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By Cathy Eck

Going Harder and Deeper

Yes, I chose that title on purpose.  I imagined some poor guy looking for porn; and he types in “harder and deeper,” and up comes my blog article. Instead of going harder and deeper outside of him, he just might turn around and go harder and deeper inside of his own mind. And if he does, he’ll find that his false self could only give him a great feeling for a few seconds. His True Self could give him an even better feeling forever.

It isn’t even that I judge porn…it’s just another activity that people use to attempt to find joy and freedom outside of them that they can only find inside of them.  Heck they tricked us to get us into the illusion.  Maybe a trick or two to get us out will speed things up.  Given that this is Halloween, it’s appropriate to trick and treat.

So Confusing

Projection is probably the most confusing term in psychology.  I don’t know if it’s the best term for what actually happens between two people. But words are like that…they’re limiting at times. Projection between people really describes what we sense happening in relationship based on our false self’s compulsively external orientation. That’s a mouthful.

In truth, everything we see in the world is a projection of what’s inside of our mind. If we don’t believe it, we won’t see it.  But it’s a huge leap to go from our normal daily illusory perspective to just going completely belief free.

We see horrible things happening in the world and even in our lives.  We can’t imagine that we would accept those beliefs.  But we did.  Usually, because of that one popular belief, “If it happened to them, it could happen to me.”  One of the privileges of life on planet earth is to be a voyeur into other people’s lives.  However, we must learn to treat other people’s lives like we treat a movie.  If they believe something untrue, they get a dramatic life.  It’s very fair.  However, what’s unfair is that no one is shouting, “Hey you don’t have to keep that shit in your life.  You can let it go.”

Projection really keeps people stuck when they don’t understand it.  It’s a weird thing.  To get out of the illusion, we have to understand the illusion so that we can see how it keeps us trapped.  Then like a big tangled ball of yard, we can let go of one knot after another until we no longer even see projection (or any of the facets of the illusion) anymore.  We get back to the way we were initially, hence the reasoning behind the term initiation.

Often, we aren’t just voyeurs into other people’s stories, they have cast us in a role by projecting their beliefs on us; and we don’t feel that we can escape that role.  We feel like we’re stuck as a permanent cast member of their play. That’s where I come in.  I show you that you can escape from a role, and I assure you that you are not doing anything wrong by escaping.  And that is key.  Often the escape brings up a lot of guilt for people.  In fact, you’re doing something very right by escaping.  You’re being the change that we need to have in this world.  And it can be intimidating to be on the leading edge of that change.

Escaping would be easy, if we didn’t have relationships and false notions of love and caring. But people want the people they love and hang out with to think like they do.  People are constantly projecting their beliefs on others under the mistaken notion that their beliefs are true and helpful.  They just aren’t.

In addition, when we hold on to something from our past, it will continue to come up into our conscious mind so we can let it go.  But usually we don’t let it go because we don’t realize that it’s false.  We’ll see the object of our thinking in the world, and that’s our chance to let go. But most people don’t do that. They hear a familiar thought or see something they believed earlier projected out into someone else’s life, and they just refile that belief on the true hard drive.  The glowing successful people file unwanted or negative thoughts as true for others, not for them.  So they constantly project out, and they live above the vermin.

What Am I seeing?

I remember the first time I consciously recognized projection. It was long before I had a label for it. I was newly married. My husband came bouncing into the yard where I was doing something, and he had his shoes on funny…just like my dad used to do. I thought to myself, that doesn’t make sense. My husband would never do that. He’s being like my dad to show me how much it bothered me when my dad did goofy things like that. I thought it was sweet of him to help me clean up my past. Immediately, I thought that’s so wrong of me to make my husband act like my dad. I won’t do that. My mind must have let go, and my husband went back inside and came out with his shoes on right. Now I still had this issue with my dad; but that was between us. Over time, I would unravel my issue with him.

But let me make something clear.  I realized that some how, some way, I held this strange belief in my mind about men being goofy; and somehow my husband translated my belief into reality.  I was the cause, and I just knew it.  I still don’t know what the belief was; it didn’t matter.  I recognized that he should not have to reflect my issues with my dad.  I can’t say how I knew this.  I just knew it.  I was being unkind by not letting go of what I saw in him.  I did not make that into some belief that I was powerful or could control him.  I saw it completely as correction of my own mental error.  I never said a word to him.  I didn’t need to; the error was corrected.

