image of 3 books on a bookcase, the middle one is called Handbook of dangerous Materials.

One of the most dangerous things in human relationship is projection.

Projection is when we take the unconscious content we are unable to own, see or engage with from our own psyche and project them outward onto another.  This can be the projection of character traits, behaviours, attitudes, prejudices etc.

These projections can both be negative in content; "Women are all terrible drivers" from men who have aggressive and dangerous driving habits, or positive shadow "what an amazing woman, she is so kind and courageous." from those who are struggling to own their power.

It's part of what makes me so determined to continue on with the work i do; engaging people with their unconscious patterns, supporting them to be revealed in ways that are constructive and nurturing.  

Because this shit has got to stop. It's causing so much harm in the world right now. The high emotional tone, the willingness to condemn another to harm because of perceived superiority of position and immune systems... Projection is rife. Projection of all kinds causes harm, it stops us seeing what's really there - we don't see the real person or situation, we just see the projections we overlay on top of what's really there. Not only does it obscure our view but it stops us doing something constructive about it.

Even positive projection can be a problem.

Why is positive shadow so difficult to bear? Isn't it nice for people to think you are "all that and then some"?

Well, no.

To carry the weight of a projection skews our psyche. We're not able to turn up authentically. When we try to wriggle out from under projection, when our egos and Self are strong enough to navigate out from under the weight, the person projecting, when in the presence of a broken projection or a retrieved truth, often feels shocked, let down, angry.

I have carried positive projection. A local woman saw me; wild grey hair, creative and projected all kinds of perfection onto me. I was supposed to be some wise woman living close to the earth, perhaps with blackbirds doing my bidding. Anyone who knows me will know what a powerful and magnetising vision that is... i have often longed for the same thing BUT I was, at the time, a harried woman in the midst of a collapsing marriage with a daughter who was losing connection with her own strength and struggling. I was tired and lonely and distressed. I could not carry that projection. I actually didn't want, or have room for that and when i turned up fallible and hurt in real life she felt angry and let down. I didn't let her down, i didn't (well maybe in my imagination for a few moments,) collude or encourage the projection but man, did i still experience the fall off the pedestal. 

To climb off gracefully is an art that for some might, well be full time. Our current prime minister was internationally lauded early in her career and now she is the victim of death threats and hate speech. It seems when she began to have to enact stringent (and bloody successful) measures to navigate covid, she went from being a wonderful person to being a communist and a tyrant.

Projections closer to home need our attention. We need to see where we are seeing the enemy within as our partner, our neighbour or some shadowy figure in the background treating us all like puppets.

Projections without the consciousness to work them, become weapons.  

I believe we all need to be sheathing our weapons, withdrawing our projections as hard and fast as we can right now because we need each other to be visible, clear and true.

What  are you doing to withdraw your projections? What have you experienced?

He's legit. i checked his Bio here 

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"Looks like New Zealanders are walking up to this take over by these authoritarians, totalitarians, autocrats, fascists, dictators and cuddly Communists.


Looks like we will need While Hat military intervention with the support of the public, the citizens and We the People to bring back sanity, order, justice and freedom."

These are quotes from a post this week by an acquaintance, someone who works in the field of life coaching. Someone who purports to be about wholeness in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual bodies.

A person who on one hand posts about meditation and light, and on the next post is full of this kind of vitriol. 

I want to mark my soul deep alarm at the cruelty and viciousness in thinking like this. Thinking that is getting stirred in people by the disinformation that is pouring into the hearts and minds all around us. This disinformation is shaping swathes of people, often disaffected, often it seems not knowledgeable about things like public health, virology, immunology. These people are turning up all over the internet, and the streets, with a sense that they have seen through the lies surrounding them and they and people like them, are the one source of truth.

It seems like a form of psychological complex capture that, beyond a psychological frame is like the rabid fervour of an evangelist or crusader.

I see it like the captured and cruel dismissal of everything that is loving and compassionate about Christ's words that marauds through the right wing thinking in our society. I see this White Hat military vision this person has, as akin to the Christian zealots slaughtering their way to the holy land. 

This thinking, this "we are special, we are the chosen, we know and you who do not are tainted and we get to punish you for your ignorance." is so viciously alive in my community.

I have tried, in my commitment to soul and compassion, in my understanding about the marks trauma leaves on a soul (and, OK, a martyr complex); the need to be special, the need to matter, the need to feel safe in an unsafe situation tried to stay in, what i have been naming the messy middle.  The ground where uncertainty lies. The space in the middle where we can wrestle with the beliefs and bring facts, counter cherry picking, call out the inaccuracies and in that space, i am finding my flame for goodness blown out by the roar of malice and, well hate, that emits from these spaces.

