This piece has called to me like it was written for me. I wil be speaking of this one more in the future.

Like the projection of negative emotions, the projection of negative qualities is very common in our society, for we have been duped into equating "negative" with "undesirable".
Thus instead of befriending and integrating our negative traits, we alienate and project them, seeing them in everybody else but ourselves. as always however, they nevertheless remain ours. As an example, nine out of a particular group of ten girls love Jill, but the tenth girl, Betty, cant stand her because, as Betty expains it, jill is a prude. And Betty hates prudes. So she will go to any lengths to try to convince her other friends of jill's supposed prudishness, but nobody seems to agree with her, which further infuriates Betty. Itis prehaps obvious that Betty hates Jill only because Betty is unconsciousof he own orudish tendencies; and projecting them on jill, a conflict between Betty and Betty becomes a conflict between Betty and Jill, of course, has nothing to do with this argument-she simply acts as an unwanted mirror of Betty's own self-hatred.
All of us have blind spots-tendencies and traits that we simply refuse to admit are ours, that we refuse to accept aand therefore fling into the evviroment where we muster all of our righteous fury and indignation to do battle with them, blinded by our own idealism to the fact that the battle is within and the enemy is much nearer home.And all it takes to intergrate these facets is that we treat ourselves with
the same kindess and understandingthat we afford our friends. as Jung most eloguently states

the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitmore of the whole outlook of life. that I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ-all of theseare undoubtledly great virtues. what I do to the leasdt of my brethren, that i do to christ.But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorestof all the beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, the very enemy himself-that theseare with me, and that I myself stand in the need of the alms of my own kindess-that I myself am the enemy who must be loved-what then?

