You Aren’t What You Project

Our War of Dangerous Mythologies

Our dominance mythology just started another war.

This month, which we aren’t even halfway through, saw over 200 complaints from our service members to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, alleging that their commanders have framed the strikes in Iran as a biblically sanctioned holy war meant to trigger the return of Jesus.

As if Jesus were the one who needed this.

Since their god is supposed to be the three omnis (omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent), that triggers a few questions about their mythology:

• Why does Christ require a trigger?

• What kind of god wants a holy war?

Of course, they’d blame the victim - us. Jesus “can’t” return because of our unworthiness, creating their call to action: Jesus needs purity. But why does an all-powerful god need anything? Can’t he just melt our cruel, cruel hearts with love? That’s what I’d do, and for thinking like that, I guess I’ll be accused of being a demon.

The 7 Mountain Mandate, also called 7 Mountain Dominionism, believes that their mythology should take dominion, as in power over, the seven mountains

1. Government 2. Religion 3. Family 4. Education 5. Media 6. Arts and Entertainment 7. Business

   

In their myth, they are facilitating the end times through the epic battle of good vs evil, culminating in the Battle of Armageddon in the Middle East, which will usher in Christ’s 1000-year reign of peace. In this story, they are the “us,” and the rest of us are the “them,” the demonic forces that oppose them. Since everyone who opposes them is a demon, they have no problem killing us in our own cities. It’s part of God’s plan.

This version of end-times mythology began in 1975 with an “identical vision” shared by two leader-men, in which God gave each a list of spheres he needed them to dominate. Of course, it’s God (whom their own Bible famously says “is love”) who wants them to take dominion. That’s not a projection at all. It never is.

Now, I’ve been part of a church that visions, and I can tell you how easily the whole place can come into entrainment with any psychological projection that tells people that God wants what they secretly want. It sparkles with a numinosity you can definitely feel. This dangerous inflation is what fuels every street-corner preacher, where you drive by and think poor bastard, except the Christian Zionist mythological story comes with white power respectability and money.

So if the world is so terrible, why can’t God just HELP? Is he powerless? Why doesn’t Christ just appear, so full of love that we put our weapons down? Is it because he is sticking to some rule about free will that necessitates all this murder? But isn’t the omniscient god aware that there is an easier and much more loving and peaceful way?

Nope. This god is a war god.

When they claim they have a mandate from God to reclaim our government from demonic control, they remind me of our Puritan fathers adjudicating murder at our colonial witch trials, where up to 400 people were accused, often of demonic possession, resulting in 50 recorded executions, if we include colonies outside Salem - and we must. And that’s just what was recorded. They were also famously horrible at record-keeping and protecting the records they did keep from fire, flood, and rodents.

It’s interesting that our textbooks really only teach us about Salem, as if that were some one-off “outbreak of hysteria.” The youngest accused was a four-year-old girl, Dorothy Good, who was held in jail for almost 8 months. When I think of her now, she’s wearing a blue bunny hat, and she’s an ancestor of Renee Good.

Just over 78% of the accused were women, which tracks with the European witch trials, where an estimated 80% were women. That’s misogyny for you.

Saner people can agree that all those accused were not demonically possessed witches who threatened the lives of their good neighbors. Their real problem was the mythological story about who their god was and what he wanted in the context of the battle between God and Satan. You know, the war. Apparently, they never paused to ask the obvious question: Since we are the ones killing people, might we be the ones possessed?

These are just some of the wages of sin that come from dominion theology. For example, I’m not even talking about climate collapse or extraction capitalism yet, but I could easily tie them in.

When religious people commit such abuses of power as the Puritan fathers did, we shake our heads and call it “hysteria.” But we should call it psychological projection, because that’s what it is/

And 7MM are in control of our government all the way up to the Vice President, the Speaker of the House, and backed by Russell Vought and the Heritage Foundation with their little book. Their mythology needs a war in the Middle East to start a world war and bring back Jesus because demons got the upper hand when we empowered women and minorities.

Ever wonder how those holier-than-thou can tolerate Trump’s obvious corruption, and even the taint of systemic pedophilia for profit? For them, God is using a rough instrument to get the job done. Trump is their Cyrus, a non-believer who gave them the mountain of government. Therefore, every criticism of him is demonic pushback, which is proof that demons are using humans to slander the “saints,” which is exactly what our Puritan fathers called themselves, too. Saints. Justification trumps introspection because ending projection is terrifying.