These people will claim "opinions" that differ to me, when they are in fact looking at twisted and cherry picked information. When that is being addressed they will often claim their right to an opinion. They will retreat into name calling and disrespect.

These are not just a few people who are out on the edge but it seems a growing number of people who are being reached by this disinformation and who are left feeling destabilised, unsafe and in getting to blame the government and nefarious nebulous outsiders with harm, they enact the infidel killing fervour or the zealots. 

I have been trying to stay in the conversation, in part because the life of soul matters to me. I have been trying to call back into engagement with each other, with facts to no avail. I have been trying to appeal to the humanity in these people by talking about the people i love who would be at severe risk from covid but i was literally told to stop wasting my time and if i loved my friend i would teach her about how to have a healthier immune system. The malice is distressing.

Hell i am trying to advocate for people i don't like who might be at risk because this "i care more about my perception of freedom and the ideology i am swept up in than i do about another vulnerable human" is an affront to our humanity.

Jung talked about psychic contagion and the rising of Wotan as an archetype after the second world war. I wonder what he would say today? The Destroyer archetype? The Death Mother?

Whatever it is that is capturing people, contagion or no, it means us harm. 

Just like the virus, it doesn't need us to believe in it. It is active and it is alive.

And i sit here soul-sore, heart worn, alarmed and furious.

How about you?

I am reading a lot of comments from people who are using "you are living in fear" as a way of shaming and demeaning others.

To me that sounds like a dicey prospect. 
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We have developed fear as a powerful and appropriate tool to help us avoid threat. It's wired into our nervous systems so deeply that we can react to threat with fear and take evasive action without even thinking. 

It's innate. It's hardwired, It's essential.

Somehow our macho culture, the patriarchy, white supremacy, has shaped us to shame ourselves around fear. We have honoured and mythologised the fearless warrior for so long that we don't have stories that reflect the reality of courage.

Somehow we are deluding ourselves that fearlessness is the mark of bravery.

Nelson Mandela, a truly brave human, had this to say.
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If we were best served, as many of these people seem to suggest,  by taking the path of "fearlessness" we might be heading towards an evolutionary cul de sac.

These comments are coming from people who also believe the virus is a big beat up, that the democratically elected leaders of our country who have kept the death rate from covid19 stunningly low are communists who are all wanting to take over our lives, that the vaccine is killing us and that if we all just ate more healthily we would get through this. They are the people who say the death rate is less than two percent and that they would like to take their chances. These are the people that they are not living in fear.

They point to my mask wearing, vaccine taking self as a portrait of fear.

I disagree. 

I call projection. I think that their response to think they can outsmart a novel virus (this is a novel virus and our immune systems don't have the forewarning) with nutrition, or vilify and blame the Government for tried and true if hard to endure public health measures is an expression of fear. Fear of things being out of their control. Fear of a loss of quality of life. Fear of a threat so immense and unseen that they are overwhelmed and instead of fearing the virus, they are fearing something they can see, something that represents difference and change. And in some circles, sometimes that is me.

I think we are right to fear a virus that has a death rate of 2% in the population, has proven long term health challenges and is continuing to mutate through communities with low vaccination rates. I think my alarm at the presence of this in the world is an appropriate response. 

I don't want to get sick. I don't want my community to get sick. I care about the many people who are likely to be badly impacted by this virus and fearlessness and bravado is not going to save them. 

Does that mean i live in fear?

No it means i take the situation, i see the risk to my own health, my family's health and the health of my community and in my alarm at this new presence I am moved to take action. This action means i have changed my previously anti-vaccination stance. This action means i wash my hands when i have been out, i used to relish the chance to give my immune system something to do. This action means i wear a mask, i buckle down in lockdown. I am not living in fear when i make changes like this. I am doing what i am designed to do; assess risk and act accordingly.

When i do this for not only myself but my community i think the likelihood of my evolutionary success is a lot higher than what it would be if i was in "fearlessness" or as i have been calling it in my head "fearlessmess".

It's time we looked at fear as an ally and learned to navigate it with care.

Oh honey i know.

i know it would be good, in the maelstrom of information and misinformation, to be able to turn towards your internal guidance system and know, just know down into your bones, what to do, who to listen, what to think, what course to take.

