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Spirit Projections
In response to my most recent post, Lyam left a comment which I struggled with myself for a long time:
Do things have spirits independant of the power projected by the individual? Or are the spirits merely projections of the individual onto his environment? And practically speaking, does it matter which is true? Does it change the outcome of any interaction with the ’spirit’?
This seems like one of the biggest challenges for people raised in a scientific materialist worldview who are coming to understand spiritual traditions. For most of us, it’s simply to much to accept off the bat that there is such a thing as a spiritual reality overlaid on and intersecting the material world. Then, once we are able to accept that possibility, the next easiest step seems to be to believe that we ourselves are the source of these spirits and things. They are things inside of us that we merely perceive as being outside of us.
I like Lyam’s question because he isn’t only asking what’s the truth, but what’s the impact of different ways of looking at the truth. In my own experience, the impact is this. If you believe that there’s no spiritual reality, then you’ll more than likely not see it. If you believe that you are the sole source of it, that it comes from you, it allows you a certain type of mental distance from what you are experiencing. You don’t have to react to things as outside separate entities with existences of your own, because you see everything as merely a projection of yourself. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with this, but I’ve found it to be too limiting. Partly because it perhaps artificially inflates my own sense of self-importance and diminishes the reality of the things I’m experiencing.
Michael Harner’s Q&A on shamanism has a rather similar point about shamanic healing:
If I understand the concept, shamans restore wholeness and power to a human being, and then that wholeness and power heals whatever is wrong with that person. So in this framework a power-filled person has the ability to heal himself.
To an outsider, it would look like they’re healing themselves. But the concept of self-healing excludes the spirits. From the shamanic point of view, nobody’s lived into adult life without spiritual help, whether they know it or not. The self-healing concept is a secular concept, and that’s fine as far as it goes. It teaches people to take some responsibility for their illness. But it also teaches them to take responsibility for their death. With that approach, everybody’s a failure at the moment of death, because they are responsible for the whole thing. From a shamanic point of view we are not that important. We are not necessarily the biggest thing in the universe. The shaman has a more humble point of view, that there is what looks like self-healing but, in fact, we are getting help. And the shaman has the role, of course, of accelerating that possibility.
I realize this is going to more than likely chafe a lot of people’s spiritual worldview. And if you’re one of the lucky people who it does, I’d like to hear why. I’m curious to hear a really good explanation of why it’s better or more useful for people to believe that spiritual realities are merely projections of ourselves, rather than having their own independent reality. I’m also happy to entertain the notion that they are both inside and oustide of us at the same time. Or if you believe that it’s not necessarily the most accurate but the most useful to believe these things are wholly independent and outside of us, I’d also like to hear why. You’ve got a variety of options here, so give it your best shot.
[Also check out the excellent follow-up to this on Fantastic Planet]
- Notes: Millions of Us Corp.
- Harner on Spiritual Reality
- Shamanic Regalia
- Foggy eyes
- The Holy Spirit in Secret
- Prev: Harner on Spiritual Reality
- Next: La Santa Muerte
September 23rd, 2005 at 12:43 pm
funny, we were just talking about this last night. i’ll respond over at fp . . . .
September 23rd, 2005 at 2:20 pm
[…] ifestation of internal psychological states. Today I come to find that Tim’s asking pretty much the same question, couched in more shamanic terms. I’m curious to […]
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:19 pm
i help people get to healing. sometimes i`ll even go as far as slieght of mouth to do so. sometimes i`ll whip up some voodoo that creates transformation in a person`s mind that could be taken as magical or the work of demons. certainly a catholic or baptist upbringing could give a person that interpretation. some of the rituals i involve people in utilise rhythmic language patterns and subtle tapping that could be percieved as evocative of spirits, though i never call out to anything but a person`s inner ideas about change. i have been accused of doing the work of demons and that i`m unaware that i`m doing so. i find that amusing, which further convinces my baptist friend of my possession.
i have always been confused about why we need to include spirits other than ourselves in all of this. i feel that our own spirit is powerful enough to do all that is needed and i have personally not found any evidence of seperate spirit entities in my work. i can`t say catagorically that there is no such thing, that would be unreasonable, and if a person has included helpful spirits in thier world view and they work for them, then who am i to challenge that?
September 23rd, 2005 at 3:37 pm
Wow, I got quoted!
Anyway, on a side note, it’s interesting to consider that Jung himself consider unconscious projected content completely autonomous from the conscious self and thus should be treated as such. You treat it as a separate entity. However, once you know you are projecting, the projection stops.
So going around and telling yourself that such and such is merely a projection is not entirely what people should be doing about said projections. There’s a difference between knowing and telling yourself it’s so.
Back on topic, Jung (sorry, I;m on a Jung kick right now) considered it beneficial to accept symbolic systems as real, if only because the mind’s reaction to such an acceptance was seemingly more beneficial than an attempt to deny it’s validity. In other words, accepting symbolic content (through the method of religious faith for instance) was healthier than denying it while pretending you’ve conquered such nonsense.
So, I definately think there is a right way and a wrong way. Well, many right ways and many wrong ways. Both religious and scientific. It’s important to remain humble, though i the true religious (and scientific!) spirit.
September 23rd, 2005 at 4:47 pm
Actually, I think Jung could probably be understood as having believed that autonomous archetypes and complexes exist on their own throughout all of nature, and aggregate things toward them which resonate. But I don’t have a direct quote on that, so take it as my interpretation. One of his students, Marie Louise Von Franz also seems to have done a lot of work in regard to death, spirits and the afterlife, treating such things as real.
September 23rd, 2005 at 6:12 pm
Growing up in Tucson, i remember being 5 and there being alot of desolation and a sort of death in the landscape (and beauty at other times). The feeling persisted for so long, i eventually stopped attributing it to a projection of my own mind and started attributing it to something outside of my self (something autonomous). THe real shift came when i read that arcaeologists consider the tucson area to be the longest continually inhabited area of north america (continuous inhabitation all the way back to 10000 bc). My eventual conclusion was that i was being aware of the layers and layers of previous life that we were building on top of and that it was still there in some regard, unseen but felt. even though i normally subscribe to a sort of self referential take on things(self help or whatever), for once attributing some of my dark feelings to something outside of myself in this case at least feels more true somehow, since they were particularly tied to a landscape and place. maybe it goes both ways?