What is the deeper reason behind the ‘grapes are sour’ attitude?
What is the payoff of seeing something as desirable or undesirable?
What is possible to get and what is impossible to get?
Generally, we’d like to see what is ‘possible to get’ as desirable,
And what is ‘impossible to get’ as undesirable.
That way, the psyche remains stable, and its efforts bring continual fruits,
Without wasting effort on what is impossible.
I am going to look at the ‘grapes are sour’ attitude in the context of relationships.
Generally to bond with someone, you idealize them,
Which is the basis of the whole romantic fantasy.
That they are good for you, best for you, the perfect match, that they will raise you higher and so on.
Idealization is the process of desiring itself.
That is what motivates you to seek anyone i.e. to seek to include them as a part of yourself.
The whole life of the ego is the Kohut’s tension arc,
Driving between where you are now and the image of your ideal.
On the other hand,
Devaluation is the process of avoiding/fearing (vs. idealizing/desiring).
As an ego, one would idealize that which is in one’s interest, and devalue that which is not in one’s interest.
What serves one —-vs—- What does not serve one.
What is life positive —-vs—- What is life negative.
However this does not explain the ‘death drive’.
What causes a person to consume poisons? severely deprive themselves? self torture? and actively seek death and self-destruction?
The child idealizes the caregiver to bond with them.
Esp. the infant idealizes the mother,
Because the mother is the source of life and protection for its initial years.
So this is where the primary attachment is created.
A certain primary relational structure gets formed in those years.
If the mother herself is lost, and the birth was from unconscious compulsion,
And if the mother is severely misattuned to the child’s needs,
Then the child’s needs go severely unmet.
If its needs are met highly randomly and inconsistently,
Then it will develop disorganized attachment
(that includes anxious-preoccupied and fearful- avoidant attachment patterns).
If its needs are met consistently,
Then it will develop secure attachment.
If its needs are not met at all, even once,
Then it will become a dismissive-avoidant.
Basically for a dismissive-avoidant,
Opening up to an other fully is anathema to them.
It is as good as committing suicide,
It will de-structure the entire psyche they have built.
They live only relying on themselves for almost everything.
Now this naturally idealizes self-reliance,
While decrying dependence of any sort.
The world-view formed by a person with this attachment style,
Precisely mirrors his interaction with his caregivers.
The image could be something like:
“Everyone is selfish and serving their own interests.
So I too will do the same.
Nobody cares about me unless it benefits them.
I must avoid dependence at all costs.”
Something like that,
And there are many layers to this.
There is grief/sadness and great anger towards others.
Even ignoring something is a form of hostility.
The dismissive-avoidant may ignore others with such intensity.
In the deeper psyche, it is a form of punishing them for what they did.
Giving them a taste of their own medicine, what they did to him.
RULE: “We do onto others, what others did onto us.”
So their treatment of others is a reflection and it mirrors how they were treated in their formative years.
What matters here is “FORMATIVE” years.
Because that is the time the ‘Self structure’ is formed.
Thereafter the entire experience of the world is in relation to that structure.
So for the dismissive avoidant, there is no alternation between grapes are good and grapes are sour.
They don’t even talk about it, in fact they don’t talk about anything related to their needs for relationship. It stays preserved in their own unconscious darkness .
It is just stuck on “Grapes are sour”, the idealization part has been repressed and buried into their unconscious.
Because if that is brought out, it will dismantle their entire independence idealizing structures.
The irony is, it is traumatic for them to see the world as good.
It is much easier to see the world as terrible and keep finding more proof for that.
Because that would justify their position right, of being to themselves and independent like an island.
They believe they have separated themselves from the morass of an ugly uncaring hostile humanity.
Generally the ‘grapes are sour’ experience applies to people who go through its opposite too of ‘grapes are wonderful’.
It is the alternation between the 2 that gives the strong experience in either direction.
Since in their formative years, their needs were intermittently met, followed by long periods of the opposite, it is a torturous confusion.
It is like living in a place where a gale, hurricane, flood, earthquake and other natural calamities keep striking your house again and again, causing you to somehow survive that and build your house once again from scratch maybe in a different area, only for that to happen again, and only for you to once again build a new house, and so on.
It becomes like an eternal improvisation exercise,
Where all relations are nulled, and where you try all over again and again.
This is basically a situation of high insecurity.
Where all “basis, rooting, hinging, foundation” is lost on a dime again and again.
This can be quite maddening for them.
