Into The Mystery Podcast Ep. 18: Projection 101

Spiritual maturity means possessing the ability to discern between what is Real, and what is a fantasy of our own minds that we’ve projected onto “reality.” Sometimes the ego, unable to acknowledge its own unwanted traits or darkness, will project them onto other people as a means of dealing with them ... a potent recipe for suffering. In this episode, we explore various forms of projection and some ways to encounter them honestly in the course of our spiritual work.

Transcript

What is inside?

What is outside?

What is only our inner experience and what is only our outer experience?

How do these two relate to each other?

In this episode,

We're taking a look at projection to discover where our inner experience and our outer experience meet,

Where we get those two confused.

How to relate properly with our inner experience and our outer experience.

The hope here is that by understanding projection a little more deeply,

We can learn to navigate our experience more wisely,

More lovingly,

With more clarity.

Have a listen.

We hope you enjoy.

Projection.

Where to start?

Where to start?

That's such a big subject.

Maybe it would be useful to start with the more elementary notions of projection,

Where we experience the ideas and concepts we have about our self as somehow external to us.

That's the most basic in the sense that it's well explored through psychology,

The way that we take our own inner state and somehow transfer it onto the outside world as if it's happening to us rather than within us.

I think that's a major feature of projection,

That hallmark experience of feeling like it's happening to you rather than within you.

Right.

Well,

First and foremost,

Because we identify ourselves with the body.

There's also a projection I think that goes on in the mind in which we're always sort of reifying this projection of what we think ourselves to be.

So,

There's whenever I think the word me or the word I or I need to place myself in some kind of a scenario or a narrative,

There's a whole image that goes along with that.

That image is created of elemental things like my gender,

My age,

Wherever I came from,

My experiences,

My traumas,

My triumphs,

Et cetera.

All of that stuff is always kind of like in the soup of what I think of as me.

There's that image.

It's always in flux.

Like who I was yesterday is not necessarily who I think I am today,

Which may have changed based on some experience I've had or something someone said to me.

But not only do I hold that image of myself in my own head,

I also hold an image of what I think other people project me as.

So,

There's more than one of me already,

As well as the people themselves.

And a lot of what I think I'm perceiving when I'm thinking about another person,

That image I hold of that person,

Is actually aspects of me that I've just sort of applied to the idea of that person.

So it's just like this weird projection hall in the mind where we've got all of these meanings and ideas flying around that make up what we think is a solid human being in our experience.

Right.

A solid self,

Or if we translate that in an outward way,

A world that is a projection.

One of the exercises I've used in groups before is to just have people answer the question,

What is the world or what is reality?

And however many people are in the room,

That's how many different answers you get about what reality is or what the world is.

And that in some sense informs this truism that what we experience as the external world is really just the inner structuring of our own mind.

Whether it's conceiving of our self or conceiving of another or whatever it may be,

It's like that construct in our ability to project it out into the world as an image or as a living reality.

Like that's so fundamental to our consciousness.

The Course in Miracles makes this point in the beginning of the course where it asks us to behold certain objects and then recite to ourselves that this cup means nothing.

It has no meaning.

So if we take the example of the cup,

I can look at the cup and objectively I can see that it has a shape,

But anything else that comes after the basic characteristics of the cup is something that my mind is applying to it.

I know from experience that it's used to hold liquids generally and that I can use it to drink.

The cup might have a hole in it that I can't see and so I can't actually use it for that purpose but I don't know that.

I'm just assuming that what I have known about previous cups to be true will be true of this cup.

And then we can go further than that.

Maybe I had an incident of spilling something that was uncomfortable.

I might bring that into the equation or maybe it has a special meaning to me because somebody gave this to me or it's left over from some holiday or celebration.

So all of that stuff,

That's the projection.

Yeah,

It seems in some sense that projection serves some kind of almost evolutionary purpose too to make life digestible.

We don't have to contemplate the purpose of a cup every time we go to pick one up.

Right.

You never get anything done.

There's some utility in that but then there's also this downside of it being this way in which we go to sleep.

It's like we stop paying attention because we just have that already developed concept or that already developed image that we can just simply imprint the world with.

And in a way it serves both functions.

One a function of utility and the other a function of,

In a sense,

Going to sleep.

