Exploring the world as a mirror is a great way to invite in maturing and healing. I see dynamics or characteristics in others, and see, feel and eventually find appreciation for it in myself.
The next step – going beyond the mirror – is equally interesting, and takes the maturing and healing to another level.
I notice that my world is my own world of images. The overlay of images on pure perception that makes sense of the world. The overlay that filters, interprets, sets imagined boundaries, imagined labels and so on. That is what creates my world.
So maturing and healing has to happen there too, in that world of images. It is, in a quite literal sense, a healing and maturing of those images.
As I notice that – in immediacy, as it happens – there is already an invitation for healing and maturing.
And as I work with it further – through inquiry, visualization, prayer and so on – there is an invitation for even further healing and maturing.
And even an invitation for what I am to notice itself more clearly, to become familiar with itself, for the center of gravity of what I take myself to be to shift into what already is.
By exploring my own world of images as a world of images, in immediacy and as it happens, there is an opportunity for all knots to unravel. Not only the conventional knots that hinders our natural appreciation, gratitude and compassion, but also the knot of taking the image of a separate self – a doer or observer – as what I really am.
I notice it as an image, as content of experience as any other content of experience. And I notice what I am – and what everything already is – as that which all happens within and as, with no center anywhere. Already allowing the play of itself as form, as it is.
How do I work with this world of images?
Through exploring the sense fields, I can more easily notice it as a world of images as it happens. (I can close my eyes, visualize my body and notice it as images. I can do the same with the immediate surroundings. And the city, country, world. And then open my eyes, and see if I can notice my own overlay of images on my body and immediate surroundings, as it happens. And in daily life, whenever I get caught up in stories about past, future, wider world, and even what is here now, I can notice that too as happening within my own overlay of images.)
I can visualize healing and maturing for that world of images – for specific images and also all of them.
I can pray for them, find genuine well-wishing for them.
I can allow experience – content of experience – as it is, as if it would never change, with kindness and heart.
I can notice stories taken as true and find what is more honest for me than those stories.
And all of this is no different from the conventional approach of inquiry, prayer and allowing, apart from the noticing of it as a world of stories.
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outline….
- healing and maturing beyond the mirror
- mirror – find here what see in others/wider world (dynamics, characteristics) – a starting point, close to conventional view
- mirror = maturing, healing to some extent
- also, my world is my own world of images, the overlay of images on pure perception that makes sense of the world
- filters, interprets, sets imagined boundaries, imagined labels etc.
- so healing has to happen there too, in that world of images
- find clarity – and with it, appreciation, gratitude etc.
- mirror – find here what see in others/wider world (dynamics, characteristics) – a starting point, close to conventional view