Projection is Perception

 

by James Leahy

 

Have you ever asked yourself why one person listens to a system and loves it and yet another listen to the same system and hates it?

I want to talk to you briefly now about the concept of Projection. Projection. More specifically, the Psychology of Projection. I believe that our bodies, minds and emotions are an active part of how we perceive the World and the meaning we make of the events around us. There isn't an objective reality that everyone can agree on. So you have to understand that your mental, emotional psychology system effects how we perceive things. The filters that we have and the way that we see things.

I read an interesting story that when the Spanish came over to what is now South America in their huge ships that the natives couldn't see the ships, they just couldn't see them. Because their perception systems just didn't have what it took to see a ship, they had never seen one before and it didn't make any sense.

Most of our perceptive ability is actually programming that is learned not the objective, accurate perfect set of equipment we think it is. If you had not learned what coloration of sound was, tonal inaccuracy and dynamic response you would not perceive the difference in low quality or high quality Stereo systems.

 

A loud bang outside will be perceived as a car backfiring by one person, a car accident by another and a gun shot by another. All projections, projecting the inner programming out onto the event. You can only perceive something relative to what is already programmed into your mind. This is why we often see things that aren't there and miss things that are. Because our minds are playing an active role in them being there.

This concept reminds me of an old story about a baby eagle.

 

A man found an Eagle's egg and put it in the nest of a barnyard Hen. The Eagle hatched with the brewed of chicks and grew up with them. All his life the Eagle did what the barnyard chicks did thinking he was a barnyard Chicken.

He scratched the Earth for worms and insects, he clucked and cackled and he would thrash his wings and would only fly a few feet into the air. His lifetime past him by without giving this a second thought and the Eagle grew very old. One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky. It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents with scarcely a beat of it's muscular golden winds.

The old Eagle looked up in awe, "Who's that?", he asked. "That's the mighty Eagle; the King of the Birds", said his neighbour. "He belongs to the Sky, we belong to the Earth, for were are only Chickens". So the Eagle lived and died a Chicken.

For that's all he believed he was...

 

PROJECTION IS PERCEPTION.