We start by watching our thinking. We notice where our judgements lie and what the beliefs are that lie beneath those judgements. How do we perceive those around us and how is the world showing up for us? There is a guiding principle that can be a bitter pill to swallow at times but gives us an accurate reflection of our state of consciousness and our relationship with ourselves. It is called the Mirror Principle and it teaches us that the people and experiences we have in our lives are simply a reflection of ourselves. Juicy, isn’t it? I personally struggled with this principle when I first learned of it at 25 years old. It was only years later in my life that I was able to integrate its wisdom to some degree. It is confronting for those of us that have experienced trauma through abuse in any of its forms and everything inside of us may want to recoil, lash out and strike at it in defiance. Yet, I recognise that out of all of the abusers in my life, I was the greatest. I abused myself far longer than any other would ever abuse me, talk about mirror principle in action there.
We can notice how we are being by those that we have surrounded ourselves with, and this is often where friendships and relationships may fall by the wayside as we awaken to truth and love because we begin to shift our perceptions and they may no longer align with those around us. Sometimes this path can be lonely for a time, but I can assure you that the further down it you walk the more you actually relish in the moments of solitude and your need to be constantly surrounded by others begins to dissipate, plus you draw to yourself new people, places and experiences that align with who it is you are choosing to be and how you wish to create your life. There is simply a bridging that needs to occur between the old you and the new you, your old world and your new world. There is a space between those worlds where there is a sense of chaos and emptiness all at the same time, and it can be enticing to give it all up and return to the old ways, but with a little more persistence and a few more steps you get to the other side and your new way of life begins to manifest more and more in each moment of every day. This concept can be seen on a collective scale in our world reality at this time in history. The old world is falling away and crumbling as the structures of society that no longer serve begin to crumble and a new consciousness is rising. We are in the bridging phase, and all seems chaotic, scary and even hopeless. The key is to hold the Dreaming. To keep Dreaming into your life, into the collective experience because it is the Dreaming that manifests and we all Dream all of the time.
What is it that you are Dreaming? What is your world telling you? Are you surrounded by people that uplift and inspire you and others, or are you surrounded by people that are judgemental and negative? It may be the case that you have both these types of people in your life and it may also be true that you may maintain some of these relationships because you can see the deeper essence of these people that is simply waiting to shine through. Either way, they are all mirrors, reflections of aspects of yourself, gifting you with insight into your inner state of being.
Take a moment here and reflect on the situations that are currently presenting in your life. Are you in a never-ending cycle of struggle? Do you feel drained and tired by life? Are your relationships with those around you strained or difficult?
These mirrors are there to give us valuable information on how and who we are being. Our outer reality is the manifestation of feedback that, if we are listening, informs our inner reality of the necessary adjustments required to create differently. Once we can move through the discomfort of this principle then it becomes a valuable tool that tells us moment by moment where we need to make shifts in our energy and return to presence. Self-awareness is fundamentally about presence and what is presence? It is the gift of our essence. It is the expression of love unconditional that cherishes the present moment, the now moment in all its sanctity. You see, when we are so fully present in the now moment, we enter Divinity. Think of a dancer as she moves and flows, her eyes closed with a smile upon her face lost in the moment, consumed by the music or the musician that she dances with exuding his passionate expression through his song. The athlete with focus so intent that there is nothing else in his or her awareness but the present moment and the task at hand. There is power in this place, yet we spend so much time living in the past and projecting into the future that we forget where we are at times. When we are lost in the past and projecting into our future from the past we are creating more of the same, because we are creating from the old stories. Until we become aware of our beliefs, not just the surface level beliefs that we know of but those that live in the depths of the dark spaces that whisper to us that we are not good enough; that we are failures; that we could never possibly have all that we choose, until we know these and transmute them we will be creating our future from our past reality and life will always be the same cycle in whichever form it presents for you.
The more present we become the more self-awareness we cultivate because we can only be aware when we are present, and we can only be present when we are aware. A beautiful and complimentary circle that opens us into expansion.
Opening our awareness means that we open the inner listening and we start noticing the feedback from our outer reality. The more we watch ourselves in every aspect of our being, the more we know ourselves and the more we know ourselves the easier it becomes to create the change that we seek, but we have to keep flexing the muscle of consciousness and training. Every day presents us with opportunities, countless moments there for us to use to our advantage, to mould and shape our reality the way that we choose for it to be.
One day I was sitting and crocheting my first and only crochet project to date. I was using this incredible wool that changed into different colours as it unravelled, it was like watching a kaleidoscope evolve as I worked which was mesmerising. I had no music or documentaries playing as I would usually, for whatever reason, and I entered into observation. I watched my mind cycle through the same sequence of thoughts like a buffer on a computer screen going around and around and around. I didn’t fully engage in the thoughts but simply allowed them to be and witnessed them. For seven hours I noticed this cycle and pattern and was amazed by what I saw. I noticed myself also becoming a little irate with the cycling and, again, did not engage but simply witnessed the irritation rising. What I found fascinating was the futility of it all. The same cycle of thoughts creating the same feelings of irritation and resulting in the same experience that was essentially fruitless. There is a saying that insanity is doing the same thing expecting a different result, or something along those lines, and this was a perfect example of insanity.
You may wonder why I did not shift or change this and, honestly, I couldn’t answer you that, as I was merely observing it for interest sake. I must say that there is also something profound in being the witnessing presence. You are not engaged in the activity of the mind but simply observing it, you are in the realm of the deeper essence of you and connecting into that which is greater than the mere Human existence. You are connecting into the Spirit of yourself that carries the eternal wisdom of all life, you are connecting into creation itself, that which some call God. You are accessing the God force that exists within you.
The idea that God is separate from us is preposterous to me. Why? Quite simply because our bodies themselves are an expressive reflection of the Universe itself, everything that we are made of is what the Universe is made of. The intelligence that is at work within our bodies is magnificent and while we may know and understand how everything inside it all works, we still don’t truly know the true “how” of how it works, it is a phenomenon unto itself. We do not need to tell it when to breathe, it simply breathes; we do not tell it when it needs to eat, it tells us when it is hungry; we do not need to tell it to process the food that we eat, it does it regardless; we do not need to tell it to operate, it operates beyond our need to control it and if this is not the force of God within then I do not know what is and, furthermore, it is the same force that exists within the Earth, within our solar-system, within our galaxy, within our Universe, how is it feasibly possible that we are separate from it or each other? How is it conceivable that the God force could not exist in, through and all around us?
I would just like to say here, that I do not use the term God in the traditional,