Why? Because the projections wildly alternate,
Swinging from one extreme to another extreme,
Canceling everything out as they move from extreme to extreme.
For instance, suppose someone does not like me,
Then I will tend to try to see them as undesirable/terrible,
Because only then can them not liking me, become a kind of ‘good riddance’, i.e. a good thing.
Else, if I see them as good/desirable,
Then that means I am not getting access to something good,
And that will entangle my energies where I keep making efforts to try to get them to like me.
So it is better to tune perception to see them as undesirable or poisonous,
Then them not liking me back will be good and alright,
Because that would only prove I am good and they are bad.
Else it would turn into, I am bad and they are good,
And that I have to be the sorry one to change and please them enough for them to accept me.
This is precisely the harrowing attachment struggle.
Preparing the body to bond OR to be alone.
Essentially, for the secure attachment people, the aloneness gets repressed in the unconscious.
For the dismissive-avoidant, the bonding part of them gets repressed in the unconscious.
They both appear to be stable, because of achieving successful repression from moving from chakra 2 to chakra 3.
Whereas, when repression cannot happen easily, because of conflicting caregiver’s attitude and behavior, then it results in the anxious-preoccupied or fearful avoidant,
Depending upon which side the scale veers to.
# If it comes closer to the secure side, then it has greater hope “If I can just try harder this time, I will make it to secure attachment”.
# If it comes closer to the avoidant side, then the hope is towards the opposite “If I can just become independent, then I can get rid of this painful need for others”.
So the scale is:
Dismissive avoidant —- Fearful avoidant –|– Anxious-Preoccupied —– Secure attachment.
This inner drama play between ‘he loves me’ and ‘he loves me not’, happens only with the middle 2. Because it is the middle 2 that are the realm of insecurity.
The dismissive avoidant is sure ‘he loves me not’.
The secure attachment person is sure ‘he loves me’.
So they both are somewhat settled in their lifestyles.
The reflections from others
Every other is a kind of mirror,
Where their behavior towards us,
Reflects how they see us.
How real the reflection is,
And how much we are reflected,
And how selective or whole it is,
Is based on how much the other desires to truly see at all.
Not many desire to truly see things.
Some folk are almost entirely manipulative,
In which case, they see very little of you,
And exaggerate whichever aspect they deem,
Will help them achieve their vested interests,
Which maybe unconnected to you.
This kind of seeing is subservient to their vested interest.
So when that interest is over, the seeing of you will also end,
And they will direct that seeing to their next interest.
Any manipulator always works off a seed of truth.
But the rest of the fruit is usually fabricated fluff.
When this is done consciously, it is called manipulation.
When this is done unconsciously, it is called madness.
But even in the former case,
Conscious manipulation does serve a deeper unconscious madness.
We like to gravitate towards reflections,
That portray us as being lovable and wonderful.
We like to seek people who reflect aspects of ourselves,
That we ourselves love/like/value/cherish,
Which is based on the structures of our beliefs and identifications.
We cannot see who we are,
We can only see our reflection as a perceivable graspable object.
So this attachment to reflections,
Is a subset of attachment to objects(abstract) themselves.
Every person reflects us in their own way,
Setting up a unique dance/music of interaction in time,
Between us and them.
All of these comprise the riches of life.
Where their behavior towards us,
Reflects how they see us.
How real the reflection is,
And how much we are reflected,
And how selective or whole it is,
Is based on how much the other desires to truly see at all.
Not many desire to truly see things.
Some folk are almost entirely manipulative,
In which case, they see very little of you,
And exaggerate whichever aspect they deem,
Will help them achieve their vested interests,
Which maybe unconnected to you.
This kind of seeing is subservient to their vested interest.
So when that interest is over, the seeing of you will also end,
And they will direct that seeing to their next interest.
Any manipulator always works off a seed of truth.
But the rest of the fruit is usually fabricated fluff.
When this is done consciously, it is called manipulation.
When this is done unconsciously, it is called madness.
But even in the former case,
Conscious manipulation does serve a deeper unconscious madness.
We like to gravitate towards reflections,
That portray us as being lovable and wonderful.
We like to seek people who reflect aspects of ourselves,
That we ourselves love/like/value/cherish,
Which is based on the structures of our beliefs and identifications.
We cannot see who we are,
We can only see our reflection as a perceivable graspable object.
So this attachment to reflections,
Is a subset of attachment to objects(abstract) themselves.
