One of the most challenging things we have in relationships with people is the experience of projection and perception. A Course in Miracles tells us we’re never upset for the reason we think. Never. That’s as emphatic as it can be.
And yet, we have a tendency to get upset.
We’ve been trained to blame others and the world on our upset, or finding fault with ourselves, and in all instances it’s not helpful. In all instances it can be avoided.
But we do have to take responsibility for the meaning we make of things, for our interpretations and perceptions and that requires a great willingness at first. Once we get the hang of it, the tremendous reduction in upset is such a relief that it no longer requires great willingness, and that’s another relief.
When others blame us for how they feel, it’s not a burden, but it can feel like one. When others blame us for how they feel, how they’re interpreting things and the meaning they’re making – this is their healing opportunity and it’s ours as well.
We won’t get any benefit if we don’t claim it as our healing too.
There’s nothing and no one outside of us.
We don’t have to heal through upsets, but we often do. That we can heal our mind even a little bit is a blessing I’ll never stop being grateful for.
I love Shakespeare’s sonnet 116 which reminds me that Love holds fast and holds no grievances:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.