, but had everything to do with themselves. “These ugly, scary, dark, powerful, sexy , violent, irresponsible, dangerous dream figures are vitally alive parts of my own authentic being and you know what – they aren’t so horrible after all”
My teachers have suggested that taking back our projections is one of the most important spiritual practices of our times, not only because of the polarization that happens when our projections are unacknowledged and unchecked, but also because whenever we lose or reject a part of our own self it makes us smaller and more constricted. So I encourage you, whenever you feel that charge of energy about the Other who fills you with anger, or makes you swoon with admiration, to remember the shadow puppet, and turn your light inward with compassionate awareness for yourself and others. As Jung says, our projections an be a helpful tool for owning and integrating the parts of ourselves we have rejected or neglected. As part of our commitment to spiritual growth and ethical living, may we bring ever more of our own selves into the light of consciousness.
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