On Mirrors

Day 41

We find mirrors all over the place. Sometimes the mirror is in the words of a child, words which strike us to the quick – there is a reason that 'truth comes from the mouth of a babe'. Sometimes the mirror is someone whom we run into that is going through a trial in life that we too have known. Sometimes the mirror is some especially angry or happy person who could have been us, if we went down a different path. All that is is, is in the world, and all that is, is a gem, and all gems are connected to one another. It follows that on occasion, when you run into some gem in the world which is not you, that you will find yourself. It also follows that sometimes when you turn back to yourself as a gem, that sometimes you will lose yourself. These activities we can call facing the mirror, or going down the path. Life is a dance in the void which never stays still, and which travels in near-circles, spirals, as the world.

I said once that small things can make a difference. This is can be understood as the concept of a butterfly waving its wings causing a storm over on the other side of the world in the future, but this can also be understood in the sense that small things can reveal much. When you clearly know who and what you are, a mirror, a moment of self-reflection, is less powerful because what it reveals you already acknowledge. It is when you deny yourself, or when there is some stress in the various logic fields of the world, that small things, like a single word or a look, can act as a key to release a lock, to open a door which is holding back a great deal of force. Are there words you still remember to this day, words from a person or a book? Have you ever seen the look in someones eyes and quailed, because you connected with them so deeply? Have you ever perfectly understood somebody, but not known what to say? I think that these sorts of experiences are like facing a mirror, like running into yourself looking back at you from the eyes of another. I call them mirrors because they remind me of, not just the experience of looking at a mirror and seeing yourself, but also of the experience of looking at a group of mirrors facing one another. Mirrors on mirrors, reflections on reflections, where you know that everything around you is following simple rules of reflection which are understandable, and yet you are confronted with a kaleidoscope which looks like a shattered world. Perhaps if everything would just hold still for a moment you could figure out how the place works, or if everything stuck to the same pattern, which we once said was just like staying still in a 4-d existence. Yet as you try to understand the place, the funhouse full of mirrors or the prism of mirrored surfaces, you find that you yourself move. Every change also changes everything else, as the reflections multiply the least single movement into an explosion of many movements. One thing becomes many, and yet those many things are just one things – the reflection in the mirror. What appears to be the case for this vision of surrounding mirrors is near to what appears to be the case for the world, and this is no accident. Mirrors and reflection, forces reaching places by indirect paths and with no clear exit, are part of the world and thus say something about how the world works. Mirrors reveal things.

Sometimes what a mirror reveals is unclear, is a word or a phrase that we need to work over and over to understand. We can feel that it's important, but not why or how – a moment that sticks in our head, a memory that haunts us at night, or an intense emotional reaction that we can't explain all are things that we know are important, that we regret not figuring out, but which are a kaleidoscope of confusion to work out. Other mirrors are not like this, not like shattered glass, but are gigantic and clear mirrors that show us one single bright vision. This sort of mirror is what we have when we see a vision of what might have been, or what could be. A stark vision, a dreadful vision of what our life could have been like if we had married that one, not married the other one, gone to college, not gone to college, fallen into drugs, entered the army, and all sorts of other events. These mirrors happen when we see someone and know them – know just where they went wrong, and what sort of mistakes they made. Someone having the same exact feelings and troubles with their parents or their school bullies that we did. Someone sticking with an abuser but unable to make the choice to get away. Someone with the same ideas and the same mistakes that we ourselves had. There are times that we can honestly see the future, when we know what someone is going to do, and what their life is going to be like. Not in the exact form, every moment and event, but in the general form and shape. We realize that there are people you can help, and people you can't help. Sometimes people just need time, or experience. You have to let them go, and hope that they make it through their time of trial like you did, like most of us – but not all of us – do. This is a mirror because you realize that at that age, or in that situation, you would not have accepted help either – thou you now realize how smart it would have been to do so. It is a mirror which reflects the past, but shows the future.

