Seeing Through What We Project
Ver a Través de lo que Proyectamos
A student describes how a period of intense difficulty led to a shift in perception, and the conversation moves into the nature of death, nonduality, and how projecting lack onto others reflects our own inner state.
Seeing Through What We Project
A student describes how a period of intense difficulty led to a shift in perception, and the conversation moves into the nature of death, nonduality, and how projecting lack onto others reflects our own inner state.
I got to a point back in April where controlling was no longer an option, because I couldn't find a steering wheel anymore. It was gone. So I had to go through it. I wasn't going to go through it if I didn't have to, but the steering wheel was gone. Then slowly, not only did I not die, but it was like I was on vacation from this sort of thing.
And you can see how this is iterative, right? You're more free now, but there still remain the fears and pains that the mind can imagine, the ones you do not want to feel. The veil that keeps you from seeing reality changes. You can see more reality, but you are still veiled, and you still want to not see. And then there is a kind of ultimate, which is death. Because we are identified with something limited, the ultimate thing we want to avoid is the end of me.
That's what I've been identifying with, or obsessing over, the last two days. Death. It's been coming up.
That's the ultimate thing that is feared, and it's perceived or imagined as the ultimate pain.
Totally. And impossible to deal with. And me, escaped.
The dark night and the end of identification
What is talked about spiritually as waking up, as realization, is when that is fully seen, and that which is imagined as death is experienced while alive. When the identification with something that can end itself ends, then nothing can be experienced or imagined to be "me dying, me ending." But that transition is the dark night.
I have to be careful here not to turn this into what I was saying earlier about the self-flagellating monks. One can hear what I'm saying and, when facing death, want to create some form of really intense fear and pain in order to stay with it and be safe in it. But if that's done intentionally, it's going to be controlled.
I think what it seems to me is that as long as I focus on here and now, whatever needs to come up is going to come up. That's the trust in the process, the trust in reality, whatever you want to call it. I don't have to prepare myself ahead of time, because I'm here. I'm not there.
Yes. And you can contemplate: what is always here and never goes anywhere? What is always here and cannot go toward tomorrow? When this moment becomes the next moment and everything that is experienced changes, even the thinking patterns, the stories about me (those come and go, those change), from one moment of experience to another, which is a completely different moment of experience, what remains the same? That's awareness. That's being. It's unchanging. My teacher used to say, "Incoloro, inodoro." It has no color, no smell.
Say it again. What did he say?
"Incoloro, inodoro." Color, the negation of. Smell, the negation of. It has none. And in more contemporary Advaita circles, it's referred to as the screen.
That which is always there, the last thing you notice.
What awareness is made of
Where does experience appear? What is it made of? That which is the essence, the substance, cannot go anywhere, because time and space appear in it and are made from it. It cannot change. It cannot go anywhere.
But if you divide it, if you split experience into duality, then there is a here and a there, a before and an after. Now I can travel from here to there, and get from now to then. But those are not two things. Time and space are the same thing, which is what physics, due to Einstein, realized. They appear by splitting reality in two. So now you can have movement and change. There is something that can go to something else, and movement, and time for that change to happen. Time is needed for a before and an after. And you need two things for something to move to something else.
It's all in the perception, and we don't even realize it's a projection. We just think it's the truth. That's amazing.
Not one, not two
That's why reality is pointed to as that which the mind splits in two, but which is one. That's Advaita. But it's not exactly "one." In Taoism they talk about the Tao as oneness, and that's quite nice, but for there to be one, there needs to be two. One is already counting.
Mind blowing. It's true.
That's why I prefer Advaita, because it's the negation of two. It's not two. What is it? Is it one? No, it's not two. Is it zero? No. Is it one? No. It's just not two. It's very mathematical, very rational, but it points to that reality. You can call it being, the self without another, the subject without an object, the original face, the sound of what is unmoved. That's what Om is: the sound of oneness, or not-two. In Hinduism, Om is a sound that points to that. It is the sound of the universe, the sound of reality, the sound of Advaita. You create the sound: what is it? It is here. It is always here. It cannot go anywhere. Om cannot be in the future, cannot be in the past, cannot be there. It is Om.
The body and mind need to align with that. It takes a process for the brain to shift, for the body to shift, because they are aligned with two.
Beyond nonduality, into relationship
But nonduality is not the end. Once being is realized, then there is freedom to be, to live, to be ethical, and then there is relationship. But it's relationship contained by the end of subjects and objects relating. That's paradoxical. You cannot understand it, but you have to constantly point to the contradiction. When I say white, I have to say black. When I say black, I have to say white.
But it's a non-doing. It's just a being together. I can see that. And then there's a doing, but the doing is happening.
The doing is in the non-doing. Non-doing action. Inaction. Formlessness is form.
And the form comes from the formlessness, and then the form goes back into the formlessness.
It doesn't go back, because it is formless and form. Form is formlessness. Formlessness is form. It doesn't change from one to the other. It is both.
It's that we're perceiving it. So it's the noticing of the perceiving. Yes, exactly.
Seeing others differently
There were three people in the recent past that I spent time with, people I've known for a while. And I perceived and experienced each one of them so differently. If I wanted any kind of affirmation that I'm on the right path, there it was. There was no doing, but I saw doing. And who did that? It just was.
How did you perceive them differently?
Each one in their own way. One person, I would normally focus on his character flaws and decide they're not okay. But that melted away, and what I saw was light. We joined on such a lovely level. There's something about him all the time, this radiance, and I always notice it. But he's got these character flaws. Now whose character flaws was I seeing? That's what I mean when I talk about projecting. It looks like it's out there. It's such a trick. But somehow, through these meetings, the meditations, the dialogues, whatever is part of the process, these projections disappear.
Projection and benevolence
The ultimate sign of realization is to be a benevolent presence.
And that's what this guy is. The guy with the character flaws. He absolutely is. It's so funny.
If you are able to see beyond the flaws, even if it's projection, keep in mind that where we project is often a good place for the projection. It's often pretty accurate. You don't easily project evil where there's goodness, and vice versa. So the character flaws can be seen, but there is something more that becomes the foreground.
Exactly. And maybe to distinguish better: the schtick that people have, I can experience as a lack. And that lack is painful for me. As opposed to it just being schtick, something someone has, like a scar. Totally neutral, rather than something that's a problem for me.
That really reflects you. It's your mind. The more you can see through that (not necessarily ignore it, but see through it), the more what becomes foreground is what you're talking about: the light, the radiance, the being. From there, you can connect with him. Imagine the energy you bring when you project lack.
Exactly.
Compare that to when you see through whatever the mind perceives as imperfections. When what is more essential is seen, you bring more benevolence, and that invites more benevolence. Because when you see lack, you first have to start from experiencing lack in yourself. So there is less benevolence toward oneself, and that is projected as lack in another. That is what gets fed, that is the energy going out, and it invites in the other person defense, self-criticism, attack.