when we’re young, projection (the imposition of internal states onto the ‘screen’ of the external world) is automatic, unacknowledged, and disowned. On the negative side, we give away most of the power of our minds; on the positive side, there’s a naively genuine sense of integration with the world. It’s easier for us to receive: help, teaching, influence, CONNECTION, etc.
as we get older, our capacity to recognize and to ‘own’ our minds gradually increases. At first, full of doubt, fear, and skepticism, we experience this as a kind of death, a loss. A loss of meaning. A loss of location. We are angry and offended (but mainly scared) that what we believed was real or true was actually not.
We may pass through apathy, cynicism, and even paranoia. “Everyone was lying.” “The whole thing was just a trick.”
In fact, we’d been unknowingly tricking ourselves.
Who knows what the caterpillar thinks as it sits trapped in its chrysalis, in a state that is not properly this and not properly that? Perhaps it feels betrayed by its own body.
And in the same way, as we evolve, we can feel betrayed by our own minds, our own societies, our own environments, and the important people in them.
But what’s happening is not only a loss; it’s more than just a departure. It is also an arrival.
We are arriving to our minds in a new and different way.
as we come to see that our inner states are not simple, direct consequences of external conditions, it is as if we are born into a new world. Everything moves slightly differently.
We own our projections.
We see, for example, that: You did not “make” me afraid. I generated fear inspired by the experience of you.
The inner world gains power.
We can still project. We can still, in other words, imbue the world around us with personal meaning. And that is good. Projection–the shaping of worlds–is beautiful. But the possibility grows to be somewhat less imprisoned within our projections.
In this new situation, what influences ‘Choice’? What determines ‘Options’?
In our previous state of Internal-External Fusion, the master of our mind was basically ‘Pain/Discomfort’ and the (automatic and uncontrollable) desire to be free of it. We hated the ones who seemed to cause us pain (or the things and conditions that seemed to cause us pain). We loved the ones who seemed to protect us or liberate us from it. A ‘Solution’ was a change in the external world that decreased pain and maybe even increased pleasure. Big dick. Lots of sex. Good cash. Popularity. Approval. and so on. Check the boxes.
But as we become at home in the mind? We begin to find more and more times when we feel positive states and beneficial impulses and sensations utterly independently of any obvious external “cause”. They’re somehow arising from the posture and the vigor of the mind itself. That’s freaking confusing.
Okay.
Enough of that.
Anyway, that is some expansion.