Yeah,

And I mean you're right.

It's obviously biologically useful to not have to relearn what a cup is every time or anything else.

And the brain is built to do that,

Which is part of our problem because the brain is very efficient at creating shortcuts around things that it doesn't have to process another time.

And that's where we get into problems of if I have had a previous experience with a person,

I will start to log those things,

Start to create an image that I will project expecting more of the same perhaps or all the other dynamics that come into interpersonal relations.

And that's where we can see that the practice of presence is so potent because presence automatically tunes the brain or awareness in such a way that the brain isn't simply following through with its projection of past experience onto the present.

It's actually alive and experiencing things in a way that's novel and real and true.

An interesting way to observe projection,

I think,

Is when you meet someone new and you have no idea what this person's about.

And this is particularly valid,

I think,

In romantic encounters as well.

We have this tendency with the blank slate of the person in front of us,

Maybe there are one or two traits that have caught our eye or we find them physically attractive or something,

The mind will immediately come forward and project this image of perfection on this person for a lot of people.

I mean,

If romantic questing is part of your experience,

Then there's that initial infatuation phase where,

Oh,

He likes these kinds of movies,

I like those kinds of movies,

We must have everything else in common.

And so there's this kind of general projection of myself onto another.

And so I think the infatuation comes out of that because until you have evidence to the contrary,

It's all too easy to fill in all the positive stuff and just assume that it's there and really believe in it.

But it's pure projection because at some point,

People sort of let go of their best behavior and you find out what's really behind the,

I don't want to say facade,

But.

.

.

And this occurs not just in those early interactions with people,

But in any kind of situation,

Especially under stress,

I think the brain will automatically start to fill in the blanks that it doesn't understand with some assumption from its own experience,

Which will lead to probably not optimal results.

Yeah,

Right.

And while we can see in that way how it's a defense mechanism,

It prevents us from experiencing the anxiety of the unknown by filling in that unknown with projected qualities or attributes that may or may not be true.

Yeah,

The brain is always in this sort of constant scramble for a sense of control that comes from knowing,

Knowledge is power,

Knowing what the situation is,

Knowing.

.

.

Because if you know what the other person wants or where they're coming from or how they may attack you or not,

It feels safer.

And if the brain doesn't have that information,

It will come up with a narrative,

It'll come up with some prior experience with a similar kind of person that it tastes on that kind of cutout doll in front of you.

It reminds me of doing inquiry exercises at my first gongerajee retreat and sitting and talking to someone who is just absolutely still and silent.

And I remember projecting all sorts of judgmental thoughts onto that person because the blank slate that was in front of me.

.

.

And at the time I didn't realize it,

I didn't realize that's what I was doing,

But it's very easy to do so.

It's like we use that other human being to fulfill the expectations our mind has about our self.

I think a lot of arguments come up among your close intimate friends,

Maybe family members,

Because we are negotiating projections.

I sense that I'm not being seen the way my image in my mind.

.

.

I'm being seen by someone wrong.

I'm not the person you think I am.

Meanwhile,

That person is trying to convince me that,

Oh yeah,

You are the person I think you are.

And we get into this,

But yeah,

Well,

Yeah,

I said that thing,

But you took it wrong.

And it's all a bunch of cross projections where we're never going to really come to a resolution if somebody can't admit that the other's projection is real.

Does that make sense?

Well,

We don't.

I mean,

It speaks to our limitation and our ability to see each other clearly and truly on multiple levels,

Not just in terms of our personality and our experience,

But at the level of being,

Our ability to see each other as the essence and presence that is true.

And we're bound to feel unseen then,

When we're not being seen for who we really are.

And the ego is infuriated by that.

I mean,

The ego just wants to preserve a positive projection of itself,

I think,

In most cases.

It's safe to say most people want to be thought of positively or think of themselves as positive.

Good people,

Quote unquote,

Good.

Well,

Then that becomes.

.

.

Sorry to interrupt you,

But that's a very important part of projection is that in the dynamic of projection,

Generally there's an idea that I am good and that is safe and established.

And what tends to happen is that when something is less than good or unfavorable,

It's quickly projected onto the outside world.

And that's a major dynamic that we have to work through is at a certain point,

We see ourselves as all good and others as not.

