What do you mirror?
Created on 07/23/2008Hello Everyone,
I know there has been quite a number of visitors to CliffHouse and I am glad to see your interest in what we have to offer.
To continue our discussion, I want to talk about mirroring.
I believe we mirror everything and everyone, inside and out all the time. What's called "imprinting" in psychology, I see as a universal and mostly unrecognized process extended way beyond "phase-specific learning" (which in relation to "classical" imprinting means that ducks, for example, can only imprint parent and associated behavior until a certain age but not after).
I don't think it ever stops though. In that case we all have "inner ducks", looking to mirror something all the time. With age, language develops through human situations and masks the "little ducks", yet they don't get less active because of that.
When I talk about space in the inner house, I believe the walls of that house are built by mirroring. I see our internal walls as mirrors; creating numerous reflections, illusions and ultimately confusions. The construction of internal space is complex and lifelong, though the process is quite simple.
"What is above is below." What was once an outside experience, when mirrored by our mind, enters inside and becomes part of our internal landscape.
To give you an example, for the last two years I have been working with criminal patients, gangsters, murderers, and most recently, rapists and child molesters. I have heard hundreds of horrible stories about people touched by what society perceives as "pure evil". Each story has a point of entry when the "evil" (death, pattern, experience...) enters a person's (usually a young child's) mind and settles itself there. It is mirrored by other memories and experiences, until it is ready to strike in this person's action. I have yet to see a criminal who just "chose" to be evil without any previous exposure to it. Does this mean that criminals are not responsible for their acts or that being abused can serve as an excuse for becoming an abuser? Absolutely not. Not every predator has been abused and very few abused children grow up to hurt others.
I believe it depends on what we choose to identify ourselves with. Ultimately, we return to the same question: "Who is the Master of the House?" When we disconnect from our core self, the mirrors on the inside may create an illusion that we are someone else, and that is when "the spirits of trauma" can take over and take action. And when hurt is repeated, the reflection of "evil" recreates itself and imprints in new generations through the hurt it creates, so evil continues to survive.
The good news about this whole thing is that mirroring is just a process; it is quite neutral and can go either way. That's why healing occurs through mirroring, as well. When we do something good, healing and transformative (and share it with others), the good is mirrored and continues to recreate itself.
In that sense, what I call "Breaking the Walls" is not a traumatic destruction, but rather a peaceful dissolution. Nothing gets broken, the mirrors just change their positions and start reflecting beauty versus tragedy.
When we practice it repeatedly, the inner landscape changes and when all the walls are down, we don't get confused about our identity anymore. We know who we are and we know what we choose.
Yet, all I've said so far is just a neat metaphor, the question that remains is "how is it put into practice?". For right now, I suggest paying attention to the space of your internal experiences, as literally as possible.
I hope you don't mind me quoting your comment to the previous post, Jed. You said, "So what I imagine is a private aberration of my imagination, for instance why do I experience my inner space as a castle-tower? Does this mean I am too defensive? Perhaps it can mean that I am wanting to build high?". But, Jed, you do live in a magnificent castle, literally, physically. I've been there. It would be hard not to mirror a space like this. I still have dreams about that castle. And that's my point. Sometimes, we can create profound changes just by changing the physical environment. Not everyone can move into a castle tomorrow to work on internal transformation. I can't. But we can all step outside once in awhile and see the sky and mirror the stars at night and make the immense space that surrounds us on Earth the equivalent of our internal home.
The space of our dreams is unlimited. I always found the complexity of the shamanic universe in different cultures fascinating in contrast to the simple and limited physical environment that most true shamans live in. However, there is no paradox there. The balance is in the position of the Master, who can use the magic of working in the space of imagination to manifest changes in external, social reality, just by shifting the mirrors between inside and outside at will. We all can learn to do it. In a way we would all have to, because the changes that we are going to face together and individually are going to challenge us in radically new ways. Like I said before, we will have to create new Gods by mirroring new spaces internally and externally.
Personally, I hope to develop the space of this CliffHouse to serve the purpose of mirroring new dimensions. And I can tell you that, even at this stage when we just started creating a foundation for CliffHouse, I already feel how it's changing me and helping me focus and notice things I may have otherwise missed.
With Love and Good wishes,
Olga
P.S. - I will put out practical suggestions for working with mirroring in dream space on the site soon.
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