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The Conflict Content : on the Possessing Object of Projection (1990)
Contemplate the possessing object of projection [ie. a projected conflict] and rather than be its ever ready victim try to stand back and think above it. Firstly the question or issue is always utterly arbitrary, with no
necessitating reason; the thing is of no consequence, of no matter, of no relevance to reality.
Secondly the question cannot be decided one way or the other, both sides remain more or less
equal possibilities and of equal power as it were.
There is this ambivalence which cannot be resolved, a convoluted obscurity that can never be
clarified and from which you cannot escape, a doubt that cannot be dismissed, which enigmatically
enforces its irrelevant and erroneous representation on the plane of projection. Anything can be
twisted to accommodate the projection, by subtle lies and prejudices it insinuates itself into any
situation. And no matter how much energy is spent it can never be substantiated. It is a sterile,
barren soil of wasted effort. It is an ever bleeding wound, a letting of life-blood; we are robbed of
energy by the dreadful black hole energy drain, the witch of worthless worry and woe.
What lies behind the projection seems to be a dark, ie. unconscious confrontation of opposed
forces that remains unresolved and unrealized on the sterile plane of projection, unparted
opponents locked in conflict, an unrelieved and unlived tension within the troubled psyche, one
opposite forever trying to gain ascendence over the other. But if its energy could be effectively
harnessed in some gainful employment, who knows where it might end.
Although one can attempt to ignore and repress this conflict it cannot be got rid of, for it simply
continues to work in the background even more darkly and dangerously than before. It must be
made the centre of enduring concern, and as much light brought to bear upon it as is possible.
Make it your corner stone, for it has the power to destroy everything that has reckoned without it.
If you once take your eyes off it, the conflict is again lost to the darkness of projection.
But having made this obscure thing your centre of concern, what then can be done with it, for it is
as difficult as the devil to deal with. The thing must be put in a hermetically sealed vessel and
heated, exclaim the old alchemists, but ever and again it will give you the slip. But already
progress has been made, for now the thing has been personified and even given a name, that of
Mercurious, an ambivalent god with a paradoxical nature - "good with the good, evil with the
evil." Mercurious must be attached to some vehicle or vessel by which to express and expand his
paradoxical nature through fantasy play, articulate himself to consciousness, for he stands as much
for the process of individuation as for its goal of wholeness.
Thus capture and contain Mercurious as the conflict content in the reflective vessel of consciousness (without taking sides), to free the soul from the prison of stony darkness with prayer and pleading, in hope of that one day when Mercurious, lured by the light of learning and transformation, uplifts his wings from the saturine waters of chaos and confusion and mounts upward unto heaven. For the transformation of Mercurious means nothing less than the redemption of the macrocosm, the revolution of the world wrought by the coming to consciousness of essential regenerative contents of the psyche, bringing wholeness to the personality, which is thereby blessed by peace and prosperity.