And it's a major flawed error in our own consciousness.

Yeah.

You can see that playing out in social media dynamics between people where it's one opinion from a person automatically invites the plastering of this whole set of undesirable attributes that we think belong to that person and not us.

It seems in places like that,

Like social media,

That projection is way too easy in those kinds of environments.

Anytime that we're not faced with the direct information that a real relationship involves,

It's very easy to slide into projection.

Yeah.

And this is so evident in email too,

Because you can't hear the intonation behind the words.

Boy,

I'd love to have a tally someday of the numbers of relationships that have gone through rocky patches,

Friendships and work relationships,

Because one single sentence was taken in the wrong tone of voice,

Or you couldn't hear the inflection in a certain word.

And the mind not knowing what to do with that just automatically fills in some narrative that we may have experienced elsewhere,

But it has nothing to do with the situation.

You got to project something into that.

Yeah.

If you don't understand it,

You'll project something into it.

We were talking about something related to this in my group the other day,

And one of the members shared an experience where someone had said something that she perceived as hurtful.

And it became a small obsession that persisted for a number of years where she was nursing this hurt,

Avoiding the person,

Had created a story around it.

And at some point she said,

I don't,

To herself,

I don't want to carry this anymore.

And so she actually approached the person and explained,

You know,

You said this thing and here's what I thought you meant.

And it was hurtful.

And I don't want to carry this anymore.

And I just wanted to clear this up with you.

And the person who had said that was baffled,

Like had no idea was not carrying,

You know,

Any kind of a grudge or there was no offense intended.

I mean,

It was just completely this projected situation in the mind.

And you know,

First off,

Kudos for seeing that and taking action,

Having the bravery to go ahead and face whatever there was to be faced,

If anything.

But it's a powerful lesson in the ways that our minds are not to be trusted sometimes.

You have to be really diligent about teasing out the meaning,

The actual meaning of what transpires between us.

Exactly.

I think that's a great example where one of the ways I think we can become deeply aware of projection is when you have a whole relationship playing out in your mind that's not actually happening.

When that's happening,

It's sure that there's projection going on.

And we should be very careful about that because maybe that's the connection to assumptions and expectations is we are filling this imaginary relationship with a whole lot of substance and perhaps some vitriol and suffering and problems and complexities that hasn't actually displayed at all.

And so we begin to relate to our projection of that person,

Which has been solely established in our mind,

Not anywhere in actuality.

And I think we do that way,

Way more often than we think we do.

Yeah,

If we're not paying attention.

And I think relation,

You know,

Close relationships in particular,

Intimate relationships,

You can each have a projection of the other that's not real.

And you might even both understand that.

But there's some sort of reward involved in maintaining the pretense between the two of you.

So something codependent.

I may be involved with someone who is a liar,

But I don't have the bravery or there's something to be lost.

I think if I confront that and what it really means,

So I'll project something a lot more favorable onto that person.

This reminds me,

This part of our conversation reminds me of,

To me,

One of the more noticeable aspects of projection,

Which has to do with judgment.

Because it's not uncommon for people to feel judged by someone else,

Where what's really taking place is an internal judgment of themselves and projecting that onto the outside world.

In fact,

That's one of the really potent dynamics within our psyche is that our super ego makes a self-judgment or a self-critique or a self-evaluation.

And then that's embodied by that other person,

The image of that other person.

So then we feel judged by them.

And I've seen many,

Many instances of this in my life,

Both as a recipient and as an offender of experiencing a really intense judgment that never actually happened.

It's really startling.

I mean,

I've seen instances where someone becomes aware of the projection of a judgment and it is so difficult to accept that that was an internal working and not an external circumstance that it can literally break down the psyche at times.

It can literally cause a fragmentation when we realize that the reality that I've been telling myself isn't the reality that's actually here.

So just to make this a little bit more concrete with an example,

I think you're speaking about something like,

Say you feel you were in a work meeting and you performed poorly and your boss shot you a look and you assume there's a judgment in that,

That you've been judged.

Harshly for your performance?

That would be an example,

Yeah.

I think it can happen around major features like certain aspects of our identity.

