Chasing Your Reflection

Each person creates the individual layer of their world, their own reality, with their mental outlook. Their reality acquires a certain tone depending on their attitude. Figuratively speaking, certain “weather conditions” are set: there may be morning freshness in the sunshine, cloudy skies and heavy rain or even a raging hurricane and natural disaster. To some extent reality is created, as is commonly thought, as a result of a person’s direct actions. Thought forms are no less powerful however, it is just that their impact is less evident. In either case the majority of problems are caused by a negative attitude to life. The mess that is created on the metaphysical layer then has to be sorted through on the physical level, which complicates the issue. Overall, the picture of a person’s separate reality depends on how they position themselves in relationship to everything that surrounds them. At the same time, a person’s frame of mind is conditioned by what is happening around them. So what we have is a closed feedback loop: reality is created as a reflection of an individual’s thought forms, and those forms in turn are greatly determined by the reflection itself. When a person stands in front of a mirror they focus all their attention on the mirror without trying to look inside themselves. It turns out then that the ruling role in the feedback chain is played not by the image but by the reflection. The person finds themselves under the mirror’s power because they are mesmerised by their own copy. It does not occur to them that they can change the original. It is specifically due to this obsessive focus on the reflection that we actively get what we do not want. Usually, our negative feelings have a total grip on our attention. We are absorbed with the thoughts of the things we would prefer to be different. We think about the things we do not want and we do not want the things we think about. That is the paradox. The mirror does not take into account a person’s willingness or reluctance. It simply conveys an exact reproduction of the content of the image, no less and no more. It is quite absurd. People voluntarily lug around with them the things they cannot stand. The saying should be not “my tongue is my enemy” but “my thoughts are my enemy”. Despite its absurdity, this is how things are. What happens when a person feels hate? They pour their entire heart and mind into the feeling. The sharp image is perfectly reflected in the mirror filling the layer of that person’s world. Whatever you hate you will encounter in your life in abundance. This causes one to be even more irritable which in turn embellishes the intensity of the feeling. Mentally, a person reaches a point where they are ready to tell everyone to get lost: “Bugger off!” The mirror then returns the event like a boomerang. You told everyone to bugger off and they did the same to you. Does this cause the number of problems to escalate? You bet! If you stand in front of a mirror and shout: “Got to hell the lot of you!”, the reflection you will see in the mirror is yourself going to hell along with the rest of your world. In the same way the object being condemned penetrates the layer of the “prosecutor”. Imagine this typical example: an angry elderly lady treats the whole world with bitter reproach. She of course is the perfect embodiment of strict and infallible justice “clear in conscience before others and her own soul”. The rest of the world must answer to the fact that it has not been exactly to her liking. A clear, sharp picture is drawn with immense precision. Looking in the mirror with an attitude like this the lady creates the equivalent reality in the world around her i.e. total injustice. How else should the world respond? It does not judge her or justify itself. In its inherent quality the world becomes exactly as it is imagined to be. Exactly the same thing happens when you are reluctant to accept something. For example, if a woman is sharply adverse to those who drink alcohol, she will be fated to encounter drinking at every turn. She will be constantly confronted with drunkenness in all its various manifestations as extreme as actually marrying an alcoholic. The greater the wife’s aversion the more intensely the husband will turn to the bottle. The husband may try to give it up occasionally but his wife hates drunkenness with such vengeance that she actually savours it and insists: “You will never give it up!” Unless the husband has solid steel intent the wife’s insistent aversion will end up instilling her thought form into the layer of his world. The tendency for pessimism is a fairly unattractive quality. The mood of: “It will not work out anyway” is like a kind of sadomasochism. The pessimist gets a certain perverted pleasure from revelling in their sorry lot: “The world is so bad it could not get any worse. It is going to hell and taking me along with it”. The pathological habit of getting a kick out of negativity develops alongside a tendency to bear grudges. “I am such a nice person. You just do not value me! It is so unfair! That is it. I am insulted. Do not try and talk me out of it. Soon I will be dead and then you will be sorry!” And where does this get you? The picture of fatal misery is not only reflected in the mirror, it is firmly consolidated. The bitter man orders a script for failure and then celebrates: “You see, I told you so!” All the mirror is doing is delivering the order: “As you wish!” With the same mood of fatal doom the loser states their unenviable position: “Life is just darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel”. They would not want to be stuck with this fate for anything and so they spend all their thought energy on whining and complaints. What else can the mirror reflect if the imagine is nothing but an expression of dissatisfaction? As the image: “I am unhappy”, “I do not want to” such is the reflection: “It is true, you are unhappy and you do not want to”. Again, the reflection is purely fact, no less and no more. Dislike of self is just as paradoxical in nature. It is self-generating. There is one golden rule that can be included in the textbook for complete idiots: “If I do not like myself, I do not like myself”. However strange it may seem, this tautology embodies a principle that is followed by the majority of the population. Take external appearance as an example. You may have noticed that most small children are very sweet and attractive. So how is it that so many adults