~ Projection ~
Before we begin this chapter, I need for you to picture something: You’re standing outside a pub. There’s a dead horse lying on the side of the road, his head lying at the foot of an old light post. A middle-aged man walks out of the pub holding a beer bottle. He kicks the horse, then continues to walk down the sidewalk. He stumbles a bit after a while, but he stands up straight again and walks around the corner, out of your sight, but not out of your mind. Tell me. Tell me in the comments down below. What do you know about this man?
You know that he walked out of the pub, that he stumbled a bit, that he kicked a horse, and that he was holding a beer bottle. That’s it. That’s all you know for certain. Your brain might make up all sorts of stories, but you can’t be certain that they’re true. You can believe it. You can't know it. Your mind just LOVES to fill in the blanks. You probably visualized things I didn’t even say. Maybe you assumed the road was a dirt road; or pavement. You couldn’t have known which one I had intended. You still don’t, but you visualized it anyways.
You might have imagined a pub in a city, or you might have imagined an old saloon from some Western movie. No matter what the design of the pub was, you couldn’t have known that it was what I intended. I said he was holding a beer bottle. I never said it was open, and you don’t know what happened inside the pub. He might have gone out with some friends, bought a beer, got a text that they weren’t gonna make it, and asked the bartender if he could just bring the beer home so he could watch a football game with his favorite beverage.
You have no. Idea. Who this man is, what his intentions were, what his beliefs are, nothing. You know that he walked out of a pub. You know he kicked a horse, though I never said he did it hard; it might have just been a tap to see if it was alive. Maybe he wanted to try to save it if it was. You know that he stumbled, but maybe it was winter and there was ice. It's pretty easy to slip on ice, and you know that he was holding a beer bottle, one that might never have been open or may never be opened at all - maybe he took it away from a drunk, to save the man from passing out or liver failure.
My point, my dear readers, is that, right then, and right there, you had an absolute ability to project. If you were a violent person, you might forget about the beer bottle and just say he hated animals. If you were an alcoholic, you might assume he was an angry drunk, and so while he could kick, he could still stumble at a walk. I’m not saying that these are the only causes of such thoughts, but they do allow for them to happen more frequently, nonetheless. Readers, ANY time you make a judgment about someone, from their Whats, understand that you may just be seeing a reflection of yourself, one that doesn’t actually portray them at all, and one that only seems real, to you.
The key to noticing when you’ve made a projection is to remember that whats are different from WHOs, and that you can create many complex stories for yourself, from even the most minuscule of resources.
Another technique your shadow uses to hide is projecting. This is where you start to believe that others have the same flaws you ignore within yourself. It has been said that oftentimes, the boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse who is cheating in a relationship often accuses their partner of doing the same, before they’re even caught. This may not just be an act of deceit; most likely they honestly believe that their partner is cheating on them. They’re paranoid and are so because they’re not listening to their conscience, not to their rationality or logic either, but to their shadow. These shadows are tricky little buggers aren’t they?
When looking for ways to spot your projection, it may be best to, again, look for your contradictions through honesty. Moments of hypocrisy often arise from an overuse of your shadow. Being honest, both in what you say, and what you do, is the best way to spot projections. It's pretty simple really. Note what you think it is that you know about another person, good or bad, and then pay attention to times where they contradict that assessment. If you say they're selfish based on a first impression, and yet they keep giving away their money every few weeks, the chances are that uh...
you had no idea what you were talking about. (This does not just apply to first impressions) In short, always try to disprove yourassumptions about people, and when they have been disproven, check to see if the reason you believed that falsehood, was because the real troublemaker in that category, was yourself. In a truly just world, treating others as innocent until proven guilty doesn't just help them. It also, helps you.
Remember this: overcoming your shadow is really as simple as matching WHO you are with the WHOs of everything that you have. Again, every item on a list has its own WHO, be it a list of your traits, your actions, your beliefs, or otherwise. Each What has its own WHO, and vice versa. Matching the identity behind your Whats, with your own identity, so that they match perfectly in sync, is what we are always aiming to do. When both you and your Whats share the same foundational energy, that is when you become a more authentic and whole human being. That is when you become charismatic, and it’s often when others will start to view you as being valuable if they haven’t already.
The first big question to ask yourself is: "How do you know... what you think you know?"
and second,
"What will be the worst consequences possible if you're wrong? And can you handle those problems if they pop up?"
Before I tell you this next story, I should let you know that I have friends…
Alright then, here we go!
Once upon a time, my dearest readers, I had a friend named Logan. In fact, he's still my friend as I write this. You see, Logan used to come over every weekend to hang out, and I often cooked us simple, frozen, chicken nuggets and french fries. One day, we put the food in, and set a timer for 23 minutes upstairs. I then set a 20-minute timer (a 3-minute head start) on my watch for downstairs. As we’re watching TV, my wristwatch timer goes off. We look at each other, and decide, almost without words, to finish the remaining minutes of the episode without going up. Once the episode was over, and my mind had returned to food, I said this:
“Ah, fuck. We probably burnt our food to a crisp by this point.”
Logan laughed and said “Nonono, we’re fine. I’m sure the food is simply cooked to perfection.”
To which I responded “If you’re dumb enough to not keep track of time, even to the extent of not knowing the difference between whether the food is perfect or burnt, then you’re just an idiot.”
(I said this cockily, but with a sarcastic air to it, half joking, half serious, as it were.)
We went up… and the food was cooked to perfection.
“Well…” I said, “I’m an idiot.”
With Reaction Formations, we looked at the WHOs of our actions, and with regression, it's much the same, but with projection, it is often our words that shine the most light for us. The oven incident wasn’t just a random story for me to tell as a form of a sympathy card (though, that’d be a nice use too, if you’ll allow me). It’s also there to show what life can be like once you’ve integrated your shadow, seamlessly switching from one position to the next, but always ending up on top. In that case, I seemed comedic, and strong, because I didn’t allow my incapabilities to threaten me. To me, that whole situation was just a good joke, and I found that joke, by listening to my words. Truth be told, deep down inside, I knew that Logan was more likely to be right. I’ve always been terrible at keeping track of time, and he’s always been great at it. I honestly do believe that this story is a tale, not just of reaction formations, but also of projection.
Aside from rechecking every time you say, or think, that you know someone else, is to hear what other, well-informed people have to say about the person that you're judging. If they say someone you hate actually seems quite nice, you should take this under SERIOUS advisement. It's the same thing if there’s someone you like that everyone is warning you to avoid. Not many people we know would simply disagree with us, merely to disagree, or make us angry. They often do it as an attempt to keep us well informed, even despite their fears of being wrong, ridiculed, or simply pissing you off. Almost everyone believes in justice. The question is what justice means to them. Try to remember that they are acting within their own form of justice and that you should check to see if their justice aligns with yours in these given moments; at least when it comes to a new and outside person.
Who knows? You may just be projecting.
Or maybe not. ;)
