all our good qualities for granted, or fail to
acknowledge them at all. Perhaps we get stuck in the
often deep and still bleeding wounds of childhood,
and forget or never discover that we have golden
qualities too. The wounds are important, but so are
our inner goodness, our caring, our kindness toward
others, the wisdom of the body, our capacity to think,
to know what's what. And we do know what's what,
much more than we allow. Yet, instead of seeing in a
balanced way, we frequently persist in the habit of
projecting onto others that they are okay and we are
not.
I balk when people project onto me in this way. I try to
reflect it back to them as commonsensically as I can,
in the hope that they will come to see what they are
doing and understand that their positive energy for
me is really theirs. The positivity is their own. It is
their energy, and they need to keep it and use it and
appreciate its source. Why should they give away
their power? I have enough problems of my own.
[People] measure their esteem of each other by
what each has, and not by what each is.
... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance