Good Morning friends
As I was writing about reflections yesterday, I remembered a different kind of reflection from my childhood. I had visited a fair and there was a stall with different kinds of mirrors. Normally, a mirror shows you a true image of yourself, though the image is laterally inverted. This stall had one mirror which showed you much thinner and taller than your normal self, another one in which you were fatter and shorter and yet another that showed a distorted view of yourself. Nevertheless, it was fun to see these funny images, basically because you knew that they were not real.
In real life too, we have many mirrors around us, in the form of people. You can see your image in the eyes of the people surrounding you. These reflections can talk about your physical aspects as well as your behaviour. The funny thing is that these reflections differ with different people, though you are the same! For example; someone tells you that you are looking very good today and a few minutes later, somebody else asks you whether you are unwell today !The same thing happens with our behaviour. Some people may praise our behaviour in a certain situation and some others may criticise the same behaviour in the same situation. All this is ok if we can remember that the others are just different kinds of mirrors… like those in a fair… the reflections that each of these mirrors show depends on their perspective, their understanding and maturity, their relationship with you, their own state of mind, their past experiences etc etc. Unfortunately, we often get swayed by these reflections… we can be in the seventh heaven when someone praises us; but we can be down in the dumps when others are critical of our actions. In short, we get unduly and unnecessarily affected by these mirrors around us because we believe that their reflections are the true reflections.
How can we prevent this from happening ? It’s easier said than done of course! But if we are aware of our own inherent strengths and limitations, if we are grounded in the reality of who we are and in which direction we are going, then, to a certain extent, we can avoid being unnecessarily influenced by other’s opinions. In short, we can realise which one is the true mirror ( showing a true, unbiased image) and which one is showing a distorted image. And the easiest way to realise this is through meditation. More about meditation some other time….
Hoping that all of us have at least one true mirror around us which shows us as we are in reality,
Love,
Anjali
