53. Looking in the Mirror ⭐

⭐

The following exercise needs to be done in front of a mirror. So if you’re not in a position to do that, he might skip this for the moment. Also, I think you’ll get the most benefit from this, if you do it after you’ve done something like the first 20 days of meditation sessions. So and this is something you can come back to, in the future, I think you’ll, you’ll find this interesting. So if you’re standing, or sitting in front of a mirror, there are a few things I’d like you to notice. First, notice the sheer encounter with your own preferences. Most of us approach a mirror with some measure of self concern, and trepidation, disappointment. Or, at times, we’re pleasantly surprised. any case we have various feelings about how we look. And notice, if you feel any of those things now, and let go of all that. First, look around, look at your forehead, and your nose and your chin, and your cheeks, and back at your eyes. And notice that you never catch sight of your eyes moving. There’s no sense of they’re traveling. Every time you look back at your eyes, they are perfectly still. Now this is the result of your brain actually suppressing data from your visual system, when your eyes move when your eyes execute what’s called us acod. So that’s interesting. Every time you move your eyes over the visual scene, you’re blind. And you don’t notice that is one of the great examples of introspection, being a limited source of information with respect to what the mind is actually like. If your brain weren’t suppressing input from the visual system, during each sicard, you would experience the world lurching around to a much greater degree. This is something we have evolved not to experience. But that curious fact aside. Now just gaze into your own eyes, as though looking into the eyes of another person. And this will be a kind of guided meditation. And again, if you encounter any feeling here, if you don’t like the way you look, or you like the way you look, or you’re surprised by anything you see, just notice that and watch this feeling. Come and Go and return to merely gazing into your own eyes. And as you do this, I’d like you to make your gaze very wide. In addition to taking in the sight of your face, taking the world don’t fixate on an individual point like your pupil or the space between your eyes. Just see the whole visual field with your face in the center of it.

Now if you’re like most people, as you gaze at your face, you will feel that you are on your own side, behind your face, looking across space at your reflection in a mirror. But I would have you noticed now that there’s only one face appearing here. The only face and evidence is the one in the mirror. Where your face is supposed to be. There’s just the world. There’s just this expanse of light and color and shadow. And the face you see in the mirror is the only face visible. If you doubt that look for your face. Briefly as you look across space at your reflection. Look for the face you think you have.

Look for the face. You think you’re behind. And see if any shift happens? Isn’t there? Just the world? Isn’t there just the face in the mirror? Aren’t you as a matter of experience, just this open space in which everything is appearing?

Again, look for yourself. Where is your face? Where is your head? Where is the seat of your attention in this moment.

Now, if that exercise seemed totally inscrutable to you, I urge you to return to it, after you have more experience with the guided meditations. Because there really is something here to glimpse. And the glimpsing of it can become a new basis for mindfulness can also change your interactions with other people, it’s possible to look for yourself in this way, and to fail to find it in a way that changes your perception of the world. And of consciousness in each moment, the center can drop out of experience, leaving just the world. And this can be quite liberating. And notice, as you look at your own face here, that this is identical in visual terms, to every social encounter you ever have, you’re simply looking at the face of another person. So as you look at another person, and they make eye contact with you, it’s quite possible to follow their gaze back to where you think you are, and to fail to find yourself in a way that opens consciousness to an experience of just centralis totality. And in a social encounter, this means many things. It means Above all, that there is no place from which to be neurotic. There’s no place from which to be self conscious. thoughts and emotions can continue to arise. But when you’re looking at another person, and they’re looking back at you, and you no longer feel like you’re behind your face, you no longer feel like you’re behind the mask of your face. Rather, you’re nowhere you are simply the condition in which they are appearing. That is a an experience of total freedom, psychologically in the presence of another. Your attention is totally free to hear them and see them and relate to them from a position that is completely free of egocentricity. It is literally free of ego. Because the ego is simply this feeling of being behind your face. As you gaze at that phase, one thing should be absolutely clear. That isn’t what you are. That isn’t yourself. That is also an appearance in consciousness. As a matter of experience, you are simply this condition of experience. You are not the man or woman you meet in the mirror and you never will be. Again, look at the face in the mirror. It’s the only face. You see. Where are you in this?