I have been into photography since high school. It’s always been a passion of mine and I’d like to get back into it. It is both art and science, mechanical and fluid. There are so many things to be into, like writing, art and dance… and life. But anyway, I need to choose the right camera. Do I get the cool vintage film camera? Or shell out for the fancy new digital that is finally verging on similar performance specifications as its film counterpart?

There are some healthy life lessons embedded in the practice of photography. The lens we see the world through deeply affects how we perceive others and ourselves. How we relate to others largely depends upon how we see them.

That’s right, how we see them. It is in this initial act of perception that we actually create our reality. There is a deep quantum physics to this that is both revealing and poignant. All of our actions and responses to anything flow from this initial act of seeing.

Friend? Enemy? Beautiful? Stupid? Subtly inferior? Subtly superior? We talk about projections, “she has trust issues because of her mommy wounding and it plays out in her friendship in X ways.” But really, when we analyze this situation in crystal clarity, the realm question becomes: what isn’t a projection?

Is it even possible to observe a material universe without projection on some level? Leading physics would say “no.” It’s all a projection of energy onto the screen of consciousness.

Much like how a camera, who’s job is to “see”, to intake, to internalize the light around it, is secretly a tiny projector in which the “screen” (the film) itself is the observer, our own consciousness is silently projecting form onto the screen of our awareness.

So if everything we see around us is a mere projection, and we are constantly getting called out for “projecting” negative things onto each other, is it possible to harness this basic and seemingly inescapable fact of being in the world: projection?

The answer is, in short: yes! Primarily by watching how we see the world, and taking control. If we begin to observe how we see others on a deep level, we can begin to sort through those projections, those lenses and filters, and pick out the negative ones, leaving us with a lens which beautifies the world, or at least does it justice, rather than making it more ugly and uncomfortable.

The next question some of you might have is: is it possible to have a “true” projection? Is it possible to have only “true” projections about the world? Or even to escape projection altogether? And I think the answer is in this case also: yes.

To ‘escape’ projections altogether would be to escape the material universe, which is probably not what most people actually want to do (despite what they may say). But to move into having true projections, or, I should say, a true projection, is possible.

And there really is only one: everything is god (or everything is *of* God, for the sticklers). Most people believe in two Gods, a good one and a bad one. They duel for superiority like battle tops in a celestial arena, or something. See even in this analogy, where is the celestial arena? It’s here! And what are the tops? You and me!

But my question is, in this analogy, who made the tops? What are they made out of? And what about the arena? That’s who.. or what, I want to know about. To me, that is God, the supreme reality that can be known, or perhaps whatever is beyond that. Whatever the substratum, the prima material of literally *everything* is, is God, to me.

Why would God only play a single character within His creation? What was He before he made the cosmos (“Heaven” included)? What was (is) His (It’s) nature prior to the creation of form? Now we start to sound kind of Bhuddist, eh?

The Bible says that in Him, *all things* live, move and have their being. This sounds more like the cosmic background than an old white man on a throne already. And yet, because this God contains all traits, qualities, attributes, forms, etc. it is also immediately personal and personable in its nature.

So what am I getting at? What I’m saying is that if there is only one thing in the cosmos, everything is made out of it.

And that is the only true projection. “Of God.” Every cloud, bird, tree, arm hair, weapon of war, evil alien, lichen, and moss is all made out of the same one thing: God (for lack of a better word to describe the truly ineffable).

And God may very well be incarnated as some wise old cosmic ruler somewhere in the multiverse, but She is, and is seeking to know Herself, as All Things, and that includes: you. And as She knows Herself as you, and as you wake up to Her, She wakes up to you. Draw near to Her, and She will draw near to you. Become Her as She becomes you. She awakens first in the heart, the risen Christ alive as you, and eventually you wake up to your own true nature.

The entire cosmos is the body of Christ, not just your local congregation. Imagine That.