He accuses her of cheating on him. He’s paranoid. Because he’s secretly cheating on her. We’ve all heard this one, right? It’s an extreme example of projection. We like extreme examples that don’t apply to us because they allow us to feel like we’re not those people. And yet, everyone projects. In fact, I’m doing it right now.
***
In normal, self-involved dreams we project characters and settings that are the totality of our consciousness, ranging from whatever we saw during the day to whatever we are deeply concerned about and repressing. When we’re awake we project our psychological insides onto other people and environments. What would they look like if we dealt with our inside stuff and had nothing to project? What would we?
If there were nothing of us to project, there would be nothingness. A void. But you are alive and so that void is alive, filling with consciousness, bursting with it through you.
What bursts forth from void-as-you? Aliveness, the fullness of it, and, therefore, complete understanding.
When one transcends and includes form, one does not project psychological forms over beings. One relates with others as a quilt relates to-and-as its color patterns. When the brain-self attempts to emulate this, you must project some of yourself onto another in order to understand the other. This is problematic because you view the other as you wish to see them, not as they actually are. And what you unconsciously want to see is usually an aspect of yourself, or your past, that you fear or need to work through, and you often don’t know it.
And they do that to you.
And you do that to them.
And then there is a them and a you.
And on the self-involved dream goes, well past the alarm. No need to hit Snooze.