Every person reflects us in their own way,
Setting up a unique dance/music of interaction in time,
Between us and them.
All of these comprise the riches of life.
The devouring mother and the death drive
The mother wanting the son for herself,
As an extension of itself instead of a separate being.
This is the classic devouring mother.
She punishes/guilts the independence/autonomy of the son.
Leading to the son internalizing that “Autonomy is bad and ought to be punished”.
So then that sets up the death drive,
Where there is masochism/self-punishing,
To end the self and get back to the state of fusion.
The son may adopt the adage: “If you cant beat em you join em”.
Since his mother is actively or passively against him becoming a separate individual,
He starts actively trying to merge back into fusion with the mother to the prior egoless state,
Rather than having a separate self,
Which is constantly attacked and opposed by the mother.
In reality the son’s self-attack against having an autonomous individual self,
Is preemptively done, because the mother would oppose it anyway.
So here, the son starts to do that attack to himself in a controlled way,
Which is an internalization of the mother’s attitude towards his self/independence.
The over-attached/possessive/protective mother is clinging on to her son,
Expecting him to be a nobody and act as its slave.
This may be totally unsaid and well hidden,
But the mother’s behavior will show it.
So the son is guilted and threatened about this time and again,
That he ought to be the slave of his mother, but is acting independent.
His independence is actively attacked and discouraged and even threatened by the mother.
She threatens him that “he is not strong enough and will die if she withdraws her support, and that he better be her slave instead”.
That is why later the son is attracted to dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists etc.
All of whom who use him,
Which is basically the repressed anger of his mother against him,
Which he has internalized,
And projected onto the dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists.
The dominator/abuser/manipulator/narcissist is openly punishing,
Which represents the same unconscious relationship the mother has towards the son’s becoming a separate self.
The son via. the projection of the vengeant-sadist aspects to the dominators,
Gets to keep his mother image pure as being the caring positive mother.
The mother also may keep gaslighting the son and reinforcing that whatever he sees in her is all good only.
This anger of his mother is essentially against him becoming an independent self,
I.e. him betraying her, and leaving the state of fusion, and the state of being an unconditional helpless slave,
Is then internalized, repressed (made unconscious), and then projected as a punishing world that wants to destroy him.
Because it is much more scary for the son to see his only care-taking figure as the devil.
So he would rather make the whole world the devil and keep the mother pure.
This sets up the death drive, where the son is constantly trying to escape himself or destroy himself,
Constantly trying to escape the terror of being himself.
Because he is expecting the brutal attack of his mother for being autonomous.
So the only action of his self is to destruct itself, masochism essentially.
Be it through attracting abusive partners or by self-inflicted harm/abuse,
OR by consuming intoxicants constantly to drown out the awareness of the self as much as possible.
His mother only wanted a slave, an extension of herself, and did not want “him”, and would have killed him as a baby if he were to express himself in his true individuality.
So this is the primary trauma, of the fear of the wrath and punishment of the mother who would have killed him because she never wanted “him” per se.
So then the son/child escapes this by developing an ego that is on the mother’s side.
His own ego is against his self, just like his mother was against his self.
So the ego formed for the son is inherently self-destructive and antagonistic to itself,
And only attracts destructive forces to itself.
That was the very way it was formed,
Because of identification with a mother who never wanted him in reality.
Neglect compounds this, because neglect simply implies the mother is not interested in the independent self of the son at all.
Neglect then is an expression of unconscious hostility on the part of the mother.
It also clearly conveys the intention of the mother to not have her son individuate at all and remain in fusion with her.
The message of the devouring mother is “I will take care of you, but never leave me, if you leave me, you have betrayed me, and will face my wrath”.
So then the mother has instilled the need, fear, and guilt of:
“The outside world will kill you, you will not survive without me, you need me.”
“Also never become anything other than what I want you to be, else I will be very angry at you, and punish/abandon you for that.”
So then the son may internalize this mother’s message and project this out to his world view itself.
He will see the world itself as being a bad hostile evil place that is best abandoned.
He thinks: “It is better to not invest in the bad world at all (this also means the very act of having a self is seen as bad, because it is investing in the world that creates a self in the first place).”
So the son actively keeps attacking his own self, independence, autonomy, and sabotaging himself,
Where all his decisions serve the death drive (his own wish to end the self and return to fusion) and he therefor attracts only destructive forces to himself,
Including addictions to abusive people/narcissists/sadists/self-harming/painful information/bad news OR to intoxicants that will eventually kill him.
