There is a solar will and a lunar state of being, there is a time we pray only for blue skies but never the less rain comes and looking at my garden lately the beauty that rain gives birth to when it nourishes the soil, well surely that should stand as some kind of profound metaphor for what happens when we allow our the water of our grief or tears to nourish the parched or aching parts of our soul. To give life to those seeds of becoming inside of us family, friends or society gave us the message they would prefer not to allow us to see the light of day. It may be necessary to know what makes us sad, so that in time the sunlight of our spirit can rise from the earth of our body watered by our tears again.
How helpful is it for us to shout at the rain, to tell it to go away? But how many of us have been shouted at or criticized or argued with when we needed to have a necessary feelings such as tears, pain, anger or sadness that others just saw as an inconvenience to their agenda and/or their will or ideas and ideals of what was ‘appropriate’ , ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ in that situation?
Is it wrong for them to have their agenda for their life? No! (But often, as John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to us when we are busy making other plans!”) To try to impose that fixed ideal on someone else’s soul is a form of tyranny. Seen it happen in my own family and in society so often by people lacking a wider perspective, compassion , wisdom, patience or insight into the depths..It is surely human in a society based on so much criticism and shame and confusion around projection and feelings for us to struggle with the parts of us that are tender, vulnerable, unformed raw and real, but let us be patient with ourselves and others in this struggle. There is a time to fight and then there is a time to surrender too, to what must be burnt away in order to free us. There is a time to have boundaries and a time to let down walls.
If we do not open to our sadness we cannot get to the healing. If we will not allow ourselves to know our anger and how the remnants of it may be warping our present perspective or view, how self assertion and self advocacy may have in becoming lost as an authentic force led us into the depths of depression, paralysis or paranoia how can we grow, how can we emerge, how can we be truly authentic?
So when we feel our emotions it is important to hold close to them, try to give them a form, an understanding, to sense if defensiveness may hide a wound or fear in yourself or another and where we may be projecting or displacing that fear or acting it out in other ways. To use our wisdom mind.
Projection is a form of denial. Rather than deal with our own feelings we project them (onto the screen of another), This is especially apparent in the paranoid. Rather than deal with their own anger and hostility, paranoids project them out onto those around them.. (they see others) as angry, hostile, and ready to attack – and respond to them accordingly, in the most extreme cases, paranoids will kill another person out of the belief that person may be out to kill them.
Anne Wilson Schaef
At one point the paranoid person was probably deeply hurt and yet now protective defenses stop them dealing with what that internal struggle with a conscious or unconscious past lodged inside of them.. Their ‘demons’ make sense in terms of the past but block the way to new life now, in a kind of permanent state of ‘haunting’. They (or we) then grapple with them daily, and we also may have to turn that search light within ourselves to see where past fears of experiencing earlier pain and buried feelings over critical shaping events may now be standing in our way.
As humans we may try to impose our emotions on others, or we may try to block their expression… Just because we feel a certain way and others feel differently that does not make either of us ‘bad’ or wrong.. Finding a container for our feelings means we can face and hold them, rather than project. They need a witness. Some times this witness is internal, some times it is a recovery buddy, therapist or wise person who can help us to mine them for inner gold, power or meaning.
What is important is that we find some way to give them an expression or voice, to let them out, to no longer be terrified of the internal lunar feeling (or deeply primal instinctive) landscape of our soul which through defensiveness or projection may be calling out for us to authentically connect within. When we find a way to inwardly connect and understand then we can begin to incorporate what before felt too difficult to experience. Then we may learn to project less and become more whole, more emotionally mature and rounded as an individual. Then we may feel the Sun slowly rising after all of that rain, all of the storms, all of the inner battle. A long period of ‘being with’ then reveals the gift of our soul and our life, as well as the bearing testament to the power and resilience of our spirit. For is it not the reflected light of the Sun that in fact illuminates the moon?
Emerging From The Dark Night 