The Divine Projector

Do You have a pet? Observe it, Your real pet or the one You would prefer, in Your imagination. Don't do it only once, but for a while. Try to see It for what It is.

Since I was a kid, I was trying to unravel what is the gaze of non-human animals hiding when it's staring into our own. I have different theories about different species and individuals within species, and at least some of them, I believe, look at us in some kind of awe. We provide shelter, food, and constraint with conditioning techniques, leashes, bowls, cages, legal papers – not unlike how we sometimes act towards each other. If we humans are not aware of how most stimuli are affecting us, and we mostly shrug it off as faith, circumstance or whatever force beyond and larger than us – how are we not literally a form of a divine power for pets? The saying that 'You should first get a pet to see if You are fit to have offspring' is not without merit...

As toddlers, we look up to the World around us in wonder, fear, or mystery. Although we might have developed our view of reality throughout the eons of our existence, not much of our approach to it has changed. What we have now is a mere culmination of social evolution. We just might live in the most aware times in our known history. This can strike as a great paradox if we take into account how critical the state of our global society is. That's where the revelation lies: we have never been so conscious about the implications of our own actions. Yet, we still are not as enlightened as we, hopefully, aspire to be. Realizing the fact that we made and are still making some missteps doesn't make us more self-conscious in general. We still need symbols and magical thinking to concentrate all of our distorted judgments towards. We need beliefs based on deus ex machinas or scapegoats. Concepts like deities, aliens, prophets, corporations, celebrity trivia, shady rulers of the world (NWO), and whatever that can take the awareness of the responsibility which lies on our own shoulders upon itself. I'm not advocating the rejection of the mentioned concepts as untrue; the point is that we invent them, we add them as a scope to our observation, regardless of their objectivity.

As if that is not enough, we take pride in celebrating some holidays with undisclosed histories. Hats off to those who practice in dignity. Most of our collectively engaged vacations have ripened into euphoric restlessness, which seeks catharsis from all the accumulating pressure generated in the hazy domains of our apprehension, where we hide what we all recognize to certainly be uncomfortable, but true. Holidays are not much more than symbolic cries for relief embedded into calendars, filled with the craving after a temporary succumbing into venerable ideologies old as humanity (love, togetherness, warmth, renewal, birth, giving, forgiveness, etc...).

No forgiveness.

But what are these tireless projections of ours? How many times have we actually projected (a) benevolent builder(s) instead of secretly conspiring, all-seeing punisher(s) out to either subdue or destroy us? (Another gesture of taking an imaginary hat off to Those who did.) Whenever we have a mystical experience, when we feel that we have been blessed by something out of our control, no matter how we afterwards label and transcribe it to reason, we can all account to a similar experience, and that is a certain sense of joy, a quale of being, a complex of sentiments that we truly are (whatever that means). How thirstily we exchange our own revelations for readymade, mutually designed beliefs? How eager we are to receive explanations, instead of exploring and sharing a less lazy truth? I don't think that this experience of authenticity is exclusive only to us. It is not divine, we just stray away from "being us" so frequently, that we can barely count the times we felt goosebumps shiver through our body with that powerful feeling that everything is actually great. You know what I mean.

The interpretations which are afterwards painted on the abstract and slick canvas of our experience are mere investigations of the only thing we can truly fathom – ourselves. We consistently made up stories throughout history to explain our own views of the World. I see nature as something that just is, without actually being separable into any kinds of categories. For categories, there is a necessity for comparison, and nature doesn't compare to itself, only some of its parts do, like ourselves. If we, for the sake of explaining, use the Jungian concept of archetypes, it might become clearer how our own immature, yet in a way impressively powerful nature is re-shaped into an abstracted, external and hidden force that directly affects our lives. For better or worse, if there is any power behind our actions, it is, in its entirety, inaccessible to our perception, leaving our destiny to our own reasoning.

Let's get back to observing the pet. You are, essentially, Their god. How do You act toward Them? Do You consider Them as friends? Family members? Amusement? Equals?

Do You tie Them up? Control Their diet? Make fun of Them? Play every time They want to play? Or let Them go by Their will, and allow Them to grow demanding, drag You around and mark everything around with Their fur (or ooze)?

Do You often consider what They might think or feel? By this, I don't mean "what You would feel or think in Their place". They are not human, therefore Their experience should almost certainly and significantly differ from Your own. What do those eyes hide behind the insurmountable divide of individuality?

So, are You a good god?

How can You, then, ever expect to be dealt with in return? Because nature doesn't consider all we do. It's abundant, mercurial and overwhelming. Our projections about the state of the World are a pledge for understanding, and without a disciplined pantheon of the human genome, there awaits no salvation.

We think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such a pinnacle of clarity, imagining that we have left all these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left behind are only verbal spectres, not the psychic facts that were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as much possessed by autonomous psychic contents as if they were Olympians.
~ Carl Gustav Jung