The intoxicants may also help him escape by numbing the awareness of sense of autonomous self itself – by fusing him into the intoxication-state as long as it lasts, which makes him repeat that again and again.
This may also lead him into the spiritual paths of self-abandonment and surrender.
Where he justifies all his self-destructive actions as the ending of his own ego and reaching god.
The son cannot pursue his own self interests, because that would mean betraying the mother and incurring her wrath and punishment.
The son also cannot become a pure slave to the mother, because that slavery feels unbearable.
So this constant suffering with no remedy makes him look for every single escape/relief/or source of pleasure he possibly can, to make living bearable – this may include an attraction and/or addiction to porn, intoxicants, and various forms of dissociation etc.
This is the inner turmoil, double bind, the archetypal struggle,
Of becoming an individual and separating from the mother.
If the father figure is absent or self-absorbed in dealing with his own suffering,
And if the mother figure is also wounded and dependent herself,
Then the only identification left is with the mother, because the father has not invested in you.
The only option then is to identify with the mother who does not want you,
And this is the classic death drive setup.
Because you would then treat yourself the same way your mother treated you,
Which is to invalidate/neglect/abuse/gaslight/deceive/sidetrack etc.
So then you are trapped in a place where you don’t belong,
For too long a time with no escape.
And there is no help from the father, he is unavailable for you,
And neither is the mother helping you in any way because she herself is dependent and in her own grief.
And add to that the mother also has the unconscious agenda to have you not separate from her,
Which is why she may never nurture your independence and keep treating you like a helpless baby,
Because in truth she wants you to remain helpless so that she has something to do (so that she can fulfill her own narcissistic needs for purpose, esteem, usefulness through serving you).
The mother will then go around telling others “Oh my son needs me, he cannot manage without me”.
That is a truth that she herself has engineered,
Where she wants to maintain you as such.
As an extension of itself instead of a separate being.
This is the classic devouring mother.
She punishes/guilts the independence/autonomy of the son.
Leading to the son internalizing that “Autonomy is bad and ought to be punished”.
So then that sets up the death drive,
Where there is masochism/self-punishing,
To end the self and get back to the state of fusion.
The son may adopt the adage: “If you cant beat em you join em”.
Since his mother is actively or passively against him becoming a separate individual,
He starts actively trying to merge back into fusion with the mother to the prior egoless state,
Rather than having a separate self,
Which is constantly attacked and opposed by the mother.
In reality the son’s self-attack against having an autonomous individual self,
Is preemptively done, because the mother would oppose it anyway.
So here, the son starts to do that attack to himself in a controlled way,
Which is an internalization of the mother’s attitude towards his self/independence.
The over-attached/possessive/protective mother is clinging on to her son,
Expecting him to be a nobody and act as its slave.
This may be totally unsaid and well hidden,
But the mother’s behavior will show it.
So the son is guilted and threatened about this time and again,
That he ought to be the slave of his mother, but is acting independent.
His independence is actively attacked and discouraged and even threatened by the mother.
She threatens him that “he is not strong enough and will die if she withdraws her support, and that he better be her slave instead”.
That is why later the son is attracted to dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists etc.
All of whom who use him,
Which is basically the repressed anger of his mother against him,
Which he has internalized,
And projected onto the dominators/abusers/manipulators/narcissists.
The dominator/abuser/manipulator/narcissist is openly punishing,
Which represents the same unconscious relationship the mother has towards the son’s becoming a separate self.
The son via. the projection of the vengeant-sadist aspects to the dominators,
Gets to keep his mother image pure as being the caring positive mother.
The mother also may keep gaslighting the son and reinforcing that whatever he sees in her is all good only.
This anger of his mother is essentially against him becoming an independent self,
I.e. him betraying her, and leaving the state of fusion, and the state of being an unconditional helpless slave,
Is then internalized, repressed (made unconscious), and then projected as a punishing world that wants to destroy him.
Because it is much more scary for the son to see his only care-taking figure as the devil.
So he would rather make the whole world the devil and keep the mother pure.
This sets up the death drive, where the son is constantly trying to escape himself or destroy himself,
Constantly trying to escape the terror of being himself.
Because he is expecting the brutal attack of his mother for being autonomous.
So the only action of his self is to destruct itself, masochism essentially.
Be it through attracting abusive partners or by self-inflicted harm/abuse,
OR by consuming intoxicants constantly to drown out the awareness of the self as much as possible.
