subject: Relationships as Minefields and Mirrors [print this page] Relationships as Minefields and Mirrors Relationships as Minefields and Mirrors
MINEFIELDS AND MIRRORS
by
Lisa Raphael
The realization that relationships are basically mirrors is the key to healing any and every relationshipwith ourselves, with others, with nature and with the universe. We are all inter- connected. What we think, feel and do affects everything around us. We are one. Our entire environment is a reflection of who we are.
This may be easier to accept as a general concept than as a truth about a particular relationship, especially an intimate one. The blame game has forever been a favorite couples' sport. "If only he would do that," we protest, or "if only she would be more like that," is a familiar refrain. there would be no more problems in our relationship. It is always the other person that needs to change. Yet just as mirrors in everyday life reflect what we cannot see, our partners reflect back to us aspects of ourselves which we do not see otherwise. It is a not easy to consider that the traits that irritate us in our partners are reflections of ourselves. Like many women, I was constantly frustrated by my former husband's inability or unwillingness to express his feelings. Yet my private journals were full of thoughts and feelings I did not express to him.
The role of the mirror in everyday life is to tell us we look is our hair tidy, does this clothing look good on us, are our pimples or wrinkles showing, and so on. When we see something we do not like, we try to fix it. We do not blame the mirror for what it is reflecting back to us, nor do we try to correct it in the mirror. Yet when we see something we do not like in another person, we forget that they, too, are a mirror, and begin the dance of co-dependencetrying to fix in the other what needs fixing in ourselves. This works both ways. Often, when working with one partner in a relationship I hear " I don't think this counseling is doing much for me, but my partner's behavior certainly has changed!"
When we understand that our partner's behavior is a reflection or our own, it becomes easier to sort out what is his and what is the hers, so to speak. Close relationships are like mine fields; we never know when an innocent remark or incident will trigger a reactive explosion. We each carry imprints from the past within us, memories of how our family or friends responded to us, reactions to past trauma. When one of these memories is triggered, we react the way we did in the past. We may even say "you sound just like my mother" or "stop treating my like a child" and blame our partner for what is essentially our own childhood memory. This is OUR mine field, not something our partner is doing to us.
Knowing ourselves is essential to good relationships, and relationships, being mirrors, help us to know ourselves. With regard to our relationship with nature, with the universe the situation is more complex. Now we are dealing with many different mirrors. Our environment reflects not just our own beliefs and biases, but the spins and distortions of groups with whom we associate and identify. Many of half truths, lies and omissions in advertising and the media are deliberately designed to confuse and mislead us. Here too, the challenge is to know ourselves, to be aware of our own biases and minefields.
To see past the distortions of all the mirrors that reflect our reality requires discernment, and discernment requires quiet. Quiet is hard to come in a world in which there is constant noise from traffic, refrigerators and microwaves, television sets, computers, cell phones, and radios. Yet it is in the quiet that we can come to know ourselves. This became clear to me one morning during a meditative walk.
Along the waterfront where I live is a bridge across the Bay. A simple, concrete, white painted bridge. This morning as I was walking, I stopped by it, entranced and enchanted by the play of light underneath it. It seemed as if filaments of light were dancing an eternal dance on the underside of the bridge. Where was the light coming from under there? The water was calm, with just a slight current moving the surface, rippling it, and the sunshine on the water made a wonderful reflective pattern. You could see everything above reflected below, almost perfectly but for the rippling of the water. But what was causing the rippling of light on the underside of the bridge?
After a while, I realized that it was the light on the water that was being reflecting back onto the underside of the bridge. Mirrors upon mirrors. The water reflected the sunlight, then the sunlight on the water was reflected onto the underside of the bridge. It was magical. The filaments of light constantly moving under the bridge looked like something from an laboratory - like electrical impulses that flow along a filament They seemed to have a life of their own. Their rhythm was not the same as the one of the light on the water that was the source of the reflection.
The way we perceive our environment is modified by the ebb and flow of feelings and impulses in our psyche. When we interact with others, our viewpoint is reflected in the mirror of their individual pattern of beliefs and perceptions which is no more accurate than our own, and adds another distortion to the original. Each reflection adds its own pulse, rhythm, interpretation. This is why it is so important that we each make our own direct connections with ourselves, and develop discernment. Were it not for the movement on the water, there would be no way of knowing where the reality of the solid ends and the reflection, the mirror image begins. Likewise, it is It is only through awareness of the flow of our own psyche that we can discern what is true in our relationships, and create healthy ones.