In many cultures, there is a mythology regarding the end of the world, which scholars call escatology. But most non-Abrahamic mythologies are cyclical. After death comes rebirth. Christians, however, have always been a this-world-is-bad doomsday cult.

For the first 100 years of Christianity, people expected Jesus to return immediately and usher in 1000 years of peace. The Gospel of Matthew says, “This generation will certainly not pass away,” before Jesus returns. When the last apostle died without a trace of Jesus, it triggered a major crisis of identity, causing them to pivot to creating institutions of power designed to last centuries.

Then came the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD. So many people expected Jesus to descend immediately that disappointment triggered a crisis of daily life. People stopped working. Then Paul weighed in with his Thief in the Night Theory, predicting that believers would be “caught up in the clouds.” We’re still waiting for that rapture.

In The Great Disappointment of the 2nd century, Christians faced such fierce mockery over Christ’s failure to return that 2 Peter 3 was written to address it. Enter the theory that to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, an idea borrowed from other traditions. Then they decided the date was 1000 AD. Of course! People were so sure that they abandoned their work, their farms. and their daily responsibilities because there was no point. But the force of all that fervent belief didn’t make it happen.

I could go on through the millennia, but let’s jump to our modern mythology.

The next date we are all supposed to die is November 13, 2026, or 2028, because Israel has an anniversary, or April 13, 2029. Our Doomsday Clock is set at 85 seconds to midnight, and of course, we are all set to perish in 2033, the 2000-year anniversary of Jesus’ ministry, because that’s how he’s going to celebrate. Except Jesus won’t come these times either.

I just want to add here that the book of Revelation was one of the most disputed books in the history of the canon. By every measure they used to determine authenticity, that book was doubtful. It almost wasn’t included in the canon. When Trump invaded Iran, I fantasized about a world where that myth did not make the cut.

Just a word here, about anti-Christs. That title has been laid on: Nero, Attila, Gengis Kahn, Merlin, Frederick II, Napoleon, several popes, Kaiser Wilhelm, and Hitler, and still the world has not ended. Surely, though, all of those were anti-Christs, in the sense of being the opposite of the mythological Jesus’ model of love and self-sacrifice so others might live, which also predates Jesus, who was only one in a long line of mythological saviors.

Does it make sense to you that the savior of the world would want a world war because he can’t make people behave?

These stories, like all stories, keep people from the truth. As all those New Agey people say, thoughts become things. I would just add: Because of projection. And thoughts about gods become gods. So, the doomsday Christians are hell-bent on bringing about doomsday. Myths are self-fulfilling prophecies in that way.

The doom is the fact that each of us has to die. That’s why they invented heaven. They invented hell as a means to control us. Because this world is evil, sex is evil, and women are evil. Fallen into sin. Ruled by demonic forces. It’s a short step from there to thinking that the original sin is being born here at all.

But let’s question the base assumption: Is the world fallen into sin, or is that a projection of existential terror, because a world where everything dies must be evil?

True evil is the force created by the indulgence in stories of cruelty, domination, and subjugation, the willingness to profit from other people’s suffering. Evil is the annihilation terror, which is fascinated with death, and kills over and over because of that fascination. It likes cruelty.

These doomsday cults, like 7 Mountains Dominion, pray for the world to go through a cataclysm so they can take dominion. But the evil they speak of is in the mirror. That taste for the mass spilling of blood? That’s evil.

Where does the fire come from that spits sermons from their mouths? Madness. Their god is a fabrication. If there were a god that wants this wholesale slaughter, including millions of children in Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza, he’d be a demon.

The need for dominion comes from a narcissistic self-importance that superimposes their world order upon the natural order. The natural world ceases to matter, and a mental schema becomes the only thing they can see. That doesn’t mean the natural world has ceased to exist, only that climate collapse has become a hoax, much like the crises of daily life that drove the ancients to leave their farms. It just doesn’t matter because the world is going to end.

There are signs all around them that their worldview is incorrect, and moments of revelation in which the Epstein files reveal the depravity and corruption behind what they are doing. So, they tell themselves a story about the bigger picture, using mythology to justify the means because the end is 1000 years of peace. But war has never created peace. Just as dominion does not create control, and subjugation does not lead to love. Not even for gods.

Every story is a mirror held up to the nose, showing you what you think the world is. Your mythology. If the 7MM cult became willing, they would see themselves in all their murderous, terrified, and ruthless intent. They are terrified of annihilation, which is what they fear would happen if they lost power. Death. They are terrified by what they imagine, which has been an illusion all along, their version of The Great Replacement Theory.

