We live in a house of mirrors, the people and circumstances in our lives reflecting and refracting back pieces of ourselves. It is our reactions to these reflections that teach us the most about ourselves: what attracts us, repulses us, makes us angry or sad, open or shut down becomes our unique signature in the language of our experience.

These reflections also show us what we look like in different contexts. Sometimes we like how we show up and what we see, and sometimes we don’t. We resemble so many bits and pieces of broken glass turning in a kaleidoscope of daily interactions—always new, always changing, always becoming.

We are so much more than the sum total of all of the reflections in our lives. The concepts, ideas, projections, assumptions that are thrown at us from the outside world only make up a small, and frankly, quite a messy composite of our identity. It is really nothing more than a mask or persona that we associate ourselves with and wear in the same way we wear items of clothing.

However, when our buttons get pushed, it can feel like much more than that. And nothing pushes our buttons more than someone who reminds us of the parts of ourselves we’d rather forget. The last thing we want to do is spend time with someone who stirs up the ugly uncomfortable shit we thought we’d dealt with already or who shoves the hideous underbelly of our personality right in our face. Ouch! Our reaction is typically to find the quickest route out of there, anything to get away from having to see THAT and be around THAT right now. Sometimes that’s not possible and we need to simply find a way to be with the person who makes us SO uncomfortable.

Being around a person who mirrors some of our deepest, dirtiest, nastiest crap can be excruciating AND it can be the best teaching tool around. Instead of running, try turning right around and seeing what there is to see. If you don’t like what you see, perhaps it’s because it feels a little too close to home or a little too familiar. Therein lies the gift. This person is dishing it out so eloquently so that you can see what it feels like to be on the receiving end of such attitudes and behaviors, so that you can know it so well and so fully, that by the time you catch your breath, you vow to NEVER, EVER act like that toward anyone again.

That person that pissed you off just became your greatest teacher and offered you up a precious opportunity to evolve and grow that cannot be bought or found in a book, classroom, or personal growth DVD. No, this came through the school of life, right there in the comfort (or in this case discomfort) of your daily life.

Pretty amazing. Everything we need to grow is right there in front of us. Endless invitations to master the human condition given to us as one of the perks of being alive. Imagine that.

But wait, that’s too easy. Beyond these mirrored reflections, who are we really? The answer is really quite simple: we are what is seeing the reflections, we are what is hearing the voice in our heads, we are what is feeling the emotions, we are what is moving the body in its dance with the world.

But who, we ask, is that? Who, indeed, is life’s greatest mystery and life’s greatest gift. It is the motor that drives the whole machine, the constant hum of life force buzzing in the background of our lives. That my friend is who we are; we are part of this whole lovely crazy thing expressing itself like mad across the universe of existence. Everything we see is merely a reflection of that doing its thing in us, through us, around us.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 12th, 2008 at 11:24 am and is filed under 3-D, Awareness, Being, Perception, Psycho-Spiritual, Relationships. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.