After that, if my husband, my employees, or later in life, my children didn’t seem like themselves, I checked to see if I was seeing my past in them. Once I realized that I was seeing my own mental projection, and it was false; it always went so quickly and easily.  It never, ever came up again.  I forced myself to deal with the real issue (the person I got the issue from) instead of the cartoon of the issue that I had projected.

I assumed that everyone thought that way.  It was so easy to let go of a projection that I couldn’t imagine that anyone would not see what I saw and do what I did. But I was very wrong.

When my husband looked at me and saw his own shadow, he assumed his mind was right. He would correct me. I’d try to tell him he was projecting, and I didn’t say what he thought I said or do what he thought I did (if I did do it, I wasn’t being myself).  He’d get angry and say that I was projecting on him, or I was insinuating that he was lying.  Or he’d project his lying on me, and say I was lying.  He was sure that his mind was right; and it almost never was.  He had a great memory; and while that might cause you to do well in school or a career.  It destroys relationships because you define people and then continue to see them according to your false definition.  When the cause of a problem will not admit that they are the cause, everyone stays stuck.

People don’t realize that they project the world they see.  And those who benefit by this ridiculous behavior don’t want us to know it’s correctable.  People then make up reasons for the drama we experience…God did it, we fell into temptation, we have karma, we’re caught in an alien matrix, relationships are hard but he’s your soul mate, etc.  You’ve heard it all.  None of these reasons are true.

It all goes back to people projecting their beliefs out into the world, and then seeing their projection in another and treating the projection as true.  This is the root of all evil because we have a flawed feedback system.  It causes us to become unloving, lacking in compassion, and blindly obedient.  If we are sure that another is evil, we have no problem killing them.  If we’re sure the other is lazy, ugly, or worthless, we have no trouble abusing them.  All problems are rooted in the false masculine role.  And we all have a false masculine within our mind.

The question would arise in my mind, “Why couldn’t he see that he was trying to fix his issue with his mother by fixing me?”  It was so obvious.  I saw it so clearly with my dad. The answer was communication. You see, I could go to my dad and say, “I hate when you put your shoes on goofy.  Why do you do that?” And he’d usually say, “Okay, I’ll stop it.” or “I do it because I’m too lazy to put them on right. But it bothers me too. Wish I wasn’t so lazy.” No big deal. We just had to talk.

But my husband could never tell his family they were false. He had been brainwashed that they were always right. And this is why he projected his beliefs out, away from his family. His mind felt that the problem could not be resolved at the source. So it was trying to resolve it in me or our children. But we weren’t the cause.  This is the biggest trick of the false mind.  It fixes it’s own beliefs in others.  So the doctor fixes his beliefs in disease in patients.  The preacher/guru fixes his sinful nature in followers.  The therapist fixes everything in others.  My husband’s problem with his mother could never be resolved in me. Why did his mind do that?  Why didn’t he go talk to his mom?  Probably because he felt I was more reasonable. My love wasn’t as conditional. He wasn’t afraid of me. And besides, I was feminine to him; his parents and brothers were masculine to him. Roles are always key in decoding the illusion.

Remembering Roles

First let me remind you that most of the confusion around projection occurs because people don’t understand roles. The masculine role projects (just like the male sexual organ); and the feminine role receives (again like the female sexual organ). Our bodies are metaphors for roles. But women can play masculine roles, and men can play feminine roles. The roles have nothing to do with our sex.

Only the masculine role projects beliefs out because the masculine role has greater status and authority in the illusion. The person in the feminine role feels compelled to receive what the masculine gives because we’re trained to do so in the illusion. In truth, we live in a fake world where mental rape and incest is as normal as breathing. People are always imposing their nonconsensual beliefs on someone else. And that’s why it’s so difficult to just be ourselves.

We’re all aware of projection even if we don’t consciously see what’s happening. In fact, this is why people create strong personas or masks. The persona deflects other people’s projections while at the same time projecting it’s shadow. It’s a damn good machine.

