#021223: Projections

Thoughts on relationships

I was on the path this morning having the first run I’ve taken in about a week and I was remembering a conversation I’d had with Abie earlier in the day, where I said that people are projections of our patterns. I kept thinking about it while I was running and it’s like this tapestry came together:

People are projections of our patterns. Some of these patterns are good: the securities we have either been exposed to or have firsthand experienced, which have been beneficial to us in our lives.

They (the patterns) could be a healthy way we learned to experience love or friendship or safety. Or they could be a way that we witnessed any of those things that clicked — set off a kind of yearning. The people and experiences that come into our lives as these kinds of projections feel like a form of nourishment and expansion that is trustworthy but which often doesn’t register as seductive or sexy or furiously intense because there’s a sort of calm that underpins it. Safety, I’ve learned, can often register as boring when we’re not entirely used to it.

These projections of people and experience are reminders and reinforcements of the self-worth that we ascribe to ourselves and which are nontransferable: cannot be taken or given away.

Some of us have an easy time finding and growing these relationships and circumstances. Others among us tumble for a while but I really don’t think you have to have experienced the kind of energy you might long for in your life in order to be attracted to it. I do think you have probably had to do a good amount of personal work if you weren’t as exposed to it in order to understand whatever patterns have shaped your view and break them to let the good shit in.

As far as the bad patterns that have shaped our view: these are people and experiences as projections too. But the projections are those of insecurities that we witness or experience as impediments or road blocks in our lives.

The human mind is prone to look out for danger as a way to avoid it but often I think some of us experience this energy as a sort familiar intensity that is highly charged and thus exciting.

I believe these “impediments” are actually stepping stones on the way to growth and new definitions of security that one gets to experience once they have learned to work with the impediments — once we’ve understood that the impediments are actually thread that is woven into the fabric of our stories and therefore our lives. They can’t be avoided or dismissed or discounted entirely, but we can try. The thing is, they’re part of us!, so best to let them be seen so they can also be learned from.

In either instance of the good and bad patterns, the most liberating truth has got to be that because we’re just projections to each other, no one can ever accurately say who or what you are. That fact is at only your discretion. Which is an amazing thing to own loudly and with pride.

I’m glad I got back out onto the path this morning.