“The mind has the ability to create, better than the ability to accurately witness. With the ability to create comes the ability to delude the self.” – Richard Rose
I remember my first real encounter with the trap of projection, when I was a struggling alcoholic trying desperately to become sane and sober. I had spent months believing that my problems were based in others only, and if they would just leave me alone, I would be just fine. I also bought into the projection of place being a cause, in that I thought if I could move to another town, I would be free of the restraints of my negative state of mind. The saying, “Wherever you go, there you are”, hit like a ton of bricks when I changed towns, jobs, and friends several times and things went from bad to worse. It slowly became apparent that the problem was in me, not outside in place or person. The projecting of our problems on the environment and others, thinking that if you could just be away from your current environment and associates, things would be better, is just projecting the blame away from our infallible, self-righteous ego. I was not facing the fact that our being creates our life, and to change our life, we must change.
We can also project positive, but likewise unconscious, aspects of ourselves onto others. This can be seen first as an admiration or jealousy of a facet in the other person. Later, we may come to see the same attribute in ourselves, and realize that something inside was simply trying to draw our attention to it. I can remember having a vivid first impression of someone as being ‘capable’. Later, after working with them for several months, I came to see that this was something I admired about them, and wished for myself, but my ego, again, couldn’t imagine it as possible. It went against the current belief-system. I needed to see it in action in the other person before I would accept it as something possible for me. The experience of it in the other led to it’s manifesting in myself, after I had come to see it was not an impossible, or even impractical, thing for a normal human to have.
The same thing happened when I first met a spiritual teacher, and felt his inner strength. I at first believed this to be something only he could possibly possess. Years later, I came to see the same inner light in several of my fellow seekers as well as myself. It had been something I wouldn’t have accepted, therefore unconsciously refused to cultivate, and had to be seen first in another before it could become manifest in me.
This trap of projection is mainly one of thinking, rather than observing. The thoughts we believe, whether our own or those perhaps projected into our heads from sources that may or may not have our best interests in mind, we take to be valid and ‘us’. By learning to observe our thoughts rather than mechanically react on them only, can lead to a new level of being, one in which everything is possible, even our own becoming.
Bob Fergeson