For example, if you are a certain religion or view yourself as very moral, you can deflect a projected belief of another religion by stating your belief system with conviction. You have the power of your peer group behind your projection. Often such power struggles come down to the power of numbers. Beliefs need believers to give them power. The more believers, the more power a belief has, and the more real and true the belief looks.

In general, people with strong personas or masks are not my readers. Most of my readers don’t have much of a mask at all; they’ve never believed anything with much zeal. So they often feel like the whole world is trying to convince them to believe or follow them. That’s why we must learn to let go from the feminine role. Oddly, a person with strong beliefs will jump into the masculine role in relationships. They see anyone who opposes their beliefs as the enemy; their goal is to get you to submit or fight.  And my readers will usually submit; they aren’t inclined to fight.

What is missing is one little piece of TRUTH. The person with the most power in any situation is actually the one with the least false self (or fewest beliefs). This is why there is a such a push to get kids believing young. It’s why believers consider people who are freer than them, doing things they would never do, to be their enemies.  Beliefs are fragile and powerless.  As numbers fall away, something has to be done by the believers to keep the beliefs alive.  Often fear is the weapon of choice to get people to resubmit to their authority.

Someone’s projection can only be fulfilled by us if we accept the belief that they project out. If we refuse to accept the projection (the belief), then we stay free. But the person projecting often becomes scary or super nice, or they exude charisma and charm.  Some are really tricky and convincing.  They want us to accept their belief; that’s the way to win the illusion game.  A belief has no power unless it has support from other people.  So we have to completely understand projection, understand how to deflect a projection, which requires discrimination, and understand how to stay in our True Self so we don’t put ourselves in danger if the projector gets emotional when they fail.

I’m going to slow down the process of projection and show you what’s actually happening in each person as it happens. And I’ll show you where you need to catch the projection and throw it back. But you might not do very well in conversations at first. We tend to talk very fast in normal conversation. So practice this in your mind by reviewing memories where you previously accepted a projection. It’s never too late to correct a memory. Once we review the experience in our mind while letting go, it lives in our mind as if it never happened. It’s incredible. We actually can change the past.  And when we correctly change the past in our mind, a new unexpected future unfolds before our eyes.

Spoken Projection

Let’s first look at an example where words are spoken directly to us. In this case, we can analyze the projection and understand it pretty easily. And we can see how we can avoid taking the projection from the authority figure.

Johnny is lying on the couch watching “Zoolander” for the twelfth time. He’s puckering up his face to see if he can perfect, “Blue Steel.”  He could not be happier.  He secretly wants to be a male model.  Dad walks in the room.

Dad: “You won’t get anywhere in this world watching television all day, Johnny,” dad says with authority and conviction. “Isn’t it time you got a job? Hard work is the key to success.” (Now dad has just verbally projected out his beliefs at Johnny, thus the term projection. Dad doesn’t see his words as beliefs. He’s psychologically reversed; so in his mind, he has just spoken the truth. When he speaks his beliefs, he feels no emotions.  He would say that he’s helping Johnny be a good man.)

Once we have taken on a belief and turned it into the truth, we are psychologically reversed regarding that belief. It lives in our mind in the same way that a thought from our True Self would live. We no longer get an emotional signal when we speak it.  In our illusion, it’s the truth.  It’s not up for discussion.  And this causes us to consider those who don’t share our belief to be enemies.

Johnny feels emotions well up in him as soon as his dad starts talking. The emotions are saying to reject the belief that his dad is giving him. It’s a belief, not the truth. Let’s say that Johnny is wide awake today. He notices the emotion, and doesn’t take in the belief. Then he notices that a judgmental thought arises toward his dad. “I wish he’d shut up, and let me watch my movie.” He lets that go too. It doesn’t really feel that great. He keeps watching the movie, and remains himself.  Johnny now has the true masculine role because he has no thoughts about the situation.

This is the big key to owning the True Self masculine role completely.  You have to let go of any judgments about the other.  The reason is that when you think a judgment, you are speaking something untrue.  You will get emotions when you do that; and if you don’t let go, you will be back down into the false world where you have no power.

