It’s all projection! *

All our myths, fairy tales, and stories of the fantastical are projections of the human psyche, conscious and unconscious, the personal and collective. One might even say that our perception of reality is a projection born from our individual and collective filters of experience. The Buddhists suggest that reality is, but an illusion anyway so don’t bother trying to lift the veil of ignorance by learning new things about this reality.

You and I through our dreams and our everyday thoughts and beliefs quite literally create the world that we see. Is there a world outside our perceptions and creation? No doubt there is, but what it is objectively may be impossible to discern at least through the usual methods.

As a psychologist I would use the drawings of children to help us both discover what was going on inside them so as to shine a light on their feelings, experiences, and beliefs. In their drawings they would project a reality that in many cases went beyond the verbal and revealed to both of us what was going on. They were literally projecting their inner world onto the drawings. This I believe is the case for writers, poets, philosopher’s, mythologists, mediums, politicians, astrologists, alchemists, religionists and you and me. We’re all projecting our reality.

Dreams is another form of reality creation through projection ** and if read properly they can reveal our innermost selves.

Psychologists often use “projectives” such as picture cards where the querent tells a story or draws a picture or responds to a set of proscribed questions so as to get a better picture of what is going on within. They also use dreams as another method of entering the clients’ inner world. Often these dreams or the projected thoughts and feelings associated with their drawings or picture responses reveal archetypal symbols e.g., light, and dark for good and evil, the shadow, male and female images as symbols of the soul, death, the trickster, lovers, wise old man or woman, gods, devils, dragons, the everyman, the hero, ruler/king, or magician to name but a very few.

Note that many of these archetypes show up in the Tarot Arcana and though these cards may not be part of the process of real divination a story can be told about the querent using them that can reveal their inner self. The symbolism behind these cards can be quite useful to those who are reading them especially when a certain card seems to tweak the interest when it is revealed i.e., at some level something within may have energy on certain archetypal symbolism and noticing that energy and then looking at the symbolism associated with the archetype can reveal hidden information about the Self. **

Then there’s the Zodiac that astrologists refer to when trying to explain reality. Though there is no evidence that the stars and positions of the planets have anything to do with one’s personality there is research evidence that shows that being born at certain times of the year can affect personality variables such as general positivity, depression, or lack thereof, and mood swings, though not all of these variables have stood up under repeated studies. However, a Zodiac reading may give one the opportunity to reflect upon its statements and compare them with how they see themselves and inspires them to look deeper.

Finally, a good medium can read the projections of a querent e.g., what they are communicating through their questions, statements, shared events of their lives, dress, affect, and body language all of which are projections of their hidden self. Thus, a medium may be reading the “Waking Dream” of the person before them. However, I personally experienced an event where I was able to discern certain aspects of a person’s life without “reading” their outward projections. But that’s a longer story for another time.

All the following books can be found on the right hand column of this blog and ordered by clicking on their picture.

*Statement from Dr. Jeremy Taylor (see The Dragon’s Treasure: A Dreamer’s Guide to Inner Discovery pg. xiv, 2009)

**The concept of projection discussed in The Dragon’s Treasure: A Dreamer’s Guide to Inner Discovery

***See the Archetype section of Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting

United we stand divided we fall

I had a dream early last week that showed me being bullied by others and excluding me and others in my group. While trying to decode the dream and apply it to my life a number of thoughts presented themselves. The following is a distillation of these thoughts.

Anyone or anything that shuts out the inclusion of that which is other than itself kills off part of its soul individually or collectively.

The idea that we are all part of a greater whole is a philosophical and religious concept as old as religion itself. Wholeness whether on Earth or in some concept of heaven has been what most religions strive for at some level. Psychologically, meaning that which affects, or arises in the mind and is related to the mental and emotional state of a person, humans spend a certain part of their conscious energy trying to attain a certain equilibrium by trying to balance between its natural tendency to be separate and the natural need to belong. When one of the factors outweighs the other the individual or group loses their equilibrium and become unbalanced and the soul expression becomes compromised.

Outwitted

“He drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took him in.”

–Edwin Markham

This poem epitomizes for me not only the power of inclusion but the power of the unfettered soul. It reflects a psyche that has grown beyond it own ego needs into something more inclusive. The God of the Christian New Testament seems to be an example of Oneness and perhaps the maturing ego through the example of the inclusive Christ while the Old Testament seemed to reflect a much more immature ego in that separateness, revenge, and survival were projected onto their god more often than not.

In fact, many religions who believe in a prime deity or God imagine their God as having many facets some of which are turned into subordinate gods or aspects of the One deity but all representing the prime aspect of Oneness or wholeness.

