"... as soon as we succumb to someone else's definition of who we are, we lose our sense of true self and of our right relation to the world. It makes no difference if those projections make us the hero or the goat: when we allow others to name us, we lose touch with our own truth and undermine our capacity to cocreate in life-giving ways with 'the other.'

...So the woodcarver resist people's efforts to name him from the outside in. With simplicity and clarity, he claims the right to name himself from the inside out: 'I am only a workman: I have no secret.' When we fail to take this first, critical step of fending off projections and reserving the right to name our own truth, we become lost in eternal smoke and mirrors and cannot even find the trail head of the path into our inner lives.

... What projections surround me? where do they come from? What drives them? how do they distort my sense of self? How am I dealing with them, and how might I deal with them better? How can I name and claim my own truth? Such questions, and our answers to them, are critical steps on the journey toward and undivided life."


-- Parker J. Palmer,
A Hidden Wholeness