I can feel my body soften at the idea that i could have a failsafe method of sifting the poppy-seeds from the dirt, hardwired in. I long for that kind of ease.

But i know that tuning my ears to the voice of my heart and instincts, my breath and deep listening as i was encouraged to do by a well known "influencer" today, might not be the panacea i am longing for.

We are designed to be a self righting organism. To manage harm with care we need to be able to make quicker-than-consciousness decisions. We have instincts preloaded to ensure we don't have to reinvent the coping strategies our ancestors developed. Flight or fight response is a great example of this; we immediately size up a threat - if we can run from it we take off before we know it, if we feel we can take it out we are likely to fight. We don't sit and make a pro-con list, we just (and yes i think Nike knows it's coopting our wired nervous systems) DO IT.

But that's assuming mostly our healthy settings are intact. That's assuming we come through life without things we learn and have to respond to getting overlaid over our healthy settings.

"Psychologically, Jung speculated that the instincts derived from the psychoid unconscious , that layer of the psych where biology and spirit might touch. I am of a considered same mind, and would like to go further to venture that the creative instinct in particular is as much the lyrical language of the Self as is the symbology of dreams.

..... The idea of instinct can be valued positively as an inner something that when blended with forethought and consciousness guides humans to integral behaviour. A woman is born with all instinct intact.....

Through wildlife studies of various species of captive animals, it was found that no matter how lovingly their zoo plazas are constructed, no matter how much their human keepers love them as indeed they do, the creatures often become unable to breed, their appetites for food and rest become skewed, their vital behaviours dwindle to lethargy, sullenness or untoward aggressiveness....." Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés; Women Who Run With The Wolves.


When we grow up we all receive injuries to instinct. When we grow up female in Western culture we are taught to be "nice". Nice, in my opinion is one of the worst weapons to be used against instinct. 

Nice stops us being honest. It stops us speaking up. It stops us reacting. It stops us protecting ourselves. It makes us say yes when we want to say no. It makes us be polite when we are being harmed. It makes us turn against ourselves in ways that shrivel our soul.

When we grow up in these pretty cages we are, by definition, instinct injured. 

Many of us are unable to act on an instinct long silenced. We are unable to hear our hearts, so long have they been unheard. 

Many of us have had so many overlays one on the other on the other about not doing what will serve us. 

If in these days of heightened distress and misinformation, of deserved fear about a pandemic and climate catastrophe, we think the answer lies in our heart we might be making a mistake.

Is it wrong then to listen to my heart? To trust myself?

No no of course your heart is wise and your Self is a loving force.

What i am saying is that instead of hearing your heart you might instead be hearing the static of the overlay. The buzz of trauma.

Has the system been consistently untrustworthy. Has authority let you down, harmed you? I think many of us would say yes to that. 

Are you living in an age where people are vulnerable to scams and greed seems to be destroying the planet unchecked?

Of course the answer is yes. Does this hurt our hearts? Yes! Does this leave a scar? Yes.

Does this mean when we listen to our hearts and we hear the alarm and the fright and longing to flee into the safety of our own protective response and think it's our hearts telling us what to do? That we can trust that distress and follow where it leads us?

I think no.

I think that the distress is real. The alarm is real. The mistrust is real. I think that we need to be able to hold that and look at how much this has been a trauma response, a rush to flight programmed from long ago mistrust of authority, hurt from the system.

I think we have to look at how we feel alarm and assume something nefarious has to be at the root of it.  

I think we have to look at the way we find a theory that, in its far reaching evilness seems to justify and match our alarm (NATO, COMMUNISM, BILL GATES,) and say that this is trusting our instinct.  Is it instead matching our untended distress, our trauma response? 

Are we saying others are sheep and mindless and responding to fear pumped out by Government and media, because we need to feel safe in our systems, our psyches and our bodies, at a time where our usual coping strategies for managing our dysregulation and trauma are not working any more?

Are we all, and i am one, believe me, walking talking reactive beings who are thrust into a time of threat without the healing necessary to help us discern the voice of our instinct from the voice of our instinct injury, the voice of our heart from the voice of our scars, the voice of the land and spirit from our own projected distress?

I would love to say there's a simple answer to all of this, but from where i sit, all we can do, the best we can do, the best we can hope for is that all of us do our trauma work. That we share the privileges necessary to do the work to clear a path to instinct and find a way to respond to these crises, and to each other, from a clear heart and not from the hurt and distress turning up in so many places.

If you feel yourself overwhelmed here is some free stuff to help.