During the first year I was
getting sober my sponsor would tell me – over and over –words I just shuddered
to hear. I was going to AA meetings 6-7 times each week. They were reasonably
large meetings, the smallest being maybe 20+ members of the Fellowship.
Listening to that many people week after week upped the odds that there would
be people I just didn’t like – people who just seemed to rub me the wrong way
from the very beginning. From the “git go,” as they would say in West Texas,
where I grew up.
Following a meeting, I would
mention, “so-and-so just irritates me,” or
“there’s just something about Henry that gets on my nerves,” or “Every
time Johnny starts to share I just have to grit my teeth.” My sponsor would
give me a knowing look and tell me, “Well, Donnie, what is it in them that
reminds you of something you’re hiding from yourself?” God, I hated that observation!
If I argued with him, my sponsor
would gently remind me of the Twelfth Tradition: “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever
reminding us to place principles before personalities.” He would often
elaborate by telling stories on himself of incidents where someone who grated
on his nerves said exactly what he needed to hear at that meeting. Had he tuned
them out, he would have missed the message his Higher Power wanted him to hear
that day.
I learned, screaming, whining
and clawing, to listen very closely to those I just didn’t like very much. It
was hard for me to admit but most of the time what they shared was exactly what
I needed to hear. Principles before personalities – the spiritual foundation of
the Fellowship. At least I began to understand there was a reason for the
Twelfth Tradition. Namely, I wasn’t the first to experience this (often)
irritating truism. I wasn’t all that unique after all. I was just one of the
herd – a run-of-the-mill alcoholic.
Psychologists talk a lot about
the defense mechanism of Projection.
So does A Course in Miracles (ACIM). We
project out attitudes/behaviors on those around us, then castigate and blame
them for having those characteristics. This process saves us from having to face
these behaviors in ourselves.
In a companion Glossary of
Terms, ACIM describes projection in this way: We try to externalize an idea
from our mind onto our perceived external world so the idea now appears to be
objectively real with an independent power over us. People, especially, are
animated by our own thoughts, which we cannot admit are truly inside of us. We
prefer to see people as outside of us and acting on us. This description of
Projection is a “… reversal of the commonsense belief that our perception is
caused from without. External objects seem to be sending information through
our senses to our brains, seemingly causing our perception of them. Yet our
perceptions are caused internally.
Over time we build up beliefs about reality. These beliefs guide our attention causing our eyes to search for
those things that fit our pre-existing categories. Once we find these things,
our beliefs guide our interpretation
of them, and these interpretations are
our perception. Our perceptions are thus projections of our beliefs, through
the means of selective attention and subjective interpretation. As a result,
what we see is simply a mirror, a reflection of our state of mind.” Robert
Perry, Glossary of Terms from A Course in
Miracles, 2nd Edition, Circle Publishing, 2005, p.83.
My former mother-in-law had a
phobia about bird feathers, especially chicken feathers. She’d scream in fear
at the sight of them. As a child she was terrified by the flapping flurry after
disturbing a bunch of roosting chickens. My only surviving aunt, 97 years old,
has an uncontrollable fear of water – baths, showers, lakes and oceans. This
stems from a time, as a child, when her brothers held her under water too long
for comfort. It terrified her. In both of these simplistic examples it is very
clear that the perceptions of these women were actually their internal interpretation of pre-existing
attitudes – about feathers or about water.
I remember a song from the 1940s
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific.
The musical dealt with the perceived horror of interracial love and marriage –
in this case a relationship between a white man and a Polynesian woman. In the
lyrics of one of the songs was the refrain, “…You’ve got to be taught to hate.”
That happens to all of us about everything. We are taught our beliefs about
reality. Those beliefs guide our attention to what we perceive and how we
interpret our perceptions. And that’s the “external world” we convince
ourselves is reality. The Course says quite simply: It’s insane.
AA (as the Fellowship always
seems to do!) has a much simpler way of stating all this: “If you spot it, you got it.”
By the way, I still abhor coming
face-to-face with this reality.
Thanks for listening again this
week. As always – with my blessing – please share this message with your
friends, family and acquaintances.
Don
#4 March, 2012