Dad now has to feel his own emotions. Johnny stayed in his true self; and Johnny’s truth is more powerful than his dad’s psychological reversal. So dad now feels the emotions that he should have felt anyway for thinking a false belief.  Psychological reversals don’t work in the presence of the True Self.  (Boy this one confused me for years until I figured it out by accidentally doing it right.)

If dad was awake, he’d realize this his child did him a favor. He’d catch his mental error and let go of his beliefs around hard work. They’d both live happily ever after. But you and I both know that doesn’t happen very often.  Dad views himself as virtuous because of his hard work ethic.  He’d have to see that he wasn’t so good after all.

This might be confusing for dad because he has been talking about hard work for ages and never had an emotion before (that he can remember). I guarantee you that he had emotion the first time someone projected those beliefs on him. So he’ll probably blame Johnny for the emotion. He’ll offer up a reason for why he feels the emotion. “That damn kid never listens to me.” Then he walks away. Now dad has another belief — that Johnny never listens. And Johnny will have to reflect that belief too unless he catches it and let’s it go before it can become lodged in his mind.  If he accepts that projection, he’ll be lazy and won’t listen.  Dad will get to be right.  Johnny won’t want to be around dad because he just doesn’t like himself when he’s with him.  He’s not lazy, and he would be happy to listen to something truthful.

Dad is pushing Johnny away without knowing it. He thinks he’s building character; and he is creating a character alright. Thankfully, Johnny ignores his dad because he understands that his dad is now feeling his own emotions. And whatever he says is false. He goes back to practicing “Blue Steel.”  (In case you’ve never seen Zoolander, Blue Steel is a winning male model look.  I recently tweeted Will Farrell who tweeted back and confirmed that Zoolander 2 is in the works.  Wahoo!)

This is a place where many people get caught. A belief kicks in that they’re responsible for their parent’s emotions. Or they can’t stand to see their dad wallowing in his pain.  Let’s pretend that Johnny apologizes to dad and takes on his dad’s belief so that his dad won’t feel bad anymore.  Johnny and dad are now connected again at the false self level.  They get a slight feeling of harmony, which is really the removal of the emotional disharmony.  Johnny can kiss his dreams of being a male model goodbye. He’s headed for the coal mines.

Other people’s emotions are caused by what they’re thinking in any moment.  We don’t cause emotions in another.  They cause them by thinking false thoughts about us.  Or in the case of projection, we feel emotions when we accept the projection from another because we aren’t supposed to do that.

Now let’s examine this further.  My husband would think an unpleasant thought about me, and he felt emotion.  But like Johnny’s dad, he blamed me for the emotion.  He thought his mind was right so he projected more false thoughts at me, and more.  In his mind, the emotion he felt confirmed his rightness.  He could not discriminate.  He was slowly destroying our relationship without ever saying a thing.  He’d look at me and see someone doing all the things that he made up in his mind even if I wasn’t doing any of it.  This is how I learned that the false masculine has no clue what it’s doing.  The false masculine covers up our True Self with it’s own fantasy; and then it relates to the fantasy.

This is why teens can’t wait to leave home.  They don’t like the role they have been cast in.  But if they don’t realize they aren’t the person that has been projected on them, they will eventually become their parent.  When we accept a projection, our mind eventually acts like it is our belief.

Johnny is Asleep

Let’s run the same scenario, but this time Johnny is like most people. He doesn’t know his emotions mean that his dad’s beliefs are false. He’s watching “Zoolander,” and dad comes in and says his lines.

This time Johnny receives the projection exactly as it is delivered. Johnny doesn’t share his dad’s psychological reversal. So Johnny feels strong emotions, but then he thinks, “My dad must be right because his words feel horrible.” You see, Johnny is old enough to have been given the crucial false belief that twists our minds. “Beliefs that feel bad are true or the emotions mean my thoughts are true.”

