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Perception often tricks us into seeing our inner content out in the world. The world becomes our projection screen, a globe of a thousand mirrors reflecting fragments of our fragmented selves. Most violence, physical, psychological, and environmental, is done in a state of projection.
Imagine the following thought experiment. You enter a crypt filled with pirate treasure. The crypt is absolutely dark. You have a flashlight with you and switch it on. You gasp as the flashlight beam illuminates red rubies, glittering gold coins, green emeralds, and cobalt blue sapphires. What beautiful colors these precious objects have!
Actually, this is the illusion of projection. These objects have no color and no light energy. The light, color, and energy you perceive are mere reflections and refractions of the white light of the flashlight, which contains all colors. Freud noticed something similar about the sexuality of the modern person as compared to the “primitive.” The primitive worshiped the mysterious inner fire, and the object onto whom this might be bestowed (“the hottie”) was secondary. The modern person conversely sees all the magic and fire in the outside object (the hottie) and fails to recognize the mystery and power of their inner fire. Someone sees Taylor Swift on a screen and says, “She’s so hot!” Actually, she’s an odorless, touchless, two-inch pixel phantom moving beneath a glass screen. What’s hot is their inner fire, the power they forever give away to the image, fantasy, or person of the hottie.
So many perceptions of things happening in the world, especially with other people, are projections of our inner contents. Consider this an auspicious time to reclaim projections, the inner light you’ve splintered into colored fragments glittering in the outer world. When you recognize yourself as the source of your projections, you take a giant step toward being an empowered magician.
To see how projection works, read this Wikipedia article on the Kuleshov Effect.
For more on projection and pulling back the curtain, see:
