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Projection

Updated: Jan 25

How to maintain equanimity and victory in the face of projection, toxicity, and conflict...


What is projection? How do we remain at peace in a world of toxic drama? What do you do when you meet the 'devil'? As Jesus said in 'The Passion of Christ' "Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword." Bertrand Russell said "Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure." Be an actor not a re-actor. Silence is better than re-acting. A person who stays silent after being disrespected by you is far more dangerous to you than you think.


People who blame others are consumed with themselves and by themselves. They self-combust, burn-out, self-sabotage, and self-destruct. Honoré de Balzac wrote "If we all said to people's faces what we say behind one another's backs, society would be impossible."


All conflict is the result of egoic reaction: One toxic ego trying to get a rise out of another person's ego. Epictetus wrote "Difficulties are things that show a person what they are... It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters." Plato said that "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something... Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance." Albert Camus wrote “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”


Epictetus said "Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them." The way out of drama is to be equanimous, lean away, to respond, with action if necessary, and never to react. He wrote "First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak." One can choose to respond from a place of peace, from our Higher Self, our soul, not our ego (the ego is the unconscious inner child and the harsh inner critic), and the options include not responding at all.


If we respond from our Higher Self it's like smashing the ball in a table tennis match - we take ourselves out of the game, and win with one movement.


Have you ever noticed that those that want a fight with you, because they claim to hate you, are actually pursuing you, either because they love you, or because they hate themselves? It's time to smash the ball out of the match. No-one wins in a blame game.


Your only real opponent is your own Self - who do you choose to play for your side - your frightened ego, or your Higher Self? Once you decide that it will be your Higher Self, you have already won. "The lady does protest too much" said the most famous author in the world, who was also a spiritual Master, William Shakespeare. This phrase could equally apply to men. What 'the Bard' was referring to is the psychological concept of projection. Once you understand it, you will win every battle that comes your way. Our emotional and psychological discomfort is proportional to our denial of our own mental health issues: Carl Gustav Jung embraced his inner chaos and many writers embraced their shadows as a 'nuclear-powered' resource.


As Katherine Anne Porter wrote "Love must be learned, and learned again and again, there is no end to it. Hate needs no instruction, but only wait to be provoked." Those beings who respond to life with hate are 'grievances waiting for a cause'. They either don't know that the problem lies with them, or they are not prepared to face themselves, out of self-hatred.


In a very early version of the 12-step 'Serenity Prayer' the masterful philosopher Plato said "There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot." He continued "Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil... The empty vessel makes the loudest sound." You cannot talk butterfly language with caterpillar people.


Let me explain...

What is projection?

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychologist, philosopher and spiritual Master, said that "Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena... Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbour, and we treat him accordingly." Of the many metaphors used to describe a life in process, the metaphor of a battle is one of the more appropriate. In this battle our own self is both our greatest ally (our Higher Self) and our greatest opponent (our own ego), with a dynamic tension existing between those elements of our personality moving us forward into personal growth and those holding us back. Every person has the potential for good and evil that lies within, and which of these wins is a battle waged within your self. Far too many people set themselves up for defeat as they are unwilling to acknowledge the destructive part of their own BEing. Utilising various psychological defence mechanisms such people do their best to stay ignorant to their faults and weaknesses. In so doing these elements of their personality are relegated to their unconscious and make up the realm of the psyche that Jung called the shadow. The shadow exerts an active influence on our personality and affects our behaviour in a myriad of unforeseen ways. When we behave in a manner which is a product of our shadow, we treat someone poorly or take part in a self-destructive behaviour, rather than taking responsibility for such actions, most people make use of the psychological phenomenon known as projection in order to avoid facing up to their own shadow. Check out my article on this.


Projection occurs when we attribute an element of our personality, which resides in our unconscious, to another person. It accounts for most interpersonal conflict. Sigmund Freud, who popularised the term in the mid-1890s, believed projection to be a defence mechanism used to avoid the anxiety that is provoked when one is forced to face up to their faults, desires, passions, transgressions, weaknesses, and destructive tendencies.


Jung, however, stressed that projection was both an inevitable and necessary component in our psychological development as it is one of the primary means by which we can gain an awareness of elements residing in our unconscious. After projecting an element of our unconscious, the healthy thing to do is to recognise the subjective origin of the projection, to withdraw it from the external world, and to integrate this element of our personality into conscious awareness. Toxic people are unconscious and asleep, have not undergone any personal or spiritual growth and so lack the insight to be able do this. Only by withdrawing our projections and becoming aware of the faults we previously projected onto others, can we ever hope to take corrective measures. This process of withdrawal and integration is a difficult task for it takes courage to face up to one’s weaknesses and dark qualities. But while difficult, this task is crucial in the battle of life, for failure to confront one’s shadow leaves these elements free to grow in scope and influence. In other words, toxic people are hiding themselves from themselves. Their lack of insight makes them increasingly toxic over time. There is no winner in the blame game. Toxic people are joyless, and are never at peace. Jung explains that by trying to appear moralistic, toxic people descend into their own self-created 'Hell' and become the devil: “When one tries desperately to be good and wonderful and perfect, then all the more the shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. People cannot see that; they are always striving to be marvellous, and then they discover that terrible destructive things happen which they cannot understand, and they either deny that such facts have anything to do with them, or if they admit them, they take them for natural afflictions, or they try to minimise them and to shift the responsibility elsewhere. The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the shadow descends into Hell and becomes the devil.” Of course, the devil does not exist, neither does Hell, but the shadow that is uncontrolled is a personal Hell for the person who invokes it.


Through projection, toxic people have a shadow that takes control of them, descends them into their own personally created into 'Hell' and become the devil: They self-sabotage their own joy and peace. They never make it to 'Heaven.'


Those who rely too heavily on projection to shield them from their shadow, who never strive to question whether the image they hold of themselves is perhaps too perfect, go through life forever in need of scapegoats or people on whom to blame all their problems. After driving one’s scapegoat away, it is usually discovered that one’s problems persist nonetheless. This spurs some to look within and to face up to the elements of their personality they have for so long tried to deny. But rather than partaking in this internal reflection, most people merely look for another scapegoat. And then another... Their life becomes a repeated pattern of hate, never loving themselves, and a descent into a personal Hell, forever chasing satisfaction, which is forever out of reach, and losing their mental health, minds and their soul in the process.


This tendency of scapegoating to occur on a collective level can have dangerous consequences for a society. Those unwilling, or unable, to face up to their shadows, are easy prey for internet troll obsessives and also collectivist movements which have ready-made scapegoats in the form of political opponents, members of different ethnic groups or socioeconomic classes. Scapegoating at the level of collectives, or in other words projecting our problems on to groups of people who differ from us, proves attractive to those who are totally lost. But as Jung recognised there is a tendency within collectivist movements to take this small hook offered by one’s opponents and to hang on it virtually all that is wrong with oneself and the world. When we cast a group of people in this negative light, seeing them as the primary source of all that ails a society, it becomes possible to justify persecution, violence, and perhaps even extermination of the group in question. Projection at the level of collectives becomes even more dangerous as those in positions of power can divert attention away from their own activities, and the harm they are causing, by using propaganda, false flags, and other manipulation techniques, in order to cast blame onto ready-made scapegoats. Such people collectively account for all the atrocities committed in the world and every war that has ever occurred.


The fact is that we are at times so separated from the pure love of our lightness. We are traumatised at such a deep level we don’t even know that we are traumatised. Hence the world is full of traumatised people traumatising other traumatised people. And no-one appears to see that. Jung would have a field-day!


Imagine a hula hoop around you. Everything inside the hula hoop is your business. Everything outside the hula hoop is everyone else's business. Let it go. Surrender it to the Universe.


The Bible seems to have prophesied the concept of projection: In Proverbs (17:20) it states that "A person of crooked heart does not discover good, and one with a dishonest tongue falls into calamity"; in Titus (1:15) it says "To the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure; but both their minds and their consciences are defiled."


We are separated from ourselves: And separated from ourselves, we are insane. As Mahatma Gandhi said “The problem with the world is that humanity is not in its right mind.” There is a place that we go into both individually and collectively that is the absence of who and what we are and what we are here to do. It is an inversion of our power. A perversion of our identity. And a subversion of our mission on Earth. The problem is it’s not so obvious when we are not actually there, unconscious in our shadow. That our attacking someone is righteous self-defence even when it is not. At times a person can be so sucked into the black hole of nothingness. That is Hell, not a real Hell, but the darkness within each of us. We must turn to our light.


Due to the terrible consequences that can emerge at both the level of the individual and of society when we fail to recognise, in the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, that “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being”


It is of the utmost importance that we strive to recognise our shadow qualities and to integrate them into our conscious awareness. Only then will we be in an adequate position to evaluate the true sources of evil in this world. On the other hand, if we fail to recognise the subjective origin of our projections, not only will our own wellbeing suffer, but we will contribute on a global scale to much unnecessary conflict. Jung believed that the greatest danger to human civilisation lay not in the weapons we have at our disposal, but in the inability to understand our own selves. For it is this ignorance, and the failure to face-up to our own weaknesses and destructiveness, that causes what should be an internal battle to manifest itself in the external world. Jung said "Modern people are ignorant of what they really are. We have simply forgotten what a human being really is, so we have men like Nietzsche and Freud and Adler, who tell us what we are, quite mercilessly. We have to discover our shadow. Otherwise we are driven into a world war in order to see what beasts we are." That all sounds very familiar.


Do you know anyone in your life like this? There is nothing you can do to wake up someone who doesn't want to awaken or even realises that what they are accusing you of actually resides inside them. What you can do is choose how to respond.


As Epictetus, the Greek Stoic philosopher, reminded us in 'The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness' “Remember, it is not enough to be hit or insulted to be harmed, you must believe that you are being harmed. If someone succeeds in provoking you, realise that your mind is complicit in the provocation. Which is why it is essential that we not respond impulsively to impressions; take a moment before reacting (if you react at all), and you will find it easier to maintain control... I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.” If you don't even know who you are, how can you begin to know who others truly are?


How do you respond to an unconscious projecting individual or group?



Plato reminds us "When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them." He also said "Justice means minding one's own business and not meddling with other men's concerns." Plato concludes that "No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death."



Mark Twain reminds us of the nature of thought and confabulation "Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts or happenings. It consist mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever flowing through one's head." The best advice comes from the brilliant Stoic philosopher Epictetus "When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." When people blame you through projection, it's never about you. It's always about them. Let them go, including any thoughts or feelings about them.


It is not uncommon to hear in a group, "Why do these things always happen to me?" If these things are always happening to us, the obvious answer is that we somehow bring them on ourselves. We are largely unconscious of what we're doing (wrong) until, slowly, eventually, we manage to dig ourselves out from the results. (It seems incredible that we actually seek to be hurt, but in a way, many of us do so, with regularity.) Blaming others for what are our own problems and indulging in self-pity don’t move us along in spiritual path.


As Epictetus wrote “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best... Other people's views and troubles can be contagious. Don't sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others... Only the educated are free.” Epictetus continued "To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete." One can only hope that those that try to torment you have read Epictetus "From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress." And that is the Truth. Epictetus has the final word “Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”



Those who want to try to destroy you are inauthentic liars hiding behind a mask and smoke-screen who don't mind putting their own lives at risk in trying to attack you out of projection and hatred masquerading as self-love. Does this sound familiar? Their 'house of cards' will come tumbling down in the slightest wind.

As Jesus said in Matthew (7:3-5) "How can you say to your brother, `Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."


Mahatma Gandhi wrote "You must not lose Faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Thank God for the ocean...


No one heals themselves by wounding another. Choose your responses carefully...


Imagine a world in which everyone understands that you can't stamp out violence with violence. Imagine if everyone understood that their  wrongdoing can't undo the wrongdoing of someone else. If you retaliate with hate, the hate in the world increases. If you find love in your heart, there's a little less hate in the world. If everyone  understood this and understood that where there's hate, there will  always be sorrow, would they cease to hate? If everyone understood that every hateful thought is a seed that grows into a crop of hate, a crop that feeds all around them, would they choose to plant different seeds? Not everyone understands, but you do. The seeds you sow will become the crop you harvest in your world and the crop that feeds all around you.If only we could understand that being wronged can never be resolved by doing wrong to others...


'How to keep your heart open in Hell' by Ram Dass with After Skool


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


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