are dissatisfied with their appearance? It is all to do with the mirror that sends back all complaint. Those who grow up to be beautiful are those who admire themselves. That is the secret. These people are ruled by the principle: “If I like myself I will have all the more reason to like myself more”. It is quite another matter when an image tells its reflection: “I seem to have put on a little weight. I need to lose a few pounds”. The mirror will dispassionately reply: “Yes, you are fat. You need to go one a diet”. Or: “I have become a bit skinny, I should build up some muscle”, to which the response will be: “Yes, you are puny, go and do some weights”. Reality responds like an echo, confirming what it has heard. This is how inferiority complexes are generated. Low self-esteem is followed by a corresponding verdict, which the mirror manifests as reality. “I do not think I have any particular talents”. “It is true. You are mediocre”. “I do not think I am worthy of upmost happiness”. “Indeed, you have nothing to hope for”. If in addition to all this a person has an innate feeling of guilt their goose is cooked. “Am I to blame? Must I carry out my duty?” — “Yes, you deserve to be punished and you will be”. How could it be otherwise? If a person feels guilty, even subconsciously, some form of retribution will be reflected in the mirror for certain! Do I even need to say that stress and fear are realised just as instantly? People are afraid of so many things many of which do not occur because it would requite too much energy for them to be materially realised. Accidents and catastrophes always represent an anomaly in the alternatives flow when the balance has somewhere been disturbed. However, if an unfortunate event lies in the vicinity of the flow it will undoubtedly take place because people attract it with their thoughts. Doubt however has the opposite effect. Unlike fear which focuses a person’s attention on the possible realisation of a given event, doubt is more concerned with what does not happen. Obviously, in many cases as if to spite us, our doubts are confirmed. Yet why should it seem that things happen as if to spite us? In reality, the mirror is simply reflecting our thought content; nothing more. In any case, the desire to avoid something greatly increases the likelihood of impact. Everything then seems to happen in defiance which usually causes the individual to be in a state of irritation most of the time. Irritation completes the overall picture of one’s mental outlook. The result is an integrated image: “I feel uncomfortable”. The individual’s reality is organised accordingly and is created in such a way that the feeling of discomfort is maintained or exacerbated. It is because of their own negative attitude that people paint the layers of their world black. Any attitude that is fuelled passionately by the heart and with the conviction of the mind will be reflected in reality. Moreover, the attitude will literally be replicated to perfection irrespective of what a person is actually trying to express: attraction or aversion. Here we can see the fourth mirror principle: The mirror cites the content of the relationship but ignores its orientation. How do people react when they see that things they do not want are being realised? Rather than looking at the image they focus all their attention on the reflection of the image and try to change that. The reflection is physical reality and in physical reality your actions are limited to inner intention. This means that if the world is not listening to you and you cannot make it go the way you want it to you have to grip it by the throat and drag it with all your strength in the direction you want it to go; a difficult task to say the least and in some cases quite impossible. It is totally absurd to stand in front of a mirror trying to catch your own reflection in the hope of making something of it. Inner intention attempts to change a reality that is ready and realised by means of direct action. The house has already been built but not as you would have liked. You have to take the house apart again and rebuild but the end result is not quite what you wanted either. Sometimes it can seem as if you are at the wheel of an uncontrollable car. The breaks do not work and the engine either stalls or roars in fifth gear. The driver tries to fit in with reality but the car is totally unpredictable. It would seem logical that if you want to avoid an obstacle in your path you should turn to the side. However, quite the opposite is true. From the moment that the dangerous obstruction has captured your attention a collision becomes inevitable. You turn the wheel in one direction but you are carried in the opposite direction. The harder you press on the breaks the more quickly you slide into the skid. It turns out that it is not man who rules reality but reality that rules man. It is like the feeling you might remember from your distant childhood when you are running and shouting with all your might. The world does not want to listen to you. It is so insulting! I remember times when I did not want to hear or understand anything. I just ran and screamed and my shouts were intoned by the thud of my feet on the ground. Do you remember ever doing that? Why was I so stupid and obtuse? Grown-ups were trying to explain something to me but I have absolutely no desire to comprehend what they were trying to say. Everything has to be the way I wanted it, full stop! Now I am a grown-up myself but nothing has really changed. I did not learn anything. I am still stamping my foot and demanding that the world listen to me. But the world does everything to spite me so I run and shout as I used to do. I run to meet reality but the wind of inner intention blows in my face and my efforts are in vain. Reality is controlling me and forcing me to react negatively, like an oyster, and this just makes everything that much worse. So how do you control this crazy car? What should people do and where are people going wrong? The mistake we make is that we stare at our reflection. This is whole problem. This is what we should be doing: first of all we have to end the chase after our own reflection and stop for a moment. This means dragging our gaze away from the mirror and letting go of the inner intention to shift the world in the direction you want it to go. In this moment the crazy car will stop in its tracks and reality will also stop. Then something incredible will happen: the world will come to meet you