Daily Contemplation
I have a daily practice where I do my chanting, mediation, and contemplation. I am currently using Mark Nepo’s “The Book of Awakening” as inspiration for my daily contemplation. Here is one of the daily entries that I found deeply helpful.
Everyone personalizes and projects. Personalizing is mistaking what happens in the world as always having to do with you. An extreme example would be when a child doesn’t do her homework and learns the next day that a plane went down in Dallas: she somehow believes that she was responsible. A more common adult version of this and less extreme, is when your partner comes home sullen and moody, and you immediately believe it is your fault.
Projecting is the reverse. It occurs when we place the things that happen in us onto the world around us. Often unknowingly, we attribute our fears and frustration to others. Rather than accept my own anger, I see you as angry. A generational example would be that if I am afraid pf dogs, I protect my children from dogs and, without asking how they feel, keep them away from dogs too. A subtler example of this is when someone is crying, and we say there is no need to be upset, because we are uncomfortable with all the emotion. Or, when we keep asking the other person if they are okay, when it is we who are not.
The truth is that no one can avoid personalizing or projecting. There are only those of us who are aware of it and those of us who are not: only those of us who own it when it happens, and those of us who don’t. But this difference is crucial. Not owning these things can end relationships. Owning them can deepen relationships.
Humans have spilled soup for eternity, and generations have made excuses, saying, “It was the Earth. The Earth shifted,” and generations have secretly thought, “He meant to do it”
If you want to save the world, then when you spill the soup, simply say, “I am sorry I spilled the soup”
For me this reflects the need to take responsibility for my part of the situation and let go of the rest.
Big Hugs and Much Love,
Cindy