Whenever we have a conflict within us that tells us that we should be different than we are,

There's going to be a tendency to want to place that value in someone else's eyes so that they're looking back at us with judgment thinking we should be different than we are.

But that's actually something that we're experiencing in ourselves.

Yeah.

You know,

That reminds me of a relative of mine who died a few years ago.

And when I was speaking to her husband at the funeral,

I don't know,

100 people showed up to the funeral.

Obviously many people loved her.

She'd been a nurse and had touched a lot of people's lives.

And anyway,

He said to me,

You know,

She always thought nobody liked her,

Which was just so sad because it was clear from the turnout at the funeral and some of the speeches that had been made that that wasn't the case at all.

There you go.

You can see an example there where maybe in childhood she experienced some form of rejection,

Some aspect where she didn't feel loved or accepted.

And that gets so deeply written into the code of our perception that we go out and we carry that everywhere.

I mean,

At a certain point,

I think that's if we get a little bit meta with this,

We start to see that much of reality as we experience it or much of society as we experience it is the projection just in the way that you're describing.

People don't like me.

It's like,

Well,

Where did we get that from?

Do people tell you that?

I had a gentleman one time I was speaking with who was going to visit his in-laws and was going on and on about what his in-laws thought about him.

As I was listening to him,

I was appalled.

I thought,

How could anybody be so crude and harsh?

And then as the conversation developed,

I asked,

So did these people actually say this to you or is this in your own mind?

And he stops and he recognized it was in his own mind.

It was nothing that they had actually said or even demonstrated.

And it's dangerous in this way.

It's dangerous because we end up living in a reality that isn't real and it causes us a great deal of suffering.

Yes.

And I'm glad you brought up childhood too,

Because I think that there is a phenomenon sometimes where parents will project themselves onto the child and then criticize or judge or celebrate the child,

Depending as though it were their own life.

Absolutely.

Living through the child,

Which I think is incredibly damaging.

It's a difficult thing to carry.

And you can't see it as a child that it was never you who was in question.

Right.

Right.

And we see the same thing as a societal dynamic when certain ways of being are congratulated and certain ways of being are criticized or eliminated.

We see the same thing of this parental model of what we're expected to be.

And this whole path is about questioning those ideas,

Which is one thing I love about it,

But it's also sort of terrifying sometimes because when you stop projecting,

You're faced with whatever's there.

Which may be pleasant or it might not be.

It might be challenging,

Might be frightening,

Might be shame inducing.

Takes a great deal of bravery to put those ideas aside and to simply stand in what's real.

Yeah.

There's another good example of shame is one of the things that I think we're very quick to project.

Very quick to project shame,

Because it's such an uncomfortable feeling.

Everything that's uncomfortable becomes the material to project outward.

That's why it's so easy to see that person over there or that country or that culture or that race or that whatever as malevolent.

It's so easy to see them as the enemy.

We have to be very careful to check that to see that that's a projection of our own capacity for malevolence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Our own shadows.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I live in Mexico.

Listeners of previous episodes probably know that.

And I grew up on the east coast of the United States where there weren't a lot of Mexicans.

We had some Puerto Rican folks in our neighborhood,

But my exposure to Mexican culture was zero.

We didn't even have the restaurants back in the day.

And coming up through college and later there were people around me who held unfavorable views about people from south of the border.

And there was even maybe a little fear that I'll admit to when I first started coming down to Mexico to visit.

I've since settled here,

Built a house here,

Enjoy myself here,

Learned to speak a fair amount of Spanish.

And after interacting with the Mexican people for over a decade now,

There's no appreciable dis- I mean,

There were cultural differences in the way we celebrate things and view the world.

And the connections that I had learned to place on Mexican people from people in the United States who've never met any of them have evaporated.

They're simply people.

And what happens,

I think,

In so much of our arguing over caravans coming from the south and whoever the dangerous culture de jour happens to be in the United States,

It comes from the fact that we don't have the exposure to actual people.

And so there again,

We have that blank slate and anybody,

Especially someone with malicious intent,

Can fill in that slate for us and tell you,

Well,

This is what these people are like.

And you should be scared or you should be intimidated or you should maybe,

In certain cultures,

You should elevate them and aspire to be more like them.

