The Trap Of Projection Summary

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

What are Projections?

When your needs, your fears, your cravings, your agenda and your ego color and distort how you see people. It is when you superimpose your emotional baggage (your own shit that is happening with you) onto others and you interact with them without being aware that it is your shit, not theirs; also it says nothing about them and says EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU. Also, with projections you are making a lot of assumptions about the other person based on your needs. You start constructing fantasy images about the people you interact in life, you see them how they are for you, not for them.

Projections are like believing that what you think of other people is 100% truth, even though you know a 5% of them max.

Also, you try to assume and guess what the other person is thinking but again, it all based on your needs and insecurities. It also creates disagreements. Projections make you feel that you know the person, even though you went to a couple of lectures or watched 100s videos.

Take into account that projections happen with everybody you meet: your parents, your friends, your girlfriend, mentors, teachers and so on.

There are two kinds of projections:

1.       The ones you make with your spouse, girlfriend, friends, boss and so on (basically the majority of your life)

2.       The ones you make with teachers and mentors (this is especially dangerous since they have the information you need to actualize): The ego will try to kill the messenger.

You need to be aware of all the projections you make with your mentors and teachers because you will be cutting your progress. Realize that you don’t know anything about your teachers, even though you read 10 books of his nor from watching 100s videos. Every story you tell yourself about other people are ALWAYS BIASED and IT IS ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, NOT ABOUT THEM.

When you are relating to other people, 99% of the time you are actually relating to yourself. It takes a lot of spiritual purification and self-development work to get to the point in which you can relate to other human being as they simply are (it takes years of work). You need to become aware of the projections you are doing with every individual in your life. All the disagreements you have are about you, not them. When you realize this, you will start to see your relationships flower and will start to learn from people.

The closer you are to the person; the more projections you make on them.

If you want to see people for-themselves and not for-yourself, you need to discard every good or bad projections that you made, you need to drop all the assumptions. You need to relate to people as mysteries.

You have to be conscious about your own agenda when you are relating to other people and start unrouting your projections. Any criticism or judgment you have, turn it back to you and recognize what does those things say about you.

 

Some signs that tell you when you are projecting with teachers:

-          You have imaginary arguments

-          You start getting with your teacher’s personal life story.

-          When you criticize little things (what he said, the way he said it, his t-shirt, etc.)

Start listening inclusively and with generosity. This means: Don’t just sit there and nitpick and find the flaws, but just sit there with assuming the burden of understanding to yourself. A good student always takes it upon himself to understand what the teacher is trying to saying, even if the teacher says something wrong or doesn’t make sense. You are responsible to make their teachings have sense (they know much more than you).  YOU HAVE TO DISCOVER HOW TO FIT IN THE TEACHINGS INTO THE MODEL OF REALITY.

Also be careful about all the assumptions you make (specially with the enlightenment stuff). The deeper the teaching, the more careful you have to be.