His mother only wanted a slave, an extension of herself, and did not want “him”, and would have killed him as a baby if he were to express himself in his true individuality.
So this is the primary trauma, of the fear of the wrath and punishment of the mother who would have killed him because she never wanted “him” per se.
So then the son/child escapes this by developing an ego that is on the mother’s side.
His own ego is against his self, just like his mother was against his self.
So the ego formed for the son is inherently self-destructive and antagonistic to itself,
And only attracts destructive forces to itself.
That was the very way it was formed,
Because of identification with a mother who never wanted him in reality.
Neglect compounds this, because neglect simply implies the mother is not interested in the independent self of the son at all.
Neglect then is an expression of unconscious hostility on the part of the mother.
It also clearly conveys the intention of the mother to not have her son individuate at all and remain in fusion with her.
The message of the devouring mother is “I will take care of you, but never leave me, if you leave me, you have betrayed me, and will face my wrath”.
So then the mother has instilled the need, fear, and guilt of:
“The outside world will kill you, you will not survive without me, you need me.”
“Also never become anything other than what I want you to be, else I will be very angry at you, and punish/abandon you for that.”
So then the son may internalize this mother’s message and project this out to his world view itself.
He will see the world itself as being a bad hostile evil place that is best abandoned.
He thinks: “It is better to not invest in the bad world at all (this also means the very act of having a self is seen as bad, because it is investing in the world that creates a self in the first place).”
So the son actively keeps attacking his own self, independence, autonomy, and sabotaging himself,
Where all his decisions serve the death drive (his own wish to end the self and return to fusion) and he therefor attracts only destructive forces to himself,
Including addictions to abusive people/narcissists/sadists/self-harming/painful information/bad news OR to intoxicants that will eventually kill him.
The intoxicants may also help him escape by numbing the awareness of sense of autonomous self itself – by fusing him into the intoxication-state as long as it lasts, which makes him repeat that again and again.
This may also lead him into the spiritual paths of self-abandonment and surrender.
Where he justifies all his self-destructive actions as the ending of his own ego and reaching god.
The son cannot pursue his own self interests, because that would mean betraying the mother and incurring her wrath and punishment.
The son also cannot become a pure slave to the mother, because that slavery feels unbearable.
So this constant suffering with no remedy makes him look for every single escape/relief/or source of pleasure he possibly can, to make living bearable – this may include an attraction and/or addiction to porn, intoxicants, and various forms of dissociation etc.
This is the inner turmoil, double bind, the archetypal struggle,
Of becoming an individual and separating from the mother.
If the father figure is absent or self-absorbed in dealing with his own suffering,
And if the mother figure is also wounded and dependent herself,
Then the only identification left is with the mother, because the father has not invested in you.
The only option then is to identify with the mother who does not want you,
And this is the classic death drive setup.
Because you would then treat yourself the same way your mother treated you,
Which is to invalidate/neglect/abuse/gaslight/deceive/sidetrack etc.
So then you are trapped in a place where you don’t belong,
For too long a time with no escape.
And there is no help from the father, he is unavailable for you,
And neither is the mother helping you in any way because she herself is dependent and in her own grief.
And add to that the mother also has the unconscious agenda to have you not separate from her,
Which is why she may never nurture your independence and keep treating you like a helpless baby,
Because in truth she wants you to remain helpless so that she has something to do (so that she can fulfill her own narcissistic needs for purpose, esteem, usefulness through serving you).
The mother will then go around telling others “Oh my son needs me, he cannot manage without me”.
That is a truth that she herself has engineered,
Where she wants to maintain you as such.
All experience is maya/projection
The external reality is a kind of mysterious screen,
On which any movie can be projected.
The source of everything we experience is projected from within.
Things like your possessions, your relationships: like your wife/husband, friends, your children, things you love, stuff you are attached to, your home, are all projections.
So it is possible that a person living in a jungle in Africa may be feeling/thinking/experiencing in a similar way as a person living in the heart of Tokyo city.
Even though every single thing in their environment is different, a similar reality may be experienced.
A romantic essentially feels the same, no matter how he paints the enactment of that feeling.
The sexual lust feels the same, no matter whom it is projected on.
Any place could become your home, if you shift your projection to the new place.
The capacity to shift projections is one of the greatest powers.
All object essences are projected.
Believing that objects have inherent essences contained in them separate from you, is the biggest illusion.