So I have to wonder on some level,

The forces that- I'm going too far and I have to wonder- No,

I don't think so.

I think you're just scratching the surface,

Honestly.

Well,

I have to wonder if there's a lot of dynamics that go into this,

Of course,

But the people who are up in arms about the changing demographics of the US,

For example,

If part of the resistance is some deep knowing that they're going to have to really question their own projections as they come into more contact with people of color and people from other countries.

It's way easier to hang onto your stereotypes than it is to say,

Okay,

I'm going to engage with someone I've never encountered before,

Someone of a different color,

Someone from a different country,

Someone of a different language,

Someone who has different beliefs than me.

And it doesn't have to be culture or country or race.

It can be just anything,

Any other person.

I guess my point being,

We have to go out and expose ourselves to it.

We have to find out what that reality is.

We can't just sit in our happy ideas of what it is and then avoid it thinking we know everything.

Yeah.

I have a somewhat difficult time connecting to this particular line of logic,

Although I understand it only because the number of people I've met in my life who seem intimidated or projecting of say people south of the border,

So few that it's hard for me to experience that as some kind of widespread point of view.

But I understand that it does exist,

No doubt.

One of the things that you're talking about that really interests me is the American projection period and the way in which this good American mentality projects this quality of enmity onto other cultures or other countries and the way in which our sense of America is the United States is the promised land of good people who do the right things.

And I think we have some serious projection going on when we start looking at these other countries that are tyrannical and when we're really quite uninformed about our own misdeeds and our own tyrannies around the world.

Well,

Yeah.

We neatly package everything up and refer to ourselves as exceptional,

American exceptionalism,

Or we talk about the American dream.

And that's almost like a PR campaign that's designed to cleanse your brain of any other illnesses.

Well,

That's exactly what it is.

PR standing for propaganda,

Yeah.

Right?

But yeah,

It's easy to project this notion.

Look at the wars we create or the cultures we take up a malevolent view of and it's exactly projection because the thing that we're so busy accusing the other of is the same thing that we're doing.

It's deeply dangerous in that way.

I don't know how you counter that either.

How you counter projection?

Well,

Just on a national level.

Individually.

Individually.

Yeah.

Individually.

I knew where I was going,

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's all we can do is raise our own consciousness and then hope it ripples outward.

Yeah.

It's a very difficult thing to see.

It's a very,

As it plays out at a mass level,

It's very difficult to see just how that projection is taking place.

But it does.

It's an individual here and there who can wake up,

Who can identify their own projections and remedy them and be one less person projecting their disaster onto the world.

So I had something else about the idea that kind of what we were talking about with the holy instant in Course in Miracles,

This idea that what we truly are,

Our divine essence is newly immaculate in every moment.

And if we don't project anything onto that,

We're free to be anything.

Whatever's required of us,

Whatever we're called to do with no self-consciousness.

And projection is almost a defense against that.

Yeah,

Right.

Well,

Course talks about it quite specifically as the sort of two sides of the same coin.

On the one side,

There's projection and on the other is extension and extension is what you're talking about.

It's that way in which divinity floods into our being and expresses itself here in the world in a way that's,

What did you say?

Fresh,

Dynamic,

New,

Immaculate,

Right?

Whereas projection is some repetition of the old that's being rehashed again and then transferred,

Projected out into the world.

Exactly.

It's that crusty old shell of personality that we've been dragging along behind us our entire lives.

Who needs that?

Yeah,

Right.

It's a new you.

Exactly,

Exactly.

Yeah.

But it's comfortable.

It's the thing we've always known.

It's that mental body that we were speaking of that's constantly reifying itself and constantly reestablishing us in time and in our narratives and our sense of where we fit among society.

We can see in that what you're saying and throughout the threads of other things we've talked about that in some sense projection is a laziness,

Right?

It's something that we employ because it's lazy and it means we don't have to pay attention to what's going on around us.

Yeah.

That's a really excellent point because you can just go through life on autopilot.

You show up at the same job,

You do the same things,

You use the same catchphrases in your language,

Whatever your social circle happens to appreciate.

We assemble our personalities,

A lot of us,

By just taking bits and pieces of other people's stuff and we form this projection of this is what I am,

Quote unquote,

This is me.

