REFLECTIONThis week I had a dream in which I encountered several mirrors. This led me to contemplate the meaning of Reflection…and what that word may encompass? When we reflect, we pause to understand the reasons, cause, effect or results of something…we examine or “turn things over” in our mind at length, until we understand it. But we are also a source of reflection. Every day, knowingly or unknowingly, we reflect the status of our inner life and attitude to others and ourselves. A mirror is both static and changing because it is a tool of reflection. What we see in it is often the result of our inner voice and opinions as much as it is of what is actually there in front of us. We sometimes decry our abilities, our looks, our value and our accomplishments (at times even our very significance) when we gaze into a mirror, flinching at its imperfect image. Yet it is likely not the image but our opinion of ourselves that causes us to see beyond it to more negative thoughts. We participate in the acknowledgement of our accomplishments and beauty to the degree that we are able to stay open to a non-judgmental self view, refraining from unnecessary negativity. Often our thoughts reflect back inner fears that have nothing to do with reality. If so, it becomes time to step away from the critical, debasing self-reflection, and find instead a more tolerant gaze through to ourselves.
The Latin word for “mirror” is “speculum,” which originally meant scanning the sky. When we speculate, we scan the future for hints of what will come. We speculate about our prospects of getting a new job, on the results of a relationship, or on the outcome of a presidency. That state of reflection upon certain sets of circumstances is fed by our own fears and motivations. Even if we want the job, or the relationship, we can find ways to undermine or spoil its prospects if we keep focusing on the negative, instead of actively participating in building something stable through small efforts.
We have to want to succeed, want to receive, want to find happiness… but when we anticipate too much—either good or bad, are we perhaps failing to allow things to simply unfold? Just as our thoughts can and do reflect back at us our interior nature … likewise our reactions to events and people give us clues to the state of our being. Are we angry, disappointed, or resentful when things don’t go our way? Or can we not be as attached to our need for a particular outcome?
The word “consideration” is derived from sidus, a Latin word for star or constellation. So to use con-sider-ation is to view the stars as a whole unit. When we pause to consider the sum total of our life as a whole unit, we can look back at our accomplishments and apparent failures, seeing the path of learning that we have been traveling on thus far. Such contemplation, the looking back as if through a mirror, at all the things we did or didn’t do, at all the times we passed or failed our own life “tests,” (and what we may have learned in the process) enables us to step back in time as if through Alice’s looking glass, to pass through to the other side momentarily where we can see and learn from the past, and adjust our sails for the present and future journey, based on the power of those revelations.
Mirrors intrinsically reflect things at their most essential nature. They have appeared in myths and fairytales, as a way of revealing something hidden or disguised. Narcissus peering into a mirror-like surface perhaps symbolically represented the potential seeking or discovery of the universal or subconscious self.
Jungians such as ML von Franz see the mirror as a threshold between the conscious and the unconscious. The depths of water are not visible and so are symbolic of the depths of our unconscious. It seems our dreams shimmer on the surface of those depths, reflecting through the earth’s pools and bodies of water
human consciousness itself.
The magic nature of the mirror reflects all things in and of the universe, as in the story of Indra’s net—the Indian myth of innumerable mirrors at all the junctures of a fishing net—holding together, reflecting back and bonding each and every thing. This quality of reflection works not only individually but culturally as well. We can reflect on historical errors and past missteps, such as genocide or all unjust wars. Such great evil reflects back our darker side. (I have been watching many movies on the subject of the Holocaust and see new tendencies toward its roots of hatred, rising up through our current needy and difficult times.) We all carry with us the potential for both good and evil action, the light and the dark of the mirror. Ask yourself: what is holier, the holiness of the saint or the holiness of the common within us all? Essentially it all comes down to what we invite in, and what we reflect back.
What is the nature of our self—what do our hearts and conscience see when it is reflected in the mirror of our lives and time on earth? Our reflection, that image we see as if gazing in a mirror…showing our actions, our life history, our thoughts, reflects back both the good and bad sides of ourselves. The value of reflection, as we pause to really look at our actions and inhabit them is in finding ways to seize on, or even just simply to become aware of and notice, the more positive things we do, thus strengthening our more positive potential. We may thus fend off letting our dark or shadow side take over our reflection and with it our self. If we seek to open rather than close down, if we have embraced kindness rather than meanness, if we have sought participation in expansive, caring practices or only sought self fulfillment at all costs…these inner reflections have worth insofar as we are changed by them even in small ways, for in reflection small positive things can expand the heart, and with it the universe.
JuliaFerrari
After having a dream of mirrors
originally published in Vermont Views Magazine