I heard it a long time ago, but I have only now begun to really think it is true. It was a rather simple concept, perhaps too glib to invite much of my inspection or acceptance. I once heard that when you love someone, you are really loving an image of yourself that you can see in them. I never realized how profound a statement that could be. I’ve been peeling back the layers.
I’ve had many experiences in recent years that have been gently nudging me into this notion of a mirror. However, it was a recent jolt into awareness that opened my mind on mirroring. I met someone at a time I was experiencing a much deeper kind of open-heartedness. This was someone whose life is far away, separated from me by an international boundary. But the kinship I felt was so intense that the notion of separateness was insignificant.
As I slowly let go of what I realized was a nearly impossible situation, I was amazed by what I discovered in myself. First, it was an intense lesson in what grasping feels like. Second, it opened my eyes about mirroring as I asked myself repeatedly, “Why her?”
I think my answer is a bit ego-centric because I realized that I had felt an instant kinship because I saw and presumed a deep kinship. We seemed cut from similar cloth. I saw a kind of reflection of the kind of person I imagine myself to be, or want to be. I felt a deep open-hearted engagement with what I thought I saw.
I saw mirrored in her the humanity that we have in common, and it seemed to be quite extensive in how similar and familiar it felt. I was the Golden-haired Boy who was both curious about and fell in love with his reflection in Iron John’s pond. For a brief time I recognized the common grounding we share in the absolute. It was so easy to grasp because I thought I saw a reflection of the universal world I am familiar with.
That encounter taught me much about mirroring and gave me much to think about. I think I sometimes experience the same kind of mirroring in people not obviously like me, and those are the ones who reflect the hidden part of me, the part of me yet to emerge. I can also fall in love then, but perhaps not so easily. It is a little more of a challenge.
More significantly, I recognize that this same thing happens with rocks, plants and people I may only casually meet. My heart is open and ready, and they move right in because I recognize the common aspects we share. I see that a rock and I are somewhat the same. I am part of plants and they are part of me. The affinity is natural. I have a shared experience of humanity with everyone I meet. All are a reflection of what I experience in myself. What I experience in them opens my awareness of what I am able to see in myself.
I also know that I need not grasp what I see. It already exists in me.
Perhaps the image of a mirror is not apt because, after all, a mirror only reflects what is real. The image is not typically seen as real, only the reflected object.
But what if it were the other way around and the only reality is the image. Perhaps seeing the image is the only real experience. The only reality is actually the interaction between the observer and the observed. All else is populated by imagination.
The stars appear to shine in the night sky. Perhaps they are a chance to see what we already experience here in our historical world of earth.
I actually like thinking about mirroring this way because it deals with my uneasy feeling about being ego-centric. It actually doesn’t feel very ego-centric when I recognize in other people, plants and rocks what I know from my deep experiences of myself. For me it all blends together and the reality emerges somewhere in the middle.
Neither am I troubled by the experience of loving what I see reflected in rocks, plants and people. All of us, after all, are all part of the same singular entity.