Mirrors

The mirror in the tale of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cannot lie. The Evil Queen obsessively used the mirror to validate her beauty. If she had loved herself enough to realize that she did not need anyone from the outside to dictate her worth, she would not have tried to kill Snow White. There are many lessons that can be taken from this story but the one that stood out to me is: comparisons can lead to jealousy and jealousy is a lack of self-confidence. "People always ask me. 'You have so much confidence. Where did that come from?' It came from me. One day I decided that I was beautiful, and so I carried out my life as if I was a beautiful girl... it doesn't have anything to do with how the world perceives you. What matters is what you see." - Gabourey Sidibe The Evil Queen may have been confident enough to take over a kingdom but she was insecure about her position as 'the fairest of them all'. This ultimately led to her destruction. It made me wonder what we could learn from mirrors that might help us avoid a similar fate.

Most of the flat mirrors we have looked into during our life do reflect reality but our brain does something a little weird with how it sees the reflection. The brain will distort our image by flipping our reflection so what we see a is a left-right inversion of ourselves. We are so accustomed to seeing ourselves in mirror form that when we see a photograph of ourselves, we swear that we look a little different. If you would like to test this phenomenon, write a word on a sheet of paper and hold it up to the mirror. The word will be reversed. The mirror is doing it's job of reflecting, but your brain thinks it is looking out a window at a real object, it can't make sense of this so it does it's best to interpret the image through inversion. Oddly enough, it does not invert top to bottom, only left to right. Our brain interprets reflections differently, it is responsible for how we are perceiving a reflected image.

How do you feel when you look in the mirror? I am in a line-dancing class with some older women. The other day, a young, fit girl came to class. She was a great dancer, energetic and expressive. She brought a passion that inspired the rest of us to try harder. I noticed something about her besides that. She watched herself with appreciation constantly in the mirror, something that I am loathe to do, (I am generally looking at my feet), and the rest of the women don't seem to do a lot of mirror staring either. She seemed so free and self-accepting that it made me wonder, how do you become that way? Was I unable to do the same because I believed that it is vain to openly admire yourself? Maybe I wanted to be as free as she is but, don't feel comfortable doing it because of fear of judgement? I can use my interaction with her as a mirror to reflect back to me some truths about myself. "The conscious person uses the world as a mirror to better understand and to master themselves. The unconscious person attacks the mirror because they do not realize it's a mirror." - unknown

There is a theory called the mirror principle that says that when what we see in others is a reflection of something within ourselves. In other words, we don't actually know anything about other people (even people we think we know), we are just reflecting our own perceptions, beliefs, onto them. "Your perception of me is a reflection of you; my reaction to you is an awareness of me." - unknown We then react to our perception and it is in the reaction where we can learn what is in us. "Unless you learn to face your own shadows, you will continue to see them in others, because the world outside is only a reflection of the world inside you." - Carl Jung? It is important to understand this concept of other people projecting their internal issues onto everyone they meet in the outside world. This applies to both good and bad attributes. I notice this in families where there is someone that is successful or good looking and you will hear other family members (often from both sides) saying things like "Sam looks like my side of the family" or "Sue got her brains from me". "You become a more positive, peaceful and a harmonic person when you don't react to people that use you as a mirror for their own self-hate." - Gaspard Ulliel Or as a mirror for their own self-love. The realization that the judgements of others are their inner perceptions about themselves might help us to understand and forgive them for treating us badly. "If you are willing to look at another person's behavior toward you as a reflection of the state of their relationship with themselves rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all." - Yogi Bhajan

We can use the knowledge that this mirror principle is part of us to understand ourselves better. Everything that we do gives away something internal; the way we dress, the way we keep our homes, the judgements that we pass on others, and the things that we notice and remember about the content we consume. A hundred people can read the same book or watch the same movie and the parts that mean the most to them will all be different, all based on their individual perceptions. "Books are mirrors; you only see in them what you have inside you." - Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind Our brain contains mirror neurons. These neurons fire when you perform an action and when you observe someone else performing that same action. This does not mean that you can't identify with things that you have never experienced. Your brain will playout or imagine the action and the same brain networks will light up as if you were physically doing the action. The mirror neurons however, do not guide your focus. They do not tell you what parts of a book or story to identify with. Luckily for you, you can choose your focus, so choose wisely, find the good.

A reflection has no substance or weight to it. It is not a living being, it is not actually you. It says nothing about your personality, talents, intelligence, whether you are a good or bad person. Please don't feel worthless when you see someone reflecting the judgement that they carry about themselves back onto you. Be careful that you do not get overly caught up in other people reflecting back that they approve of your appearance or behavior either. They are projecting themselves onto you and there is not a way for you to stop them. "Remove the 'I want you to like me' sticker from your forehead and place it on the mirror, where it belongs." - Susan Jeffers Use the mirror principle to learn more about your inner self and use your mirror neurons to feel the incredible things this life can offer. These inner reflections will serve you better than what you think you see in the mirror ever will. If you liked the quotes I used today, you can print them off in this free quote sheet found here.

Love and Hope,

Big Sky Baby