The problem with not “showing up” in a relationship, namely not speaking up, sharing my reality, or conveying what’s going on with me, is I automatically have determined the outcome of the interaction. By making the choice to not show up, I’m making the choice for both of us, how the scenario is going to play out. Because it’s already playing out with my current silence. In this way, I’m playing both sides of the relationship. I’m playing my side, having my experience of the relationship and reacting to my experience. I’m playing the other side, in my head, imagining showing up and sharing whatever I want to share, imagining their reaction based on either my history and projections or based on our history and projection of who I see them as, imagining the fallout and difficulty in repair, if there even is a repair, and then choosing to not go down that road because it’s not worth it. I’ve just made the choice for both of us.
Once we understand what a metaphorical or spiritual picture is, then we can explore how pictures can become a root to projection. By projection I mean the psychological idea of taking our experiences in our history, when we haven’t fully processed them internally, and interpreting current experiences inaccurately as the same as those historical experiences. A great example of where we almost always have multiple pictures that need breaking is in marriage.
We hold on to pictures, even the pieces of them for many reasons. For me, it’s often fear. If I look away from my picture at the unknown, how terrible would the truth really be? How much more will it hurt than the picture? However, so far, the truth has been so much more merciful than the beliefs, expectations and imaginings I clung to. Real Truth is never without Mercy, Compassion and Love. In Divine Reality, Truth and Love are one and never separate. It’s easier said than done, but these moments where we break our pictures and release them, are those moments where rubber meets road. It’s the place where we prove we believe it enough to act on it. Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it terrible and painful. So far it’s ALWAYS been worth it.
Once I have a set of interpretations, I can find myself drift away from the facts by holding onto the interpretations tighter than I hold on to the real facts. Interpretations themselves are stories. As I collect more stories from interacting with people (same or others) then more stories are built and I can fall into the trap of collecting these stories together as a “proof” I’m right about something. Proofs got built on top of other stories or interpretations, until I was convinced my partner was a man that didn’t exist anywhere except in my head. That’s how projection starts and then get built on or develop. The problem with projections is they feel like reality, truth and clever insight but really, projections and interpretations are pure fantasies, created from my fears based on my history.