Johnny will feel lazy and emotional until he goes out and gets a job and starts working hard. Then he’ll feel relief. We get emotion when we go against our truth. And now that Johnny has his dad’s psychological reversal around hard work, he feels good when he talks of working hard and feels bad if he’s being lazy.  He doesn’t like the work he’s doing, but he’d rather do that than feel bad about being lazy.  He’s mentally programmed just like his dad. His dad will be proud. And he’ll pass on that same belief to his children one day.  Once our mind accepts a belief as true, we work around that belief always choosing the path of least emotion.  But none of those paths lead us to freedom.

In this example, we can almost see or feel the projection of the beliefs as they travel from the mind of dad to the mind of Johnny. We can also see how to undo it by catching the transference of the belief and recognizing it isn’t true. We can replay this scene in our mind thirty years later, correct our error by noticing the emotion we feel when we hear dad’s belief and not accepting his projection this time, and that memory will now live in our mind correctly. We will no longer believe that hard work is necessary for success (unless we’ve got more beliefs on that subject). But most people will never correct their past memories. They will satisfy the beliefs (their false God) or they will suffer punishment in the form of emotions, problems, humiliation, or disease.

Let’s assume that we do decide to make that mental correction, we will feel like we are disconnecting from our dad because that is exactly what is happening. We shared a false self belief with dear old dad, and that created a connection — shitty but still a connection. Remember, false selves are meant to be individual containers. They hold our thoughts, visions, and the first-cause beliefs that we need for creation. But the false self was not meant to share beliefs (religion and governments invented that idea to create conformity and slavery).  So our false selves are connected by beliefs when we should not connect at the false self level unless we are cocreating with someone, and that is a temporary connection.  Our True Selves, on the other hand, are permanently connected with everyone.  Our True Selves, however, hold no beliefs.

Unspoken or Indirect Projection

We also receive projections indirectly by observing people’s actions or accepting their false words as true. This is the insidious trap that has caged so many innocent people involved in the self-help movement or the New Age teachings. It’s a very old trick; and it was used by religious and political leaders for ages. People speak words that are truthful or at least sound good, but they say them as corrections to existing unwanted and unhealthy beliefs.  They speak from the dual, divided perspective of the illusion as if they are outside of the illusion; this creates level confusion.  They usually speak with judgment of the unwanted side of duality directed at the listener.  The person in the teacher or healer role is in a masculine role, but we are in the listener or feminine role. So often we identify more closely with the belief they are covering up and projecting than what they actually said.  If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have gone to listen to them.

For example, in religion, the preacher tells you to pray and you will get to heaven. But his hopeful statement is whipped cream placed on top of the manure that says you were born with original sin.  If you have no original sin, or you never accepted the projected belief in original sin, you don’t need to do anything to correct it.  You wouldn’t need to go to church.  So you strengthen the belief that you are sinner each time you pray to remove the sin.  This takes us further away from our True Self.  Once we start letting go, we must dig deeper to find our True Self; and it is much harder.

How Experts Project

A popular teacher shouts, “You are a success. You are filled with abundance.” He jumps up and down on the stage, and the crowd is jumping with him. In that moment, they’re paying attention to his words and ignoring how they feel. They feel emotions, but they label it excitement. They pour the excitement into their affirmations, which they shout back at him. “I am a success. I am filled with abundance.”  We don’t notice that we wouldn’t have to make that statement if we didn’t truly believe the opposite.  We would not go to this guy’s talk if we didn’t feel poor and worthless.  We are trying desperately to flip to the winning side of the bottom of the triangle.  But we are actually making the belief that we are poor and worthless stronger.

Dan (seminar attendee): The next week, Dan goes to work. He’s in a feminine role as an employee. He’s up for a promotion, and he doesn’t get it. Now he’s much more aware of the opposite of those affirmations than the positive statements he screamed at the seminar. The teacher didn’t directly project the words at Dan, “You’re a loser.”  But Dan accepted the duality of success or lack of success and abundance and lack of abundance because the teacher got him to want the desirable side of the that duality –success and abundance. While the teacher got to choose which side of the dual pair of opposites he was on, because he played the masculine role, Dan doesn’t feel he has a choice.

He tries saying the affirmations each night for weeks, but it seems nothing happens. He only becomes more and more aware that he’s not a success, and he doesn’t have abundance. Finally, he realizes that the affirmations are empty words. There’s no opening or vortex in his life that could possibly bring him success or abundance at this moment short of winning the lottery, and he never buys a ticket.

