Seven of Water : Projections
The man and woman in this card are facing each other, yet they are not able to see each other clearly. Each is projecting an image they have constructed in their minds, covering the real face of the person they are looking at. All of us can get caught up in projecting movies of our own making onto the situations and people surrounding us. It happens when we are not fully aware of our own expectations, desires and judgments; instead of taking responsibility for them and owning them, we try to attribute them to others. A projection can be devilish or divine, disturbing or comforting, but it is a projection nonetheless–a cloud that prevents us from seeing reality as it is. The only way out is to recognize the game. When you find a judgment arising about another, turn it around: Does what you see in others really belong to you? Is your vision clear, or clouded by what you want to see?
Osho’s Teachings
In a cinema hall, you look at the screen, you never look at the back–the projector is at the back. The film is not there really on the screen; it is just a projection of shadow and light. The film exists just at the back, but you never look at that. And the projector is there. Your mind is at the back of the whole thing, and the mind is the projector. But you always look at the other, because the other is the screen. When you are in love the person seems beautiful, no comparison. When you hate, the same person seems the ugliest, and you never become aware of how the same person can be the ugliest and the same person can be the most beautiful. So the only way to reach to truth is to
learn how to be immediate in your vision, how to drop the help of the mind. This agency of the mind is the problem, because mind can create only dreams. Through your
excitement the dream starts looking like reality. If you are too excited then you are intoxicated, then you are not in your senses. Then whatsoever you see is just your projection. And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in his own world.
Osho Hsin Hsin Ming: The Book of Nothing Chapter 7
A coat of quotes and passing poetry
"
This soaring, sacred thirst, Ambassador of bliss, approached first.
Making a place in me
That made me apt to prize, and taste, and see.
For not the objects, but the sense Of things doth bliss to Souls dispense,
And make it, Lord, like Thee. Sense, feeling, taste, complacency, and sight,
These are the true and real joys,
The living, flowing inward, melting, bright, And Heavenly pleasures; all the rest are toys:
All which are founded in Desire, As light in flame and heat in fire.
"Ambassador of Bliss | Thomas Traherne