Intuition + Projection, Part I
I’m often asked about how one differentiates between intuition and projection. For me, the answer invariably points towards learning to decipher the quality of energy and sensation which - you’ve guessed it - can be accessed through the body.
We’ll explore that in part II. Here, let’s look at what intuition and projection are.
Intuition
As the word suggests, ‘intuition’ is an inner knowing. It has very little to do with the thinking mind, and everything to do with our unconscious or subconscious processes, which tend to communicate through the body.
From a somatic, or physical, perspective, the subconscious - literally below consciousness, below our everyday thinking awareness - is everything that’s below the head, in the body.
Unsurprisingly then, intuition is often interchangeably used with the phrase “trusting your gut” or “gut instinct/reaction” - because it emanates from the diverse dialects of the body’s felt-sense.
And this diversity is an interesting phenomenon of intuition: what one person intuits as true or valid for them is often completely different to another’s.
In this way, intuition is the language of the soul, and is also intimately linked to the imagination and creativity.
No two souls are the same. Or to get more granular about it - no two souls express themselves in the same way, or have the same filters with which they perceive and make meaning from the world. This goes beyond cultural, familial and societal contexts - and points to something more, well, mysterious.
You can see this in twins, for instance. My mother’s twin sister, my aunt, who passed away last year, was a completely different entity from my mother. This wasn’t from any deliberate attempts to differentiate themselves from each other. To anyone who knew them both, it was clear as day that these were two deeply distinct souls essentially expressing themselves in very different ways.
My mum on the right, and her twin, with my grandmother
And as a result, the language of their intuition was also different - despite them having grown up in the same environment, ostensibly having the same experiences.
Somatically, they were making meaning in different ways, leading to often deeply divergent expressions of their inner knowing.
Because: our souls have not come here to be cookie cutter replicants of each other.
This is why the soul chooses to speak through the non-verbal, non-linear language of intuition, and of the imagination.
Intuition sometimes shows up as a flash of inspiration or illumination, and sometimes slowly, in its own time, because - and this is important - intuition exists outside of the past, present, future of linear time. Instead, it weaves through the Indigenous-shamanic view of time as a spiral, where all things, including the past + future exist in the timeless now.
There’s no right or wrong way to decipher your intuition, and “use” it. It’s a quality to come into relationship with, and as with any relationship, force and coercion don’t go down very well.
As an emanation of the soul, intuition is a feminine principle which exists in all of us, regardless of gender.
In alchemy and Jungian thought (Jung was an enthusiastic student of worldwide traditions of inner alchemy), the soul or the unconscious was this feminine principle, extant in all of us. Jung called it the anima.
The anima and her intuition are not concerned with empirically proved “facts” or even of being right or wrong. As a consummate artist, for the anima, Truth - like Beauty - is subjective; the anima is concerned with what is true for her. When we dishonour our soul’s intuitive, subjective communication it usually leads to all sorts of difficult life situations and health issues - the latter especially something I can testify to.
It distills down to this: with the benefit of hindsight, how many times have we asked ourselves, “I should have listened to my gut?”
Projection
Projection emanates from the ego-based thinking mind.
It exists on the linear time spectrum, and mostly oscillates between the past and future - the present would blow its cover, and it would dissolve.
Projection usually goes like this -
We perceive or experience something, whether internally from a thought or an emotion, or from an external source. This experience could be “positive” or “negative”.
A physical sensation arises. Depending on the condition of our nervous system and the extent to which we judge our experience, we are either willing or unwilling to be with that sensation, to allow it as a current of Life moving through us.
If we’re unwilling/unable, a thought usually arises that is coloured by our core operating belief system(s).
For example, perhaps the external situation is something “positive”, like a compliment or a pay rise or being seen and valued in some way. If we don’t feel safe with that charge of expansion (and most people with histories of severe trauma don’t), a thought will arise along the lines of unworthiness of some shade that calls into question that “good” thing.
We then tend to project that experience away from our direct, present moment felt experience.
“If only they knew how [insert preferred self-loathing descriptor] I really am”
“I’m just going to end up fucking this up and making a fool of myself.”
“They’re just saying that because they’re kind and can see how wretched I really am.”
“They’re lying. They want something from me.”
Etc., etc.
And if it’s something “negative”, instead of being with the present-moment arising uncomfortable charge - which is not easy, I know - we project it out onto the external source- “they made me feel this way,” etc.
The interesting thing to invite to the table here is the consideration that if this sensation of discomfort didn’t already exist within us, whatever its previous origin story, the external situation wouldn’t elicit this response.
For instance, if I identify with the belief - and its accompanying physical charges - that I’m unworthy, then a lot of things out there are seemingly going to “make me feel this way”.
But if this familiar identification with worthlessness falls away, then nothing out there can make me feel like I’m worthless. Someone could come at me with that intention - and I can feel the sensation of what they’re projecting onto me - without identifying with it.
This is one of the fundamental characteristics of projection - and why it can never exist in the present moment: projection is usually part of a lineage.
Projection is learned behaviour. Unlike intuition which is the soul’s innate or indigenous language, projection is the product of our socio-cultural and familial contexts.
As most of us, and the generations before us, have been raised within the cultural, societal and economic milieu and mono-meanings of the patriarchal colonizer we have been injected with the reactivity of judging our experience and projecting.
In this way, we give away the power to come into relationship with our present-moment experience - primarily through healing our nervous systems and trusting our intuitions - and continue on down the path of fear, blame, shame, self-loathing, numbing, addictions, etc., etc.
We can unlearn this through the alchemy of inner-decolonization. Instead of reactivity, we can begin to learn how to respond when necessary.
Otherwise, the war within rages without.
If we can begin invoking grace to all that we are, all that our lives are in this moment, we claim back our power. And then this is what we can start emanating out into the world.