the consequences are always twofold: one, we come to believe that we totallt lack the quality which we are projecting, and thus it is unavaliable to uis-we do not act upon it, utilize it, or any way satisfy it, which causeschronic frustration and tension. two, we see these qualities as existing in the environment, where they assumeeawesome or terrifying proportions, so that we end up clobbering ourselves with our own energy.
Projecttion on the Ego Level is very easily identified: if a person or thing in the environment informs us, we probablyu aren't projecting; on the other hand if it affects us, chances are that we are victim of our own projections. for instance, jill might very well have been a prude, but was that the reasonfor Betty to hate her? Certainly not; Betty was not just informed that Jill was a prude, she was violently affected by Jill's prudishness, which is a sure sign that Betty's hatred of Jill wasd only projected or extroverted self contempt. Similarly, when Jack was debating whether or not to clean the garage, and his wifeinquired how he was doing, Jack over -reacted. Had he really not desired to clean the garage, had he really been innocent of that drive, he would have simplyanswered that he had changed his mind. But he did not-instead he snapped back at her-imagine she wants him to clean the garage! Jack projected his own desire and then experienced it as a pressure, so that jis wife's innocent inquiry did not just inform Jack, it strongly affected Jack: he felt unduly pressured. and that is the crucial difference- what I see in other peopleis more or less correct if only it informs me, butit is definely a projection if it strongly affects me emotionally. Thus if we are overly attasched to somebody or something on the other hand, then we respectively either shadow-huggingor shadow boxing, and the quaternary dualism-repression-progection has most definitely occurred.
the undoing of a projection rrepresents a move or a shift"dow" the spectrum of consciousness(from the shadow to the Ego Level), for we are enlarging our area of identification by re-owning aspects of ourselves that we previously alienated. And the first step, the primary step, is alwaysto realize that what we thought the evironment was mechanically doing to us is really something we are doing to ourselves-we are responsibile.
thus I am feeling anxiety, I would usuallyclaim that I am helpless victim of tension, that people or situations in the environmentare causing me to be anxious. the first step is to become fully awareof anxiety, to get in touch with it, to shake and jitter and gasp for air-to really feel it, inviteit in, expressit-and thus realize that I am responsibile, thast i am tensing, that I am blocking my excitmentand thereforeexperiencing anxiety. I am doing this to myself, so that anxiety is an affair between me and me and not me and the environment. But this shift in attitiude means that where formerly I alienated my excitement, split myswelf from it and then claimed to be the victimof it, I now am taking responsibility for what I am doing to myself.
If the first step is the "cure" of the shadow projections, then the second step is simply to reverse the directionof the projection itself and gently do unto others what we have heretofore been unmercifully doing to ourselves. Thus, the world rejects me freely translates into I reject at least this moment, the whole damnworld! My parents want me to study translates into I want to study. My poor Mother needs me becomes I need to be close to her. I'm afraidof being left alone trasnslates into Damned if I'll give anybody the time of day! Everybodys always looking at me critically becomesI'm interested critic of people.
we will returnto these two basic steps of responsibility and reversal in just a moment, but at this point let us note that hese cvases of shadow projection we have neurotically tried to render our self image acceptable by making it inaccurate. all of those facets odf our self -image,our ego, which is incompatible with what we superfically believe to be our best interests, or all thosefacets which are alienated in tiomes of stress, impasse,or double-bind-all off that self-potential is abandoned. as a result we narrowour identity to only a fraction of the ego, namely, to the distorted and impoverished persona. and so by the same stroke are we doomed to be hauted forever by our shadow. which we now refuse to give even the briefest conscious hearing. But the shadow always has its say, for it forces entry into consciousness and anxiety, guilt, and depression. The shadow beomes a sumptom, and fastens itself to us like a vampire battens on its prey.
TO BE CONTINUED I HAVE RUN OUT OF TIME AND OFF TO WORK. THANKS, vl
To speak fiquratively, it may be said that we have split the concoridia discors of the opsyche into nemerous polarities and contraries and opposites,all of which for convenience sake we have been referring to collectively, as the quaternary dualism, that is, the split between the persona and the Shadow. In each of these cases, we associate ourselves with only "one half"of the duality while casting the banished and usually despised oppositeto the twilight world of the Shadow. The Shadow, therefore, exists precisely as the opposite of whateverwe, as persona, consciously and deliberatelt believe to be the case.
Thus it stands to good reason that if you would like to know just howyour shadow views the world, then-as a type of personal experiment-simply assume exactly th opposite of whatever you consciously desire,like, feel, want, intend, or believe. In this way you may consciously contac, express, play and ultimately re-own your opposites, After all, you will own them, or they will own you- the shadow always has its say. This, if anything, is what we have learned from every example in this chapter; we may wiselybe aware of our opposites, or we will be forced to Beware of them.
Now to play the opposites, to be aware of and eventually re-ownour Shadows, is not necessarily to act on them! It seems that nearlyevery person is more reluctant to confront his opposites for fear they might over power him.and yet it's rather just the other way round.: we end up, tatally against our will, following the dicates of the shadow only when it is unconscious.
to make a valid decision or choice we must be fully aware of bothsides, of both opposites, and if one of the alternatives is unconscious, our decision will probably be less than a wise one. In all areas od psychic life, asthis and every example in this chapter has shown, we must confront our opposites and reown them-and that doesn't necessarily mean to act on them, just to be aware of them.
by professively confronting one's opposites, it becomes more and more obvious-and this point can hardly be repeated too often-that sincethe Shadow is a real and intergral facet of the ego, all of the "symptoms" and discomforts that the shadow seems to be inflictingon us are really symptoms and discomforts whih we are inflicting on ourselves, however much we mayconsciously protest to the contrary. It is very, very,mych as if I, for instance were deliberately and painfully pinching myself and pretending not to! Whatever my symptoms on this level may be-guilt, fear, anixety, depression-all are strictly the result of my "mentally" pinching myself in one fashion or another. And this directly implies, incredible as it may seem, that I want this painful systom, whatever its nature, to be here just as much as I want it to depart.
thus, the first opposite you might try confronting is your secretand shadowed desire to keep and maitain your systoms, your unawares desire to pinch yourself. And may we be impudent enought to suggest that the more ridiculous this sounds to you, the more out of touch you might be with yourShadow, with that side of you that is doing the pinching.
