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[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Perception is almost entirely projection.

When you watch a projected movie on a wall or canvas, it can really feel like the wall or canvas is playing the movie, as if that external reality was sending it to you.

But it's all coming from the projection machine.

The seemingly outer world is almost entirely a blank canvas. What you see on it is coming from you.

Essentially by definition, most people are normal and relatively average. When you graph out any quality of people by the number of people have that quality or how extremely they have it, you almost always end up with a bell curve (I.e. a single mode/median around which everyone is), not a bimodal graph (i.e. two bipolar extremes).

The extremists and extremes are rare by definition.

When we use terms meant to describe the craziest nuttiest most extreme people to instead describe 50% or more of the population (i.e. people on that bell curve) then we dilute the terms and help the extremists.

The boy who cries wolf helps the wolves.

This doesn't just occur in politics. If you poll people about their ex-lovers and ex-friends, you'd think 90% of the population has some combination of literal diagnosable Narcissism (NPD), Sociopathy (APD), Bipolar Disorder (BPAD) or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD).

If you think 50% or more of people are political extremists (e.g. Nazis or bootlicking big-government-supporting communists), then you are the political extremist.

If you think the majority of your ex-friends and ex-lovers are mentally disordered, then you are the one with the mental disorder.

The us-vs-them instinct is a very intense instinct, like hunger for food and the sex drive. Without these instincts, our uncivilized caveman ancestors wouldn't have survived. they would have starved to death, not had enough kids, and not protected themselves from equally savage neighboring tribes. Now, ironically, we literally kill ourselves by caving like slaves to our evolved hungers, instincts, and temptations.

The intensity of those instincts can make them feel powerful, but spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) is possible and reveals them as actually impotent. When you can transcend these primitive bodily instincts and start to see things how they really are, meaning with the clarity of that transcendence, I can't begin to explain the level of invincible liberation and invincible inner peace that comes with that clarity.

In reality, there is no them. What bothers you most about them is their similarity to you. The us-vs-them instinct was designed to protect you from other tribes of humans that are just like you. It gets triggered by mirror-image-like similarity, not true differences.

Dogs bark more at other dogs than at humans.

Almost always, if not always, it's your own reflection in the mirror you are barking at.

When you really understand and embrace the teachings of my book, you see there is nor real enemy, neither human nor otherwise, and that we are all one. You find invincible inner peace because, in a sense, there is no real war at all with anything, not even with yourself. In that sense, all is one, truly and literally. However, in practice, you can hijack your primitive us-vs-them instinct by seeing all humans being on the same side in a common struggle that unites us all. Instead of defining your 'them' in your us-vs-them mentality as other humans who are your mirror-image, which makes no more sense then eating to the point of morbid obesity and death, you can instead define the 'them' as the primitive instincts themselves. It becomes then, not a war against your mirror-image against other humans, but a battle for spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) and free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness). And, in that battle, all of us human beings are on the same side. It's a wonderful rebellious battle against temptation and spiritual slavery. And it's a winnable battle.



With love,
@EckhartAurelius

perception is projection.jpg (152.08 KiB) Viewed 208 times

Projector. The canvas is actually blank.
projection-machine.jpg (18.96 KiB) Viewed 207 times

[Sushan]

This is very true and can be observed easily in interpersonal relationship. When couples are complaining about their partners in counselling, most of the times they complain about their projections but not about the actual qualities of their partners.

But at the same time, due to these projections or not, real threats like wars, social oppression, etc. occur, and they need to be actively addressed to avoid further harm.