This getting really interesting and thank you Leswan for doing such a clear job about answering. And I say thank you because I feel we all need encouragement – me too!
I see that we are often feeling we are projecting because we are in the dream state – in which our body is paralysed and it feels as if our body no longer exists and we are projecting, but in fact we haven’t moved anywhere.
Then if we are projecting we usually are in the dream and symbols world. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/levels-of-awareness-in-waking-and-dreaming/We need to go to another level to see ‘through’ the symbols to what underlies them. Usually we then exist in what is called in the film Matrix a construct. The danger of this lack of understanding applies to lucidity also. You are dealing with powerful mental, emotional and spiritual processes. It is important to understand what the dream process is capable of and what it does. Remember, a dream is a full surround virtual reality activating all your senses and abilities. See
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-encyclopedia/the-magical-dream-machine/When you are in it, it is just as real to you as the physical world. But there is a huge difference. The environment, people, animals and objects are all projections. In the film Matrix, the hero is at one point put into a lucid virtual reality called ‘the construct’. He cannot understand what is happening to him, and his guide says, “What you see now is what we call residual self image. It is a mental projection….” Your dream is exactly that, an amazing moving and living projection in which you act and interact with YOURSELF. There is, in the widest or cosmic sense, nothing else. The dream process transforms your emotions, your beliefs and hopes, your fears and traumas, your intuitions and creative visions, into people, environments, animals and events. Understanding that is vital. Very often you see yourself as a physical body that is like the one you know so well in waking, but usually with some interesting alterations.
But there is another level we need to get to if we realise that we are only a construct of our own imagination. It is bodiless awareness without any gender. In fact all the imagery of travelling is sort of like the construct, necessary to make it seem real. In fact we are then in a timeless spaceless zone that we are in fact always in. There is no place that we are not inhabiting. We are everywhere, but of course our interest focuses us on particular places and people. As the new physics says, at this level there is no locality. See:
http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/quantum-physics/Tony