Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation

by Richard Rohr

We ourselves create a substantial part of the image and meaning that we see—by our own expectations, needs, hurts, compulsions, infatuations, desires, and agendas. Psychology sometimes calls these blinding and binding patterns “projections” or “reaction formations”; in their negative forms, they may even be called delusion, fantasy, or obsession. Without some awareness of our common habit of projection, most relationships will not last, but become serial infatuations or create entirely unnecessary enemies. Without maturity in seeing, we never really meet or accept the other—as other—but live out of our own inner states, over and over again, like a dog chasing its tail. This is the final narcissism and instability of any non-self-reflective culture or person. We must be aware—almost hour by hour—of what our reservoir is holding, or we will never feel the need to fill it with a new kind of positive flow—or recognize the brackish and even poisonous waters from which we are drawing.