Ignorance and projection is just like seeing an apple - whenever we see an apple we think the "seed" is "located inside the apple". Actually that is just a form of self-view (self-view is of two "levels": the view of subjective self, and the view of self in dharmas/reifing objective phenomena). In reality we are manifesting/actualizing different moments of apple by peeling away the skin, eating its flesh and finding the seed. Each stage is a clear-cut dharma position or manifestation as Dogen puts it. The seed is also a coreless, empty, dependently originated appearance rather than a truly existing thing hiding there. So it is not the case that there is an 'apple' and a 'seed hiding inside apple' - the seed is simply a particular instance of apple totally exerted from all causes and conditions, clear cut from other instances. "An apple and a seed inside apple" is simply a projection blinding us from suchness, and the nature of false projections is such that they persist stubbornly like a spell or a dream until they are exposed in a moment of clear insight. The bondage that is illusory nevertheless has an amazing power in shaping our perception and experience - it defines how we live, how we feel, how we experience, how we suffer.
Likewise due to ignorance, due to self-view, we are referencing or extrapolating moments of experience with an underlying substance, agent, perceiver, etc - like seeing the appearance of apple and linking it with the idea "the seed is inside the apple". It is precisely this idea at the back of our minds - of some substantial core, inherent existence, ground, etc that prevents us from experiencing the wholeness and completeness of an instantaneous, transient, flickering and self-luminous moment, the groundless ground of being/becoming. It sets up a something or someone to be grasped or sought, resulting in seeking, grasping, effort, deluded attempts to re-confirm a remainder, etc. It has its fundamental cause in that "idea back in the head", the view of a real existence, i.e. ignorance. That view of inherency is the cause of fabricating duality (dualistic view is a subset of inherent view), the abstracting of luminosity from an arising, and all the confusions from without beginning in samsara.
p.s. even after insight, it is not necessarily the case that the bondage is immediately gone completely, though certain damage is done.
asunthatneversets (Kyle Dixon) just posted this today:
"…The
process of eradicating avidyÄ� is conceived… not as a mere stopping of
thought, but as the active realization of the opposite of what ignorance
misconceives. Avidy� is not a mere absence of knowledge, but a specific
misconception, and it must be removed by realization of its opposite.
In this vein, Tsongkhapa says that one cannot get rid of the
misconception of 'inherent existence' merely by stopping conceptuality
any more than one can get rid of the idea that there is a demon in a
darkened cave merely by trying not to think about it. Just as one must
hold a lamp and see that there is no demon there, so the illumination of
wisdom is needed to clear away the darkness of ignorance."
Napper, Elizabeth, 2003, p. 103