It would thus seem to me that our attempt to create separateness here on Earth, in our nations, and neighborhoods is the antithesis of the God we believe in. Why the need for some people to insist upon the separateness of people seems to exist to support the egoic need to think of themselves as unique, dominant, better than, and righteous.  What if God’s Will is for us to be inclusive and strive for wholeness and Oneness even if that may not be achievable by the psyche of most of us or any of us for that matter? 

What are we doing then when we strive for exclusiveness, polarization, and separation? It’s hardly a mature and grownup let alone enlightened response to the world. What if  “growing up” means to become more responsible for our actions, more reliable in our dealings with others, more compassionate, less self-serving, and honest not only with others but with ourselves as well? What if our egoic maturity depends on thinking of others and not just ourselves and learning when we are projecting our faults and weaknesses onto the actions of others? What if growing up depends on us owning these faults so that we can thus be responsible for them and then move toward their correction or acceptance without acting them out? Could all this be part of our purpose for being here i.e., to learn how to do that?

There is no one answer to our purpose for being though it is possible that most aspects of all the so-called meaning of life philosophies can be included with the singular exception that most seem not to advocate the creation of greater separateness and entropy, that most do not employ evil to meet evil or to manipulate what constitutes evil in order to commit evil and thus defend the separateness. It also seems to me that an ends justifies the means or an evil for evil, hurt for hurt, and polarized philosophy is a consequence of separateness and exclusivity and rarely if ever brings about fulfillment in the long term even if that term lives beyond the individual or group. It also seems to me that the awareness that declares the experience that the kingdom of heaven is here now is a place you come from not go to is an awareness that knows no separation not between God and us or between each of us. This awareness reflects a nondual consciousness i.e., a consciousness of unity.

In this way of seeing the world the concept of ‘united we stand and divided we fall’ is a truism i.e., a reality that throughout history has proven itself every time we challenge it, allow it to decay, or ignore it. Empires have been destroyed when they’ve lost this unifying principle and they enter the Dark Night of the Soul that spirals into decay. How arrogant are we to think that that truism is for others and not us because somehow we are more special and can do without the input from other than ourselves? How self-indulgent, self-centered and elitist are we? 

In a state of non-binary awareness we dwell within the very same spirit that dwells within us. Fundamentally at our deepest most profound level we are united. When we deny this basic truth we become functioning cripples in that we are vastly less powerful and effective. 

When we allow our divided and egoic nature to grow up and see that we are all connected and that this is connected to something vastly bigger than ourselves we will see that we are part of a gigantic interconnected and coherent system that includes everyone and everything around us. As we now looking at ourselves we have become incoherent in our relationships and are rapidly compromising our ability to survive as a species. We don’t know what our destiny as a conscious species is but surely our penchant for separation and division within a context that exists as a function of its unity jeopardizes that destiny.

Bronze plaque on SJSU Tower Hall

Who’s out there?

Shadow people

“This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.”

–Rumi

We spend so much time and energy rejecting parts of ourselves and the parts of ourselves projected onto others (called judgments and criticisms) that it is a wonder we have any time for living at all. 

Sometimes I worry and fume, rage and hide from so much of what I see in the world that it just wears me out.

Have you ever noticed how some days seem to have so many things go wrong and/or so many negative people show up around you? Some days seem to have more jerks and idiots on the road than others, why is that?

If for one moment we could stop our mind in the middle of a negative observation as though the thought, or observation, were to hover like a holographic image in the space of our head you might walk around it with the minds eye. Imagine it–the thought, the observation–to exist only in the space of our mind and that it has no reality outside our head. Now, if the thought or observation only has reality inside the head, what is it we’re seeing outside our head? At that moment there’s what we see hovering in the space of the head and what is walking, driving, talking, and acting outside. 

Most of the time they are mutually exclusive, but we layer our internal image onto the external reality and then convince ourselves that the layered image is real. The ego-self is a righteous machine, it never likes to be wrong so it almost always gets rid of the wrong and all its negative attachments by throwing it at the outside environment, on to others, or other things.

But what would happen if we were to accept that this part of ourselves is the cause of most of what we observe, or think and that the reality outside may be totally different? 

Instead of throwing out the negative thoughts and feelings, or stuffing them down into the subconscious parts of our minds, we were to welcome them into the house of our self as a guest who is just passing through, entertained for a little while, then sent on their way? 

What if each negative feeling or thought were but a guide to what’s inside of us instead of an indicator of what’s outside? What if we treated the images in our waking life like the images in a dream, as metaphors and symbols for our self? What if we were to treat our images of reality as a need for self-healing, or loving? What if the love we saw outside ourselves was actually a projection of ourselves? What if it’s all us? What then?