Then either reinforce that over time or maybe at some point we get sick of it and we want to take it off and get a new haircut and get a new job and get a new lover and go down some other road.

But yeah,

You can't.

.

.

I mean,

You don't have to wait for a big life change to do that.

You can do it in every single moment if you've got the awareness and the willingness and sort of the intestinal fortitude for it.

Yeah,

Intestinal fortitude,

Yeah.

Well,

It can be scary at first.

Yeah,

Sure,

Sure.

No,

I just enjoyed the term.

Well,

Yeah,

It's like we have to identify this craving for the novel and heed,

Give it some do,

Give it some place in our life where it has an opportunity to flourish and projection,

It kills that.

It just destroys that possibility of novelty.

Yeah,

And the other thing about projection too is that it really codifies our interaction with each other.

Yeah.

So,

If I'm in a job interview,

I mean,

We only have certain sort of limited things that we can say to each other or on a date or interacting with someone who's just gone through a tragedy.

Yeah.

We have these very prescribed ways of being with each other that aren't necessarily genuine,

But they have to do with our projection of pain or suffering or what we've experienced,

Et cetera.

Yeah.

Where we could,

And I'm not suggesting that you should like freelance at a funeral or anything,

But you know what I mean.

You can come from a place that's much more genuine.

And that requires just this willingness to encounter the awkwardness of a situation where you're not using your stock lines,

Where you're not assuming that the other person is coming from a particular orientation or place or think certain things about you or judges you in any particular way,

But reacting in the moment.

It means some kind of willingness to encounter chaos and the unknown brilliantly.

Yeah.

I like that word brilliantly because there's something very sort of,

There's a lot of inertia to do it the other way.

There's a lot of,

I mean,

In push you bring all the old baggage that comes with the projections too,

Right?

It's not just the projection itself,

But everything that's connected to it.

That's a nice way of thinking of projection as an inertia.

It's the inertia of our personality writing itself into the world all the time.

Yeah.

And if you're not mindful,

You just get dragged along with it and nothing changes.

Yeah.

Well,

You know,

There's a really powerful relationship to projection and the shadow parts of our personality that we've hinted at around the way that some of our drives or motivations are projected onto a negative other.

And we alleviate ourselves of a certain level of anxiety when we think that that person over there is capable of that,

But I'm not.

And I think that's a very dangerous,

Maybe to me the most dangerous kind of projection when we can look at someone and see the horror that they are capable of creating and believe within ourselves,

I'm not capable of that.

And it represents a really destructive element of projection that keeps that motivation,

That aggression,

Whatever it may be,

Deeply hidden in our consciousness.

Like,

For example,

I think we see this play out a lot in some of our attitudes towards sex or sexuality in our culture,

Where certain people or activities are treated as deviant or just plain bad.

And yet these activities which play themselves out are often represented in the psyche of every individual,

But we don't want to acknowledge that to ourselves.

It's too frightening.

It's too frightening that that quality exists in me.

And so we alleviate ourselves of a certain degree of our shadow by doing so,

By placing that in somebody else and not myself.

Yeah.

And if we're going to do honest spiritual work,

We need to be able to recognize when we do that and reclaim those shadow parts of ourselves so that they can be worked with.

As long as I think that I don't have the anger,

But boy,

My partner sure has a bad temper,

Then there's a part of me that's been disowned.

And I think we mentioned this in a previous episode,

When you disowned some part of yourself,

Then it can control you without you even knowing what's happening.

It can run you around without your knowledge.

And the thing that really appears in that act of projection is that people who have done so tend to exhibit a very judgmental and sometimes malicious attitude toward the quality that they have projected outside themselves.

Because when we meet with a,

Let's say maliciousness in another human being,

And we have integrated that within ourselves,

We don't see it the same way.

We don't see it with this scornful,

Judgmental,

Rejecting attitude.

The reason we see it with a rejecting attitude is because it's something that we're busy trying to project out of ourselves.

Right.

Yeah.

But when you understand that,

Oh,

I've got an angry side as well.

I am capable of that great anger.

And then you feel it rise up at some point.

You can go,

Oh,

There's anger.

It's not like,

Oh,

I'm a bad person and I have anger.

And you're right.

