I was thinking about my challenge around Sheryl and Archie. I want to tell her that she should not go back to Archie because she is happy now and she wasn?t happy while she was with him. I want to tell her that he is irresponsible and that going back to him will be hurtful to Julian. I want to tell her that wanting to return to him is probably just a part of her addictive disorder, and that she should look at this as if she were hearing the story from one of her clients, and advise herself as she would them. Lots of stuff that I want to tell her, and as I think of this, it becomes very clear that I am talking to myself.
I am expressing my fears for myself. I am reliving my relationship errors and projecting them onto Sheryl. In other words, I think I am looking at Sheryl?s life, but really I am looking into the mirror of my past, and the fear that my future will be like my past. I am angry with Sheryl for showing me this. I resent her for this. And all the time, this has nothing to do with Sheryl. It is all about me.
I think that this is always true about everyone in my life. They reflect for me what I need to see, and I do the same for them. No matter how fearful or painful the reflection, I owe them my eternal gratitude for their part in my spiritual growth. My spiritual growth is all that matters. So no matter what is happening to me in the illusion, the only part of it that has value is how I use it to awaken. The same is true for them.
Once I understand that I am projecting my life onto them, I can more easily withdraw those projections. Now I can see my daughter as she is; holy and beautiful and perfect; the Christ. All this stuff that she is doing, all this practice, all this trauma drama that seems to be her life is nothing. It is just the illusion she is temporarily lost in; the play acting that she became so deeply involved in that she forgot it was just play.
There is no chance that she will not find her way out, and I would not slow her down in that journey by trying to remove the very circumstances that she is using to get out. I will not hold her more deeply in it by believing that these circumstances are the truth. I will not become part of her ego dream by joining her in it.
By believing only the truth about her, I am teaching myself the truth about myself. As I see the Christ in her, I recognize that Christ in myself. This is another way of releasing the past so that it doesn?t become my future. It is the perfectly designed method of salvation through joining. I join my Christ Self with her Christ Self and we are both saved. When I look at the illusion and see something different, I recognize it as the ego deception it is. If I have trouble doing that I ask Holy Spirit for help in reinterpreting what I think I see.
There is nothing for me to do in her situation. There is nothing for me to say to her. My job is to recognize my projections and withdraw them so that I can see the truth of her, and then to hold that truth until she sees it herself. Everything is done on the level of the mind where all real work is always done. When I find myself playing around in the illusion, trying to manipulate what doesn?t exist, I know that I am wasting time. I go right back to the cause-my thoughts, not hers, but mine. This is the only way out for either of us.
I want to be truly helpful to my daughter, but the fear that she can?t help herself and so needs my help is counter productive. God believes in her. He created her so He knows the truth of her. He never loses sight of her perfection and His knowledge of her is perfectly unaffected by her actions. This is my job as a parent/friend/partner in any relationship. What they need from me is my certainty that they are as they were created by God, like Him, perfect in every way, perfectly unaffected by anything they say or do in the illusion. My faith in my daughter is my gift to her and also to myself. If I teach her that she is lacking in any way, that is what I am teaching myself
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