Reflection 62

Welcome!


The Mirror (see Mirror Experiment)

Look in a mirror.

There you see your appearance. Or rather, there you see one of your appearances - what you look like at that particular distance, from that particular angle. Move the mirror away or closer and you get a different appearance. Use two mirrors and you can see yourself from the side or from behind…

Are any of those appearances also presented at your centre, your side of the mirror?

No one can determine this for you. You have to look for yourself. Don't guess. Have a look.

I look in my bathroom mirror and see my face there. I don’t see my face here, this side of the glass. Here I am free of that appearance. Here I am space for that face there, and space too for all my reactions to that appearance, for sensations, for all that I experience.

That appearance is me in the sense that it’s how I manifest at that range, and of course I identify with it. I couldn’t function in the world if I didn’t recognize myself as that. But I’m also aware that I’m not in that image, not inside that ‘box’, that appearance - that I don’t have a name or shape or colour or any identity here this side of the mirror.

Are you the same?

Not having that appearance this side of the mirror is so freeing!

I remember Douglas Harding talking about a friend’s daughter who was very young – about three, perhaps. Her mum asked her to go to the bathroom to wash her face. When her mum went in to check, she found her daughter washing the mirror – which was of course where she found her face! She wasn’t old enough yet to have learned to pretend to move it to this side of the glass and stick it on her clear no-face!

Warm regards from the One who is THIS SIDE of the glass but who appears to you as Richard!


Please send your comments to Richard