I’ve come to realize something that hit like a ton of bricks disguised as chicken feathers.
I realized that I’ve been invisibly fighting my shadow. Fighting an image of a false self, projected into the world through the lens and carapace with “should’s” and “ought to’s.” Both my own and from what I “think” is being projected to me. At the same time, I have been consciously struggling with a version of the real self, telling this in-between me to wake up and get going.
Three iterations in the unity of one. A man, a projection and a ghost.
It has almost a holy symbolism to it, and perhaps it is a bit holy.
The fighting is constant. Silently occurring under the surface, hidden away from my risen self. I’m awake, see, and I can’t remember what my dreams are dreaming about.
When it dawned on me, I was taken aback.
The notion had come to me at a point earlier in the day: me, finally able to articulate the feeling I had as akin to being a soldier itching to jump out of an airplane to enter the theater of war, but not quite over the jump site.
I’m itchy, irritable, and need to molt out of this hard skin like a lobster who’s outgrown himself.
That was then that I caught a glimpse of him, that trickster false shadow. Holding me at bayonet point, that treacherous bastard was egging me hurry up and jump and join the war. Only, the moment I caught his eye, the real projection and I were in union with one another.
I’m not jumping yet. I want to, but I’m not. I’m not over the battlefield I need to be over. I have a little more room in my carapace to grow into.
What’s important is that I caught that saboteur. For a moment I could see the false-positive he projects and be conscious of it. I caught that false bastard seeing him for what he is.
What may be the most profound part of the exchange was the realization of just how important it was to link myth and reality. It put into context the WHY of feeling something and understanding the aspiration of what it suggests. Rather than desiring a thought to mean what you want it to mean.
The illusion of the false positive, when looked at as the feeling or emotion is that it takes on the appearance of the REAL, when in fact it’s illusion. That’s not to say we need to destroy our self-thoughts. To the contrary, we need those to exist. But what we need to avoid is the illusion of the projected self. That false self.
I do, anyways. I saw him and put him in his place for now.