Human minds are mirrors reflecting our images of each other to each other.
Like a funhouse of mirrors in a carnival, each mind has its own unique way of distorting what it beholds. Minds can exaggerate every flaw and blemish, make you bigger or smaller, fatter or thinner, more grotesque or more beautiful. A mind can also make you seem brilliant or dull, strong or weak, respectable or reproachable, humorous or stern, intimidating or approachable, kind or hostile, gentle or harsh, likable or unlikable, lovable or unlovable.
A mind reflects what is present in itself. One cannot reflect love without the quality of love. One cannot reflect strength without the quality of strength. One cannot reflect wisdom without the quality of wisdom. Similarly, one cannot reflect hate, weakness, and foolishness without these qualities.
Every mind is interdependent on other minds to reflect back to itself its own qualities. Through the mirror of other minds, a person sees, beholds, appreciates, nurtures, and learns to reflect their own signature qualities.
Herein lies the challenge: humanity is like a vast network of funhouse mirrors, not yet capable of reflecting to each other the truth of who we really are.
Why not learn how to be better mirrors—mirrors that reflect each other’s light, each other’s sparkle of divinity? Why not be like the moon reflecting the light of the sun?
Since ancient times, sages have repeatedly testified about a simple inexpensive solution that purifies and polishes the mirror of the mind: unconditional loving-kindness.
This transformative elixir that money cannot buy remedies the distorted projection of our fears, desires, and insecurities onto our images of others. This brings to an end our transactional parasitic feeding off of each other to fill the desolate emptiness of a human physicality disconnected from its spiritual source.
A mind and heart integrated in loving-kindness unlocks the wellspring of one’s own divine spirit and becomes a mirror of the divine. Such a mind becomes like both the sun and the moon, shining radiantly and reflecting to others their own divine radiance.
Image credit: Alex Iby via Unsplash.com.