Looking in the Mirror

What a surprise it is when you first recognise that the world is simply a mirror of your own mind. With that one insight you realize that the trials of life that seemed so cruel are simply self-induced lessons. 

It helps you understand that your experience is generated by the projection of your own past suffering and desires onto the world. To a large extent you tend to see what you believe about the world and yourself.  Our life experience is a mirror and projection of our own denied thoughts, feelings, beliefs, fears and desires.

I had an amusing and compelling example of my tendency to project many years ago. I was sitting in my car at the beach, feeling a lot of anger towards someone in my life. As I sat there fuming away, I heard an insistent tapping sound and looked over at the external rear vision mirror. There I was amazed to see a little Willie Wagtail bird attacking its own reflection in the mirror.

Time and again this aggressive little fellow attacked the image of what he thought was an upstart intruder into his territory. I laughed out loud realizing that Nature was blessing me with this living demonstration of my own self-destructive habit in such a powerful, yet lighthearted way. There are mirrors everywhere!

When you withdraw your projections from others you start to understand that you are both the sinner and the saint. Then you are seeing the true picture. There is only One Life and it is playing all the roles through its many forms. In that moment the Willie Wagtail and I were One! 

As Shakespeare said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts"..  At one time I am the aggressor and the next I am the victim; at times I am the student and next the teacher. And whereas all these roles are transient if taken at face value they perpetuate my sense of duality. The Self is only One. 

The mind creates endless sensations, emotions, thoughts, beliefs, desires and many other modifications. They are all objects in consciousness and yet we identify with them and believe we are the pain or pleasure, the anger or sadness, the political belief or the idealistic attitude.

Even the ego, our sense of being a separate self is an object. It is simply the "I" thought and the root of all other thoughts. Pull out the root and then ask "who is having this thought, feeling, belief or concern?  You realize there is actually no individual there, only Pure Consciousness.

It is when we can observe this "I" thought and really see it, that it simply falls away and the silent Presence emerges in its place. In that present moment there is only Peace.

Before you can realize this, there is a need to look at your own subconscious self to find the denied parts that you are projecting onto others. Until you withdraw these projections, the Self will remain veiled by the defences that protect you from the things you don't accept about yourself.  

The more you defend against your denied parts, the more anxious or depressed you feel and the more you project those denied aspects onto others. Have you noticed how awakened people don’t feel the need to defend themselves?

In intimate relationships it is easy to project the denied aspects of yourself onto your partner. Blaming and judging are due to your own ego looking into the mirror of your partner and not liking what it sees. So there is a very real need for compassion, acceptance and forgiveness towards yourself and others in relationshsips. In fact, the healing only starts with self-love.  

We tend to be attracted to the very people who have the qualities that we have denied in ourselves. For instance, the introvert marries the extrovert and then spends their time wondering why they got together with someone who talks so much. And the extrovert wonders how they could have married someone who never talks!

Neither realizes that their own habit of being an extrovert or introvert, over lifetimes, requires a rebalancing. Their polarization at one end of the spectrum is mirrored by linking up with someone who displays the behaviours they need to develop in order to be whole. 

Your soul, the reincarnating principle, constantly seeks to express greater wholeness in each new life and the existence of inner and outer conflict is the sign of that need. The secret to resolving the inner conflict is to move towards the centre and allow, as in our example, the qualities of both introversion and extroversion to express themselves through us. 

On a political level projection is seen in conflicts in the Middle East, Africa and Europe where whole cultures refuse to look in the mirror. Often these tribes who fight each other over decades, centuries and even millenia are brothers in a very real sense. Yet, they continue to feud over generations, because they look in the mirror held up by their brother and don’t like what they see.

When will someone emerge who can help our societies withdraw these projections? How do we offer psychotherapy to whole cultures? Living in the remembered past and imagined future maintains this feuding. If they were to stop and see just how similar they are, then they would be able to embrace.

Of course, the problem is made worse by the fear and immense pain of past traumas and betrayals and the projection of that pain into the imagined future. Only the surrender of their group ego defences which would reveal the Presence as Love, Peace and Compassion will resolve these feuds. 

So from the point of view of the mind we see how different we are and there is only diversity, while from the perspective of the Self we are all literally One. To actually know and experience Oneness the mind must become silent and the ego must be seen and understood as the source of the problem. The ego must feel safe enough to surrender its control over the mind. 

The surrender of the ego to the Self is as beautiful and delightful as a dewdrop slipping into a shining sea. It is only from the ego's point of view that surrender is distressing, because it has been borne out of separation. It is the sum of all of our fears. It is all about fear. Where there is fear there can be no understanding. 

The first step to healing for each one of us is to see that fear is a mind-created problem and not inherently real. The Self has no fear for It doesn't know separation.