If you are unable to shift your projections, then you stay attached to the original time they were flashed into you.
Attachment itself happens when there isn’t enough power to shift the projection.
It then stays with the person we first projected that feeling on.
That is what is generally called programming/conditioning.
Imagine if an old movie is remade with today’s technology and actors, everything is different, but the movie essence is the same.
Only the props have changed, the same drama and relationship is playing out.
So the implications of this are that:
# 2 people could be living just next to each other, but living in totally different experience worlds.
# Also, 2 people from completely different physical environments could be living a similar experience.
In your internal space, the projection potential is either present or absent.
And when you have it, you can project it on anything or anyone you want.
Its like when you have the love potential in your heart, and it is unblocked, it can be projected on anybody or anything.
You can keep the enactment of the projection at the fantasy level alone, or bring it down to the physical world, if such a choice/power is available to you.
Drugs like marijuana can temporarily vastly enhance your energy/power to access projection potentials and project.
Like I could ask you to look at a tree in front of you, and tell you to love the tree with all of your heart OR hate the tree with all of your heart, and you can experience both directly for yourself.
You can clearly witness how you modulate your experience with your intention.
You can even do this exercise when sober.
The drug only vastly enhances the power of that projection ability because it amps the available energy.
This is the basis of how on LSD, many people report to see the whole world reflected in an ordinary object like an ashtray.
It is like how a newborn experiences the world.
Every object in his/her environment takes on numinous projections.
Really, the experiences we have later in life are pale shadows of the peak experiences that were had at that time.
Those experiences set the tone for our relationship to the world itself.
From this level, there is no such dichotomy between the imagined and what is called real.
Every single thing you experience is real.
There is no such thing really called the physical world.
Everything that you experience is projected.
What a fantastic ride/illusion it is!, to believe the physical world exists independent from you.
It is a mind-boggling magical spell.
On which any movie can be projected.
The source of everything we experience is projected from within.
Things like your possessions, your relationships: like your wife/husband, friends, your children, things you love, stuff you are attached to, your home, are all projections.
So it is possible that a person living in a jungle in Africa may be feeling/thinking/experiencing in a similar way as a person living in the heart of Tokyo city.
Even though every single thing in their environment is different, a similar reality may be experienced.
A romantic essentially feels the same, no matter how he paints the enactment of that feeling.
The sexual lust feels the same, no matter whom it is projected on.
Any place could become your home, if you shift your projection to the new place.
The capacity to shift projections is one of the greatest powers.
All object essences are projected.
Believing that objects have inherent essences contained in them separate from you, is the biggest illusion.
If you are unable to shift your projections, then you stay attached to the original time they were flashed into you.
Attachment itself happens when there isn’t enough power to shift the projection.
It then stays with the person we first projected that feeling on.
That is what is generally called programming/conditioning.
Imagine if an old movie is remade with today’s technology and actors, everything is different, but the movie essence is the same.
Only the props have changed, the same drama and relationship is playing out.
So the implications of this are that:
# 2 people could be living just next to each other, but living in totally different experience worlds.
# Also, 2 people from completely different physical environments could be living a similar experience.
In your internal space, the projection potential is either present or absent.
And when you have it, you can project it on anything or anyone you want.
Its like when you have the love potential in your heart, and it is unblocked, it can be projected on anybody or anything.
You can keep the enactment of the projection at the fantasy level alone, or bring it down to the physical world, if such a choice/power is available to you.
Drugs like marijuana can temporarily vastly enhance your energy/power to access projection potentials and project.
Like I could ask you to look at a tree in front of you, and tell you to love the tree with all of your heart OR hate the tree with all of your heart, and you can experience both directly for yourself.
You can clearly witness how you modulate your experience with your intention.
You can even do this exercise when sober.
The drug only vastly enhances the power of that projection ability because it amps the available energy.
This is the basis of how on LSD, many people report to see the whole world reflected in an ordinary object like an ashtray.
It is like how a newborn experiences the world.
Every object in his/her environment takes on numinous projections.
Really, the experiences we have later in life are pale shadows of the peak experiences that were had at that time.
Those experiences set the tone for our relationship to the world itself.
From this level, there is no such dichotomy between the imagined and what is called real.
Every single thing you experience is real.
There is no such thing really called the physical world.
Everything that you experience is projected.
What a fantastic ride/illusion it is!, to believe the physical world exists independent from you.
It is a mind-boggling magical spell.
Journey to the Abstract 