Seeing Through Projection

   While paying for coffee this morning, my debit card wasn't working, and somehow it was declined twice. I had a couple of emotional reactions. The first is that of panic: "My card is not working anymore!" Then the second was embarrassment, realizing that I was holding up the line. When I finally found cash to pay for the coffee, I apologized to the woman who was waiting behind me. But the lady did not respond to me, and I moved on to get the milk.
    When I look at this situation, I realize what mistakes I am making in how I see the world. The first mistake is that I somehow see people around me as separate from me. In the moment when I am apologizing to the lady, I see myself as someone who did something wrong, and I see the person behind me as someone to whom I am accountable. Then, when the lady does not respond to the apology, vexation arises, as though an expectation of reply were disappointed. But all these things arise because of the mistake of thinking I am separate from other people. I create this inner drama, and fuel it by my sense of separate being that has these insatiable 'needs' for approval or acceptance.
     The same sort of thing happens with desires. I often think that desire is all about trying to merge with something else, such as a sugar treat. But actually, desire implies an illusion of separateness. When I see the thing I like in the dessert store, I start to have the thought: "that thing is over there waiting for me; I want that." And rather than accepting the image as already arising in mind, I project it out there and then think it's something substantial out there that I can grasp or hold onto. It is like having a war with oneself, in a way, and creating all the actors and actresses in one's own internal battlefield. Which one of these things belongs 'out there' and which one is truly me? Is it not all like the clouds in the sky?
     Another example has to do with anger. If anger arises inside me, I often might assume that the anger comes from something outside me which I somehow have to reject. But in fact, anger is just conditioned arising. There can be any number of reasons behind the anger, and none of these reasons has an object. Yet, sure enough, the mind thinks that there is 'someone out there' who is causing anger to arise, and then rejects the someone out there as responsible for the anger. A different approach would be to accept the anger as a phenomena arising in mind and not to assign it to a particular person or thing. It is just natural phenomena, and it doesn't really have an object at all. For instance, anger could be triggered by different sets of conditions, such as the state of the body, or lack of sleep, or a memory. Do any of these particular things have a particular object outside of mind? What if, rather than projecting the anger outward, I were to simply accept that it is the condition of mind, and one of many? How would that be?
      It takes practice to see this way, because the projection normally happens very quickly. But it seems that the important thing is not to see things as separate from the mind but to somehow own the conditions that are coming from mind. If there is anger, it's not coming from outside the mind but is the condition of this very mind. This would be taking responsibility for the conditions rather than thinking they are separated from mind.