We’re probably most of us aware that we could not see something in someone else unless we first felt it in ourselves.
If we had not lied, we wouldn’t know what a lie was. If we hadn’t felt courageous at some point in our lives, even if in imagination or in a minor affair, we could not know what to look for in another.
If we blame another for, say, negligence (I’m making it up), we wouldn’t recognize negligence unless we either were that way ourselves, were accused of being so, or had some other pre-existing familiarity with the notion. It must be that way.
In this example, when we try on “you are negligent” to see if it fits, we see that that issue has to have come from us. It becomes immediately obvious.
What we see in ourselves forms our filter. We then see others through that filter.
If what is within creates what is without, we can be said to be creating our experience of others by seeing them through the filter of what we already believe.
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If we’re interested in purifying, there’s a strategic reason why seeing things as reflecting or relating to ourselves is useful.
We seldom blame ourselves if we’re proved to have done something bad or wrong. If we can claim that behavior as our own – never mind another’s – blame will fall away.
The moment we see we did it, our blame machinery seems to shut down and our justification machinery seems to start up, both miraculously. And we make no further comment about our noticed behavior unless asked. We self-servingly bury what may now be seen as our mistakes.
Thus, if we’ve lied and are seeing it in others, to really deal with the situation once and for all, we need to own our own lying. Then the blaming should miraculously stop.
That’s what’s behind Jesus saying we have to remove the beam from our own eye – because it’s the reason we can even notice the mote in our brother’s eye – before we point to our brother’s mote. When we remove the beam in our own eye by owning the behavior, we amazingly no longer see or are bothered by the mote in our brother’s.
This is putting the self-serving bias to work for us.
***
We now can invoke the law of change and change the offending pattern of behavior from “I never stop” to “I am moderation.” Or from “I ignore appropriateness” to “I am appropriate.”
We could not do that from a blaming posture.
If we’re blaming, then we’re talking over top of our pain. It’s the resistance to experiencing that pain that has us project it outwards and attribute our feeling it to another in the first place. By blaming, we may not be able to stop experiencing our pain, but at least we’ll know who “did it to us.”
I got to see that, if we’re blaming, we’re consenting to remain incomplete. If we’re blaming, we’re resisting. Resisting seeing in ourselves the blemish we claim to be seeing in another. And yet seeing it in ourselves is what will save us from pain and misery.
In the wider picture, all that’s necessary to start the dissolution process is to raise whatever’s in question to awareness. The solvent of awareness will immediately begin to dissolve the pattern of behavior.
(We can also use the universal laws of transmutation, change, and elimination, we can use the violet flame, and we can ask the Divine Mother to take the unwanted behavior pattern away.)
Now that we’ve stopped blaming because we see the pattern in ourselves, whatever “course correction,” as the Divine Mother called it, (1) is necessary can be recognized when the realization arises or is inspired in us.
That course correction usually comes as an “Aha!” or realization. We have to clear the brush and create the space for that guidance to arise or be heard.
Mine came when I saw that what I was “seeing” in another was indeed a composite picture of myself.
I can’t say this is Kathleen’s process because it’s been filtered through me. I definitely don’t say it’s mine. This is my takeaway from work Kathleen’s been doing with me.
I’d never have seen this on my own. She’s taken the theory of purification related to vasanas a ways down the road.
Footnotes
(1) “Mi-ki-el, Yeshua, St Germaine will let you know if there is a course correction to be had.” (“Transcript ~ The Divine Mother: New Year’s Message 2017,” December 29, 2016, through Linda Dillon, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2016/12/31/new-years-message-2017/.)