OverThrowing Illusions

"Each man is in his spectre's power

Until the arrival of that hour

When his humanity awake

And cast his own specre into the lake."

__William Blake, "Each Man Is in His Spectre'sPower"

Long before Freud and Jung, William Blake coined the word

spector to signify the illusory self that, by its appetites and desires, overrules and dictates to the true self. The illusory self becomes our personal image, the projected likeness we want others to see.

The spector is fed by our patterns of appeasement, by our fear of authority, by our need to be perfect. Lest it take hold of our lives, we have to return to our essential humanity, to the core of our being, to the soul within us, and clarify by the soul's mirror what constitutes self and illusory self. In everything we do, we need to determine whether we are acting out of the core of our integrity or at the dictates of the specter.

Where mind and heart, reason and compassion are separated, there Blake's specter roams hungry and unchecked through our life. Casting off our illusory self is an act of maturity that strengthens the light of the soul. Acting out of our own heart, rather than out of projected self, we come once more to the true likeness with which we have been endowed.

"Where is the specter raging through your life? What false projections of your soul are showing on your screen this week? Meditate upon what life would be like without the support of those projections. Search for your true, authentic self."

[From "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews, July 20th's essay]