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November 2009 
Do you use relationships as your mirror?
Posted on May 10th, 2009
by 
barbara
barbara
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for May 10, 2009:
Definitely. I believe we have a relationship with everyone to more and lesser degrees. What we see in others, we recognize only if we have it in ourselves. It keeps me from judging others as less or more than I am, and helps me not to judge myself. If I someone in my life is acting self-centered and egotistical, I need to look at how I am self-centered and egotistical. Similarly, though, if I see wondrous acts of kindness and compassion, then I must own that, too. If I can name it (it being the behavior or quality), then it is me, too. Then I can choose what behavior or quality I wish to be more of.
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Bing, you hit this on the nail! ;-D
Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?
Relationships are created to allows us to Be who we Really are. could be pretty frightening or very loving?
Do we use a relationship for that, use is the incorrect word, but yes, we have relationships with everyone and everything everyday, how we show up, react or respond to what presents itself is the power to inform, transform, inspire…
Barbara you are correct… great post…
I am Love, Jeff
I think you are right about creating relationships to help create us, Jeff. It is the question I ask myself everyday: how will I bring my presence to life today? And life is all about relationships with other people, animals, places. I think the “self” who interacts each day with people is largely connected to my ego (but remember I broke up with Tom Cruise the other night in my dream). Once I let go of ego, there is more space in me for my true presence to emerge.
“Once I let go of ego, there is more space in me for my true presence to emerge.”
A truth that most of us, as our ego's does not wish to see. Yet is very freeing when we allow the dance of ego and essence to be in harmony.
I am Love, Jeff
I LOVE you guy's……mmmwha..xxoo
straight on!
“What we see in others, we recognize only if we have it in ourselves.”
i see that you all are looking absolutely marvelous today :)
i'm going to disagree here.
when i saw that man beating his mother's head against the wall in the shop where i was working at the time. what i saw in him is so very not in me.
when i read the news about all the death and destruction at the hands of warmongers and government officials, what i see is not in me.
when i look at you, i see not who i am. i don't see you as a reflection of myself. i see you. and people sometimes don't like that very much. they want to think i am a reflection of them, but they're wrong.
we may sometimes choose to wear blinders, and see only what we want to see. but we don't have to. we do have vision. we can see what is out there, regardless of what is in here.
I think my point (a little cryptic), boogie, is that everyone has all potentialities of being, action, response, etc. As infant and child humans, we learn by the mimic of others' actions and ways of being – we adopt our society's or our parent's behaviors so that we can belong; as we grow into our own awareness, we realize that we chose to become like others; thus, we can choose to not be like others. When we see violence in another, we know that violence is a potential within us … most of us choose not to utilize our violent natures. For example, it is within me to allow myself to be killed or commit suicide. I choose to defend myself and to not commit suicide with one (and only one so far) exception: I would die without a moment's hesitation for my granddaughter - I would allow a violent act against me to save her from harm if given the choice. I think my point was more that we use relationships to see how things/we/others are or how they could be. I think you are right about the utilization of choice and many people choose not see others as they really are because they fear their “shadow” (as Jung would call it) side … and it is here that I tend to embrace the shadow, own it, and transcend it.
reflections aren't real. mirrors turn everything backwards. if you rely upon anyone or anything else to tell you what is real, the best they can give is a bass-ackwards reflection of reality. the only way you can see what is real, is to look for yourself. we all have our own eyes with which to see. <3
oh wait! been thinking about this some more. i think we all do have a tendency to interpret what we see in light of our own unique experience. sometimes, though, i see things that don't translate, that i cannot possibly understand, as with the two examples i gave above. william james called it the psychologist's fallacy (in the principles of psychology, i want to think its in chapter five), when people confuse what is subjective with what is objective, or what is inside their own heads with what might be going on inside someone else's head. he said something to the effect that it takes a crazy person to understand the minds of the criminally insane.
when i disagree, it is not because i think you are wrong. it's because my experience doesn't match up with yours, that i don't understand why you would say or do certain things. i'm not trying to upset. i'm trying for dialogue so that we might all find a little bit more understanding.
boogie – I don't think of you as “disagreeing” with me; I view you as expressing your thoughts and I find that I very much “agree” or at least understand your ideas; much of what I write here comes from a feeling or knowing place and often is wordless at first, so I struggle to get the words in a place where they are clear (especially to me!) This question on reflection reminds me of the question: how valid are the observations of the observed observing itself?
Keep me honest …
Jeff, I meant to get back to a part of your comment: “allow the dance of ego and essence to be in harmony” – I just broke up with a big part of my ego … (Tom Cruise – that's huge) ===> do you think this means my essence is more in harmony with what is left of my ego or has my essence absorbed what used to be ego? By essence, can I interpret that as what I believe is my presence? Too many questions for a Sunday afternoon!