But losing power won’t kill them. Instead, it would raise them from the dead. Ask anyone who has left a cult and healed that trauma. Space. Freedom. Joy. Becoming a living embodiment of true purpose. There are many of us now, and that could just tip the scales.

But does it ever occur to them to surrender their cherished outcome? Dominion. That’s what I had to do, over and over. And my point of view, my story, and all the ways I projected that upon the world.

See for yourself. If you turn and face the fear, at first, it grows louder. You’ll have to tolerate some difficult emotions. Most people are not willing to sit still for that. They project. So, instead of resolving, the fear gains gravitas, and avoidance becomes a life-or-death necessity. You have to become willing to die. Then you’ll see what dies and what doesn’t. It’s preparation for the ultimate death, and shows us why death is really a friend.

Other cultures have known this world as sacred and could teach us how to remain still while existential terror passes. It’s possible. Then the story resolves rather than projecting conflicts outward. From petty fights to world wars, it’s the same reflex. Here’s the good news. Life does not end when your story ends; it changes form.

How many of you have had to admit that the story you were running wasn’t true? It feels like death, but it’s actually rebirth. That’s the irony. The truth is 180 degrees from the lie. We can turn and face ourselves. I know because I have done it, and I know many others who have as well. What we can do as individuals, we can do as a culture.

Imagine no religion. It’s easy if you try. No hell below us. Above us, only sky. John Lennon

We should know by now. We’ve had enough experience with wars to end all wars. The force that has to be used to dominate actually shatters the soul, causing insanity, and that causes more war and terror, shattering more souls.

And so it goes, as Vonnegut so succinctly said.

The answer is simple. Worship life rather than the fear of death. Step out of the story of domination.

We can have an egalitarian culture that supports all people, but we have to give up domination theology. I argue that this would be a matri-focal culture that supports mothers. Because everyone is a mother’s child, that’s a culture that supports everyone, whether or not you are a woman, and whether or not you ever want to raise a family. Everyone. That means self-realized women make decisions, especially about the distribution of wealth, the structure of society, and whether we go to war, since to them, it’s children and grandchildren that are at stake, not some old man’s power and privilege.

We could provide for people’s physical needs, you know, the obvious ones that life requires. Become good stewards of our local environments without an eye toward the powerful’s right to make a profit that the middle class and the poor pay for. Companies could exist to add benefit to the lives of their employees and the people who need their services, rather than to serve the parasitic class of shareholders. People can be supported for simply being alive. We have a responsibility to them because they are here and precious as a newborn.

Listen, it’s simple. Spend the trillions in war taxes on helping people, and the need for war will disappear. Spend our life energy on the living rather than on killing. We only worship death because we fear it. Instead, we could face our fears. If we did, we’d find that death is a friend, informing us, teaching us how to live. If we learn one thing from the Jesus story, it’s that we can become willing to die so others can live. What dies is our egoic certainty that we even know what the world is and how best to live in it. Let that die, and then see what survives death.

What arises when we surrender our worldview?

Love. Reverence. The willingness to serve life. Remember how quickly the world began to heal and regenerate during the pandemic? Recovery means we have to stop drinking the neurotoxin, the lie, and see for ourselves how quickly the hangover heals.

It’s as Ram Das said: We are all just walking each other home.

We can create a post-mythology culture, one that transcends and includes the best parts of mythological metaphors, recognizing that no story is true. Then see what the answer is to the foundational question of self-inquiry: Who am I?

When I saw the answer to that question, all the structures inside my mind fell away. I experienced that as standing in a room where the four walls fell back, the floor vanished, and the ceiling blew away. Space. Sky. And of course, that’s another metaphor, but that’s no problem if you are the sky. And what was that sky? Everything and nothing, which I experience as joy. For others, it’s love or beauty or peace, any of the divine attributes. That’s what we are without a story. It’s the end of the projection mechanism, which takes a story from inside and superimposes it between us and reality. We are better off without that story.

I’d love to know what you think about the ramblings of this mythological mind, how this hit you, or what it brought up. Please leave a comment. You are all my teachers.

If you read to the end, please leave your heart, so my heart will find it. It lets me know you were walking beside me. If you were moved at all, restack, please. Subscribe if you’d like to join me on this mythic journey of love and healing, or please upgrade to a paid plan if you can. Thank you for being here. You mean the world to me.