Reflection and Inner Growth

If you are someone who is in tune with a spiritual path, you will have heard the term ‘reflection.’ In fact, you may have heard it so much that it has become somewhat of a buzzword. However, have you ever stopped to wonder what it really means in a spiritual context? More importantly, have you discovered its importance as a tool of inner growth?

When you look in a mirror, what do you see? More than likely you will see your physical human form looking back at you. Now ask yourself how you feel when you look at yourself. Are there negative emotions or positive ones that surface? What are the thoughts that arise? Are you aware of any self-judgments when you look at yourself?

It may seem like all this inner-questioning could lead to a lot of over-analyzing in your head. This could certainly happen if you follow that path. However, if your desire is to let go of any self-identities that do not serve you anymore, you need to move beyond intellectualizing and into the realm of allowance.

Allowing is very different from simply letting sensations, emotions and thoughts control you. It is more about observing thought and emotion without feeling a personal sense of identity attached to it. In other words, you will not be stuck in the reality of “this is who I am.” You will not try to fix it, change it or judge anything whatsoever. The idea is to slow your mental activity down and become like a non-attached observer viewing a movie screen. Eventually, you will achieve a state that enables you to be still, to feel and to let everything go.

To understand this better, consider the following analogy: Imagine yourself on a boat that is travelling through some very rough waters. You feel the rocking and swaying of the boat and the occasional spray of sea water hitting you in the face. You see dark clouds looming and forks of lightening approaching. Soon, pelting rain drops fall from the sky and soak your whole body. All these elements are akin to physical sensations, judgments, emotions or thoughts. These are what you observe, experience and most importantly, allow. The idea is to use your awareness like a spotlight that shines its powerful light on all forms and helps you to see them for what they are: forms that come and go.

At this point, it’s very important to mention what you can do if you are not able to allow or when you find yourself in resistance. Always go back to what is true for the moment at hand. What is true may be, “I am not willing to allow this” or “I can feel my resistance to this.” Once you are able to really “stand in” what is true in each moment by saying “yes” to it, you can release any inner tension or any “non-allowance” in small increments.

It may take seemingly endless repetitions of this “standing in truth” especially when you are dealing with a deeply-set negative pattern within you. However, little by little, you will entrain your awareness to focus more intensely and enhance your ability to allow in order for you to choose more life-affirming perspectives. You will know you are on the right path when you experience those “aha!” moments ¬¬--or in other words, self-realizations. You will actually feel lighter, have more self-knowledge and feel a greater sense of self-certainty, self-empowerment, self-love, self-value and much more.

Now expand this model of looking at yourself in the mirror to using everything in your life as a mirror. This could be the relationships in your life whether that may be an intimate partner, family members or a complete stranger. It could also include media forms such as television, movies or the internet. The sensations, thoughts and emotions that emanate from inside you are constant sources of self-reflection as well. Essentially, life is an endless web of interconnected relationships. It contains limitless reference points each serving as a mirror for one another.

So, what is the point of it all? Well, try to imagine for a moment journeying as a human entity through life if you had no points of reflection. You would be completely in the dark –or completely in the light for that matter– and by default there would be no awareness of other separate entities. There would be no journey that begins from a place of innocence. There would be no journey that ventures into separateness from a higher source. And, there would be no journey that returns to connectedness with that same higher source.

Could it be that getting back to this connectedness is what has always driven us, what urges us to evolve our consciousness and discover the unknown?...