Hence to ask,"How can I get rid of this symptom"? is too groog immediately, for that implies that it is not you who are producing it! It is tantamount to asking, "How can I stop pinching myself"? As long as you are asking how to stop pinching yourself, or as long as you are trying to stop pinching yourself, then you are quite obviously have not seen that it is you who are doing the pinching! And so the pain remains or even increases. for if you clearly see see that you are pinching yourself, you don't ask how to stop-you just stop, instantly To put it bluntly, the reason the systoms doesn't depart is that you aretrying to make it depart. This is why Perls stated that as long as you fight a symptom, it will get worse. Deliberate change never works, for it excludes the Shadow.
Thus the problem is not to get rid of any symptom, but rather to deliberately and consciously try to increase that symptom, to debileratly and consciously try to increase that symptom, to deliberately and consciouly experience it fully! If you are depressed, try to be more depressed. If you are tense, make yourself tenser. If you feel guilty, increas your feelingsof guilt-and we mean that literaly! for by doing so you are, for the veryfirst time, acknowledging and even aligning yourself with your shadow, and hence are doing consciously what you have heretofore been doing unconsciously. When you, as a personal experiment, consciously throw every bit of yourself into actively and debileratly trying o produce your present symptoms, you have in effect thrown your persona and shadow together. You have consciously contracted and aligned with your opposites, and in short, re-discovered your shadow.
So, deliberately and consciously increase any present symptoms to the point where you consciously see that you are and always have been doing it, whereupon, for the first time, you are spontaneously free to cease. If you canmake yourself more guility, it dawns on you that you can make yourself less guilty, but in a remarkable spontaneous way. If you are free to depress yourself, you are free not to. My father used to cure hiccups instantly by producing a twenty-dollar bill on the spot and demanding in return that the victim immediately hiccup just one more time. so also, allowed anxiety is no longer anxiety, and is the easiest way to "un-tense" a person is to challengehim to be as tense as he possibly can, In all cases, conscious adherence to a symptom delivers you from the symptom.
But you mustn't worry about whether the symptom disappears or not-it will but don't worry about it. to play your opposites for the sole reason of trying to erase a symptom is to fail miserably at playing your opposites. in other wors, don't play the opposites half-heartedly and thenanxiously checkto see whether or not the symptom has vanished. If you hear yourself saying, "Well, I tried to make the symptom worse, but it still didn't go away and i wish to hell it would"! then you have not contacted the Shadow at all. but merley refled off some quick-fire lip service to placate the gods and demons. You must become those demons, until with the entire force of your conscious attention you are deliberately and porposely producing and holding on to your symptoms.
So in contacting my symptoms and deliberately trying to identify with them, I will want to leep in mind that any particular symtom-if it has an emtionial nucleus-is a visible form of a shadow which contains not only the opposite quality but also the opposite direction. Thus, if I feel terribly hurt and mortally wounded"because of" something Mr X said to me, and I consequently am in agony-although I consciously harbor nothing but good will toward X- the first step is to realize that I am doing this to myself, thatliterally I am hurting myself. Taking responsibility for my own emotions, I am in the position to reverse the direction of the projection and to see that my feelings of being hurt are presisely by my own desire to hurt X. "I feel hurt by X finally translates correctly into "I want to hurt X". Now this doesn't mean that I go out and transh X to a pulp-the awareness of my anger is sufficient to intergrate it(although I might like to brutalize a pillow instead). the point is that my symptoms of agony reflects not only the opposite quality, but also the opposite direction. Hence, I will have to assume responsibility both for my anger(which is the opposite quality of my conscious goodwill towardX) and for the fact that the anger itself is from me toward X(which is the opposite of my conscious direction. In a sense, the we have first-in the case of projectedemotions-to see that what we thought the environmentwas doing to us is really something we are doing to ourselves, that we are literally pinching ourselves; and then, as it were, to see that this is actually our own disguised to pinch others! And for the "desire to pinch others", substitute-according to your own projections-the desire to love others, hate others, touch others, tense others, process others, look at others, murdur others, contact others, squeeze others, capture others, reject others, give to others, take from others, play with others,, dominate others, decieve others, elevate others.You fill in the blank, orrather let the shadow fill it.
Now this second step of reversal is absolutely essential. If the emotion is not fully discharged in the correct direction, you will very quickly slip back into the habit of turning that emotion back on yourself. so as you contact an emotion such as hatred, every time you start to turn the hatred back on yourself, then play the opposite direction! turn it out! That is now your choice: to pinch or be pinched, to look or be looked at, to reject or to be rejected.
Taking back our projections is somewhat simpler-but not necessarily easier-when it comes to projected qualities, traits, or ideas because they do not themselves involve a direction, at least not one as pronounced and as moving as that of the bitchinness, wickedness, stinginess, and so on, seem to be itself, and not so much aboutany direction of the quality. Of course, once these qualities are projected, we may react to them in a voilently emotional manner-and then we may even project these reactive emotions, and then react to them, and so in a dizzying whirl of shadow-boxing. And it may well be that no qualities or ideas are projected unless emotionally charged. Be all that as it may, considerable re-intergration can neverthe less be accomplished if we simply consider the projected qualities by themselves.
As always, the projecteed traits-just like the projected emotions-will be all those items we "see" in others that don't merely inform us but strongly affect us. Ususally these will be the qualities which we imiage another to process and which and which we utterly loathe, qualities we are itching to point out and voilently condemn. Never mind that we are flinging our condemnations at our own little black heart, hoping thereby to exorcise it. Occasionally the projected qualities will be some of our own virtues, so that we cling to those onto whom we hang our goodies, frequently attemping to feverishly guard and monopolize the chosen person. The fever comes, of course, from the powerful desire to hold onto aspects of our own selves.
In the last analysis, projections come in all flavors. In any case, these projected qualities-just like the projected emotions-will always be the opposite of those we consciously fancy ourselves to process. but unlikethe emotions, these traits themselves do not have a direction, and thus their intergration is straightforward. In the very first step of playing your opposites, you will come to see that what you love or despise in others are only the qualities of our own shadow. It is not an affair between you and others but between you and you. Playing your opposites you touch the Shadow, and in so understanding that you are pinching yourself, you stop. there is no direction to the projected traits themselves, and so their intergration does not demand the second step of reversal. And so it is through playing your opposites, through giving the Shadow equal time, that we eventually extend our identity, and thus our responsibility, to all aspects of the psyche, and not just the improvished persona. In this fashion, the split between the personna and Shadow os "wholed and healed".Well I am done
Thanks VL

