Vachon Imagined

When I played softball, I would spend hours playing catch with the infield. I played outfield, so the motion of throwing that ball back and forth became a part of me.

It was conditioning.

I would dream about it. I would find myself doing the motion while walking through the hallways of school. I carried it everywhere. The repetition became something deeper than a skill; it became something stored within me.

It took root.

Even now, decades later, I can still do it. In an instant, I become that eighth-grade girl again, standing on the field, feeling the rhythm of the game, the movement of the ball, the familiarity of something practiced thousands of times.

That is the power of conditioning.

What we repeatedly do, think, and experience begins to live within us.

The mind of projection works in much the same way.

Imagine the mind sending out and receiving thoughts, beliefs, fears, expectations, and interpretations much like a softball player throwing a ball back and forth. There is a constant movement between what we project and what we receive back.

Except in the inner world, nothing moves in the same way it does in the physical world.

Yet it is still moving.

Always moving.

Always speaking.

Even in silence.

The projections of the mind are powerful because they can become so familiar that we mistake them for reality. We can become so conditioned by our own thoughts, experiences, fears, and beliefs that we no longer recognize who is truly speaking.

This does not mean we deny what we feel.

It does not mean we ignore what we see.

It means we become willing to look honestly at what is moving within us.

Confession has power because it brings what is hidden into awareness. What is acknowledged can be understood. What is hidden continues to influence us in ways we do not see.

The truth is, what exists within us exists whether we speak it or not.

So we return to the One who is not moved by our temporary identities, our judgments, our successes, or our failures.

The One who does not change based on whether we are rich or poor, accepted or rejected, praised or criticized.

It remains.

It moves.

It is still, yet infinitely powerful.

And we are emitting from this invisible world all the time—the world beneath words, beneath appearances, beneath the stories we tell ourselves.

The unseen world.

The one that shapes the one we experience.

The one that speaks, even when we are silent.