-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel
The term scapegoat had its literal origin in instructions outlined in the Old Testament for a practice on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:8-10). An actual goat was chosen for practitioners to, literally, project their sins upon that would then carry those sins away from the community as it was sent off into the wilderness.
The relief afforded by this ancient ritual, of assigning the weight of one’s committed sins to another to carry, was defined in modern times by Sigmund Freud, as the ego’s defense of projection.
The action of this defense is the ego protecting itself from the negative judgment of its conscience (superego), for wrongful thoughts and actions, that would otherwise result in the consequences of shame and punishment. Thus, in scapegoating or projection, an innocent person is blamed for the very actions and thoughts one seeks to disown.
Both Freud and Jung emphasized that projection was not a conscious choice, it happened unconsciously and automatically. Jung went on to broaden the function of projection beyond a psychological defense only. He identified that the unconscious mind reveals its fuller self to the conscious mind by projecting its contents, or complexes, like through a movie projector, upon the outer screen of our daily lives, replete with all its characters and dramas.
Through its projections upon other people in daily life, that snare us in emotional reactions and entanglements, the unconscious mind communicates with us by drawing our attention to people who mirror our own hidden selves.
Our conscious ego is then offered the opportunity to individuate, that is, to welcome home its unknown and disowned parts. This requires extreme moral courage while we face and reconcile with our shadow, or unknown self.
A more advanced technology than scapegoating, to redeem our sinful selves, has been attributed to Moses in Leviticus (9:18), via the commandment, to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This exact guidance was reaffirmed and highlighted centuries later by Jesus Christ, to “Love your neighbor as yourself”, as a core ethic of his teachings. (Matthew 22:36-40).
The wisdom of this biblical injunction, to love your neighbor as yourself, is in its practicality and scope of healing potential. This is a technology of true love.
In order to love our neighbor we must retrieve and love our disowned, or unknown selves, completely, particularly the parts of our projected shadow that we loathe and have scapegoated in our projections onto our neighbors. No scriptural exceptions are made to this commandment. All neighbors, and consequently all parts of the self, must be loved.
The refusal to love and assume responsibility for the true self, with all its flaws and prejudices, results in the living of a false self, which creates illusion and dysfunction, both within and without. As psychosomatic medicine reveals, very often our physical ailments reflect the soul mirroring to ego consciousness the error of its judgments.
A physical ailment may reflect the unconscious mind using the physical body as its projective screen. For instance, digestive problems might be the unconscious mind symbolically communicating to the ego the ego’s refusal to accept a truth, as mirrored in the physical body being unable to properly digest food. In this case, acquiescing to the truth at the mental level might resolve the physical symptoms. Love of truth promotes physical vitality.
The shamans of ancient Mexico discovered that the wear and tear of living our illusions causes our vital energy to be dispersed to the periphery of our physical beings, compromising the efficiency of our vital energy centers, or what the Hindus call chakras.
Some of these illusions are traumas, stored in the body, whose life experiences have yet to be individuated into our wholeness. To access the abundance of our fullest potential, we must fully accept and love every aspect of our selves, including our entire lived life experiences.
If we scapegoat any life experience, or anyone in that life experience, we are a fragmented, divided wholeness. We must love it all, unconditionally, no exceptions.
Gay Hendricks, in his classic book, Learning To Love Yourself, taught the practice of declaring love for every challenging or disagreeable part of the self, as it emerges. For example: “I love the part of me that feels hate. I love the part of me that objects to me admitting it feels hate. I love the part of me that hates that I hate. I love the part that judges me harshly…” With love comes acceptance. With acceptance comes abundance.
Out of sheer love, Carlos Castaneda gifted the world the fruits of his shamanic lineage before he closed the door and ended that lineage. One of those gifts was the magical pass of recapitulation, where one fully restores one’s energetic wholeness through reliving, and ultimately fully loving, every aspect of oneself and one’s life. This is being in the abundance of total love.
Love is the energetic vibration that opens us to the experience of our oneness with everything, the ultimate abundance. From this place of wholeness we are best positioned to suggest to our subconscious mind to manifest outwardly our heart’s desire. As within, so without.
All is one,
Chuck
