Delusion is Serious Business

As I’m teaching and coaching the difference between reality and projection/delusion, one thing I have to reinforce again and again is that projection and delusion are required and necessary aspects of operating as a human.

Delusion is not optional. Projection is guaranteed. These things have REAL personal and relational weight and implications, and they happen via sacred processes for sacred reasons. They are experiences, and the foundation for further experiences. All of my experiences are sacred.

I cannot make a future plan without investing to some degree in a projection that the thing I am planning on will happen. This is DELUSION, and how could we possibly live without mutually investing in delusions until reality manifests itself?

Since delusions and projections are the media of plans, projections of others’ mistreatment and carelessness are PLANS to have that experience in relationship.

Then here I am, stuck absolutely with the practice of imagining things which are not yet real, which may become real via my process of imagining them. Here I am, with an imagination influenced by much I did not choose for myself. Here I am, in a reality which may at any moment be mostly imaginary—that is to say, fake in the realest way.

Projections are fake like fake flowers. Are fake flowers real?

They exist. They are physical objects I can see and feel. I could taste them, if I want to be really sure. But are they *actual flowers?* No, they did not grow from the ground. They are real objects and also “not real.” Seen from a distance, it can be hard to tell which is which. This is how my projections are real. They are a real representation of reality, while still not being reality.

I cannot turn off the practice of projection and continue to function in the modern world. I also cannot live a free and empowered life if I invest wholeheartedly in any projection or delusion.

Trickiest of all is the understanding that projection or delusion which is true or which comes true is still a projection. A projection is an experience which I invoke into my here-and-now reality via my imagination; if it is not actually conveyed to me via a physical sense of scent, touch, taste, smell, or sound, it is NOT my here and now reality, which does not make it any less REAL.

Projection and delusion give me a real experience of something unreal. Since I cannot turn this off, I turn on a process of habitually examining my projections and precisely investing in the important parts. I divest from the idea that I know the unknowable by forming multiple projection-narratives when I find myself attaching to one.

The most harmful delusion is the delusion that says I’m experiencing reality when I’m actually experiencing delusion. The second-most harmful delusion is the delusion that delusions are not real or not important.

A knife is a tool that can cut anything, and I am the one to wield both knives and delusions exquisitely, to my own benefit, without harming others.