Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Projection
Stockroom of a Thousand Mirrors

Understanding the energy body rests in recognizing the mechanics of interpretation. In essence, interpretation results from inner reflections of thoughts and feelings and their outward projection. As interpretation guides your steps through life, it is a principal interface between you and the world. It is therefore basic that you understand and manage reflection and projection in order to move your personal awareness toward the core of your energy body.

Projection

Projection is the attribution of your traits and perceptions to another. From a psychoanalytic angle, projection is often accompanied by a denial, even to the point of dysfunction, if not pathology.¹ Associated with this, the amount of emotional reactivity often marks the degree that a person is projecting. From an energy body perspective, projection extends beyond simple attribution. It can be seen as the effect of cohesion spinning and shaping all perceptions as cohesion determines what is perceived, including interpretation. Projection, then, pertains to the mere act of interpreting anything, since doing so results solely from the type of cohesion in place at the moment.

Charles Tart holds that interpretation results from a process—in which the intellect and emotions both play a role—of filtering raw awareness into defined perceptions. He maintains that as we pick and choose perceptions the following interpretations are based on preexisting beliefs and feelings. Projected states, then, are a measure of reality. As German philosopher Martin Heidegger points out, projection determines what is possible in the first place.²

In this light, there are three basic types of projection: personal, group or collective, and species. Personal projection naturally results from individual cohesion. For example, a person might say, “He is angry with me,” when the opposite it true; it is that person who is angry. A shared sense and interpretation of reality, or even a piece of reality, is group consensus. For example, a particular group might hold that Jesus is the sole Son of God, while another group regards him as being one in a long line of prophets. This single interpretation has wide-ranging implications including being a dividing point among major religions. Species-related projection pertains to the effect of uniformity on determining what can be perceived since the container plays an active role in forming inner cohesion. Perceiving the physical movements of heavenly bodies is one example of species-related projection. Based on physical observation, humans see a sun and moon. Ascribing meaning to this is an example of group projection—interpreting the movement from an astronomical or astrological framework, for instance. Taking species projection to another level, experiencing the characteristics of arms, legs, head, and so forth, is projection as physical form governs capacities of perception and uniformity governs physical form. Change uniformity sufficiently and you have a new physical form that gives rise to new perceptions and new interpretations of those perceptions. All three types of projection influence the others. Depending on time, place, and circumstance, each delivers an entrainment effect. Each contains the conscious and unconscious elements that shape perception. Each is therefore a reflection of cohesion.

Much of the work of the classic mystical traditions is geared toward interfering with this projective process, to removing the stranglehold that beliefs and feelings have on interpretation, in order for new perceptions to be brought forth, making it possible to eventually arrive at new formulations of reality. The skill of suspending beliefs is known in modern psychology as deautomatization, meaning that you interfere with the automatic responses and their associated interpretations, be they individual, social, or of the species.³

The dynamics of projection-interpretation are forceful; from them, entire worlds are built. The dark side is that you lose the mystery of the world as you criticize others and even deny that those same features are alive and well within you. These influences are also at the heart of creativity. But to tap their potential, you need to learn how to manage the inflexibility produced by conditional energy fields; otherwise your perceptions are predetermined by the prevailing view of reality. At best, learning occurs slowly.

Since being more deeply enmeshed in projection presents a higher capacity for denial, we could say that humans as a species are still trying to figure out our orientation. More so, as we destroy not only ourselves but our very home, the amount of denial could be considered pathological. There seems to be no prevailing awareness that a reality based on exploitation of material resources isn’t working out. There is no compelling, wide-ranging consciousness that we need a new orientation to the world to survive, the most basic of needs. The value of the guidance provided by the stages is therefore readily apparent. We need to know how, why, and where we can learn and grow. In bioenergetic fashion, the more aware an individual or group becomes the more they develop awareness of the environment and the human relationship to it.