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Vonda,

quote:

the undoing of a projection rrepresents a move or a shift"dow" the spectrum of consciousness(from the shadow to the Ego Level),

I would phrase it differently, for I am not convinced that there is an "undoing" of the shadow. It seems more of a piece to integrate and that is what I keep saying also. We MUST get to the Ego level of our consciousness and begin there in earnest before we can do shadow work, exactly what Wilbur is saying.
It is good that Ken Wilbur has said it so you can hear it. It is the same material as we have been going over and over and over. What particular piece of Wilbur's work did this come from? Book title? His Integral INstitute work? Where did you find this piece? I have most of his work and like to look at the whole piece in context.

I am going to move this to the Wisdom Bridges site Vonda, as this is EXACTLY what we have been working on.

I currently understand why it is taking me so long to type this in. This is such a hidden treasure of information for me.
From this process I see that I take on more than I can physically handle related to what is going on in my life at that prsent time. This has been a pattern thru out my life. What a unique opportunity I have been given to see it in this venue.
I have several more paragraphs left and then I will add my learning which is continuing to the present time. Thanks, VL

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Vonda,

Why not just give everyone the information about where they can read it if they want? Rather than type it all in.
Unless there is something for you in doing that.

I don't know the name of the book you are getting this from, and the information comes from Ken Wilbnur's Spectrum of Consciousness.

I had posted the information months ago and when there was no response I decided to type the piece in as It is an important peice for my learning

The Ken Wilbur pievce is done.
where do you get information on Ken Wil

Vonda,

Information about Ken's Spectrum of Consciousness can probably be obtained from his website. Here's the link: http://www.integralinstitute.org/

Hope this helps . . .

Thanks, VL