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Dear People Whom God Loves,

We now turn to how we project onto others these disowned parts of ourselves that we no longer see as part of us.

To use anger again.  When our anger has been put into our shadow (which means we aren’t aware that we are angry), why do we see others as angry?  At some level, we know that anger is present, but since it’s not in me, it must be in you.  Maybe the other person is angry, but we don’t see it in ourselves.  We are only half-right.  At other times, the other person or persons are not angry, but I think that they are because since it is not in me, it must be in them.  In this case, we are completely wrong.  When other people really bother us, it most often means that there is a part of us that we don’t recognize.

I quote this from Wilber’s book:  “You might have seen the recent studies where men who were anti-gay-pornography crusaders, and who had dedicated a large portion of their lives to aggressively fighting homosexual porn, were tested for their levels of sexual arousal when shown photos of gay sexual scenes, the crusaders evidenced substantially more sexual arousal than other males.  In other words, they themselves were attracted to gay sex but, finding that unacceptable in themselves, spent their lives trying to eradicate it in others, while claiming they had no such nasty desires themselves.  Yet all they were really doing was projecting their own despised shadows onto others, then scapegoating them.”

This doesn’t mean that we do not see things in others.  It is good to do so as this gives us information about them in order to understand them better or, on occasion, to protect ourselves from them.  If their behavior “drives us up a wall” and is really not threatening us personally, it is a good sign that they are touching our shadow.

I find it valuable to look at some public figures that really bother me.  That helps me to see parts of myself that I have disowned.  This is hard for me to do.  It is very uncomfortable.  But I recommend it to you.

More next time.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay


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