It totally shifts to something that's just accepted as part of human nature in general,

Not necessarily specific to me.

But I think that we've had lots of experiments with that in recent years where we've seen that in a very large scale,

This projection element.

And maybe our presence on,

Maybe the presence of the internet is just exacerbating that.

Yeah,

Definitely.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I can tell you where some of it comes from though.

I mean,

Just in my own experience,

Having grown up in the Catholic church,

There is not an acknowledgement of the shadow side.

I mean,

That's all just kind of assigned to the devil.

Right.

And if you find it in yourself,

You go to confession or whatever,

But it's to be rejected and cleansed from your identity.

And so you reach a certain age and there's this huge inner conflict that goes on if you discover that,

Oh,

I do have sexual proclivities of a certain kind,

Or I do have this anger problem,

Or I am feeling murderous rage in a situation.

Is it splitting?

There's a psychological term for the inner.

.

.

Yeah.

Cognitive dissonance.

Yeah.

Intense cognitive dissonance.

Because if you cross a line,

You go from being a good to a bad person.

There's like no in-between state.

Right.

And that's so unacceptable in our consciousness.

So that's where the projection comes in.

It's like we find that unacceptable thing,

The thing that we've split off.

And when we find it there,

We think.

.

.

Like for example,

There's people who.

.

.

I'm not one of these people.

I have an easy time getting angry.

But there's people who feel that if anger arises in them,

It makes them a violent or bad person.

And so the very idea of anger arising in me means there's something wrong with me.

Right.

And that's.

.

.

And these people,

In my experience,

Tend to get angry in passive aggressive ways.

And when anger comes out.

.

.

It comes out anyway,

Regardless.

It's just not very visible sometimes.

So know thyself.

Know thyself.

There it is.

Yeah.

That's the antidote to projection.

Know thyself deeply and fully.

And I think that it's worth saying that a lot of our current spiritual climate,

A lot of what I observe in the New Age world or the yoga world,

Is this idealization of the good and the way in which there's a pathological rejection of the shadow parts of ourself in favor of being good and sweet and kind and compassionate.

Of course,

We need all those things,

But if it's done in the name of splitting off these other parts of ourselves,

It creates a turmoil in us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's no kind of enlightenment at all.

No,

It's not.

Surprisingly enough,

I brought a poem.

Oh,

Great.

It's hard to find poetry on projection,

So it's just sort of implied.

I literally searched the index for projection,

But Rumi did not address projection directly.

He must have somewhere.

It just might be hard to find.

Yeah.

Well,

I did find a poem that I think speaks more to the idea of being annihilated in God.

.

.

Yeah.

.

.

.

Which obviates any need for projection whatsoever.

So this is by Rumi.

It's called The Fragile Vile.

I need a mouth as wide as the sky to say the nature of a true person,

Language as large as longing.

The fragile vial inside me often breaks.

No wonder I go mad and disappear for three days every month with the moon.

For anyone in love with you,

It's always these invisible days.

I've lost the thread of the story I was telling.

My elephant roams his dream of Hindustan again.

Narrative,

Poetics destroyed.

My body,

A dissolving,

A return.

Friend,

I've shrunk to a hair trying to say your story.

Would you tell mine?

I've made up so many love stories.

Now I feel fictional.

Tell me.

The truth is you are speaking,

Not me.

I am Sinai and you are Moses walking there.

This poetry is an echo of what you say.

A piece of land can't speak or know anything or if it can,

Only within limits.

The body is a device to calculate the astronomy of the spirit.

Look through that astrolabe and become oceanic.

Why this distracted talk?

It's not my fault I rave.

You did this.

You approve of my love of madness?

Say yes.

What language will you say it in?

Arabic or Persian or what?

Once again,

I must be tied up.

Bring the curly ropes of your hair.

Now I remember the story.

A true man stares at his old shoes and sheepskin jacket.

Every day he goes up to his attic to look at his work shoes and worn out coat.

This is his wisdom to remember the original clay and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.

To visit those shoes and jacket is praise.

The absolute works with nothing.

The workshop,

The materials are what does not exist.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.

Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,

Where something might be planted,

A seed possibly from the absolute.

I love that.

I love that.

I love that.

I haven't heard that one before.

I love it.

I love it.