By the teacher projecting out his words on to an audience, who all clearly attended the seminar because they are not successful or filled with abundance, the teacher became more convinced that he’s successful and abundant, after all he made $20,000 over that weekend. And the students, once the excitement has worn off, are left with the underbelly of his projection. They are simply more aware that they feel unsuccessful and poor. They identify with the unwanted aspect of that particular duality.

Now if a person in the audience has a strong masculine role, they will go back to their job; and it will seem that those affirmations worked easily and quickly. They will now tell their employees to start affirming success and abundance and wonder why it isn’t working for the employees.  These things do work if you are in the masculine role.  They don’t work in the feminine role.  The feminine role gets the unwanted half of the dual perspective in most cases.  And in many people’s unconscious minds, this is completely justified because Eve was responsible for the fall — Eve represents the feminine role.  But Adam and Eve weren’t real.  Their story, perceived as true, gives people in the false masculine role the right to punish the feminine role.  And those three sentences just explained all the problems and suffering in the world.

So what’s the answer?

Letting go. Instead of paying for another one of those seminars that make the leader rich, Dan sits home for a weekend.  And that isn’t easy.  Nearly every day, I get an email from someone who has dumped huge sums of money on these sorts of seminars and feels addicted.  Yes, going to the seminar made Dan feel like he was on the winning side for a weekend because he paid attention to the words of the teacher while he was in the room, not the emotions in his body.  When he left, he was left with what he really got from the teacher.

Dan starts letting go around success. He recognizes that he views success as something that happens to others, not him. So he starts with a question, “How do people become successful?” The question starts to bring up answers, and he has read my blog. He notices that none of the answers are appealing to him. He thinks things like:  Manipulate others. Work hard. Do something you don’t want to do. Get more education. Say more affirmations. Write a book. Market yourself. Network. Every answer has an emotional component to it.  They aren’t what he truly wants to do.  So he realizes these are all false answers, and he lets them go. Then he does the same with abundance. He starts to get into letting go, and finds that hours pass; and he’s still going deeper and harder into his mind. He’s having moments of clarity, and an occasional insight.

After his private workshop, he feels better. But he doesn’t have any great ideas yet for how he can be successful and abundant. But he’s turned a corner. While at work, he watches for jealousy around his coworkers. When he feels the jealousy, he retreats to his office to see what he’s thinking, and he lets go of whatever belief arose. He notices that his mind complains about his life or others who are successful; he has some beliefs that he’s a victim of circumstances. He doesn’t let his mind speak a emotionally-laced belief without declaring it false.

He keeps working at this until one day, he gets a great idea for a business. He feels inspired to learn a skill that he’ll need, and he finds what he needs on YouTube. He keeps letting go, and eventually starts his own business. As beliefs arise, he continues to let go. His business grows organically, and he never works hard again.

Finally one day, he notices that he’s a success, and he lives a life of abundance. He remembers that stupid seminar (where he dumped a load of money) and chuckles. He realizes the most important lesson of all. If he had willed this business to him by taking powerful actions, shouting his affirmations, and pushing everyone out of the way, he would have always wondered if he really deserved it. He would have felt bad that others lost so he could win. He’d have to keep those disempowering dual beliefs alive so he’d be going back to those expensive seminars every month. He’d be constantly fired up on emotions. And when he lost that coveted masculine role, when he retired, he’d have to face the other side of his beliefs. His own projected beliefs would now come rushing back to him.  This is why most successful people say that they do feel a strange feeling of lack that never goes away.  The projected shadow could boomerang back at any moment if they lose their special role.

Instead, Dan has a business that he enjoys; it gives him the chance to express his gifts and talents. And most important, he knows he earned it and that it’s right for him because he only acted from inspiration. No one lost so he could win. He allowed it to grow as he let go.  He never needed to take another seminar or class. He always knows everything he needs to know; and best of all, he’s perpetually calm. People say they’ve never seen an executive as calm as Dan. Then they wonder how he did it. “He must be lucky,” they think. Hopefully, one day while looking for porn, they’ll type in harder and deeper…then they’ll discover the secret too.