Mirrors often happen to be events, words, choices, trial, and memories, but sometimes mirrors are entire persons. Mirrors which show you not what you were, or what you or they could have been, but mirrors which show us who we are. They, the person, isn't the mirror though. Rather, you are, and you reflect back onto them. It's been said that the more you fight the enemy, the more you become like them. This is, technically, because you and the enemy gravitate towards the most effective means of fighting, and the longer you fight the more stalemated the tactics become until someone wins. In the sense of a mirror – have you ever heard the saying 'he who smelt it dealt it'? The childhood rhyme goes back to farts, but it has relevance to life beyond mere gas as well. Or perhaps I should say, gas tactics – like gaslighting. Gaslighting is the action of denying that someone has valid feelings and beliefs, saying that they don't matter. It diminishes and dehumanizes people, and is generally regarded as a bad sort of action to take. Its also similar to the act of trolling, of pretending not to understand what someone means, or to intentionally misunderstand them, in order to get a reaction out of them. Both of these actions are methods of attack, attack by casting an unflattering light onto someone, thing, gem. To push a narrative or to try to convert or understand the logic field of the world so that the gem appears to be of a form other than what it would be to a reasonable and caring person. To do this is to try and ignore a part of the world.

We've talked before about how dangerous this is, how being an intentional ignoramus, or only understanding the world in one way with one logic field, pushes part of the world away from you, which leads to a rigid and fragile world. Mirrors in cases like this, where you confront someone or something that believes differently than you do, and is something that you do not want to directly confront because confronting it directly, acknowledging its actual existence at all, is itself a danger to your world, often arrises in moral and religious debates. They are argument not about facts – statements of what is, but about things themselves – what is the world. They appear to be facts, appear to be miscommunication, because we use words to argue, because the world-structure of language is what we most often and clearly use to pass ideas along, but that is a little too simple. Understanding each others words is useful, and needed for complex arguments, but is not always the first essential step for understanding, for realizing meaning in dire situations. What is needed is the ability to imagine another world which is not like the world as you know it. If you cannot do that, then you don't have communication, but only interpretation.

A mirror then can be a very frightening thing. To admit that perhaps the person you are tarring with the brush of bigot, fool, delusional, ignorant, or liar might not be because they are such, but because you are, demands, if you are not hypocritical, that you condemn yourself. Of course, if you are hypocritical, then you can live just fine like that. This shows that its not just looking and seeing a conundrum like a mirror which is the issue, but caring about it. To be emotionally invested in your own integrity, is to have the issues which a mirror could damage be like a cause of the world, a pillar of the world. To be morally hypocritical and to not care about that is to have your morals be a result of your beliefs, an outer and unclear part of the world, or an action and not an understanding. There is a reason that we generally dislike hypocrisy – it is because hypocrisy hides the truth, and is unfair. It is, by its very nature, something which appears to that which it is not. To understand hypocrisy, or a hypocritical person, requires that we dive more deeply into the world than we are used to. Hypocrisy is usually a lie, an ultimately destabilizing force in the world, because hypocrisy is a tool. We can say that its essence lies in its use, the important reason that it is what it is in a logic field. Hypocrisy is usually meant to be used. When it is not, when someone is hypocritical just to be hypocritical, then you have someone who doesn't know who he is, a harlequin, a person wearing a mask. To gaze in the mirror, to confront and realize your reflection, is to realize that you are wearing a mask. And to admit that a mask is worn is often to wonder what is underneath it.

Looking at a mirror, confronting a reflection or a flash that shows a different angle to the way things, and the self, are, is to be brave. I've talked a lot about understanding different points of view, and of realizing that you, too, can be wrong. This is because we live in a confusing world, a world of shimmering mirrors and paths which lead down into the blinding dark. Mirrors can be felt, as well as seen. A mirrors reflects things, and is a picture of things – but it is a picture of something. When you run across your reflection in a mirror, when you confront all the ways that you might be wrong, or when you touch and disturb the delicate balance of the world, leading to a storm or an avalanche, you tear up the crops and the houses, but you also reveal new land and soak the ground in life-giving water. When you realize that you were wrong, you also realize that you are right. Not all masks are full though, and you could only be wearing half-a face as well. We have, after all, a mixed nature; which eye are you looking out of? When you see your reflection in a certain way, it might be that way because you are wearing a mask, ignoring or denying a possibly valid point of view. Or, it might be that your reflection looks that way because of the bad light that someone else is casting upon you. Who are you really? Which is the reflection, which is you, and which is a mix of the two? You decide which it is – but please, decide wisely.

In men whom men condemn as ill

I find so much of goodness still,

In men whom men renounce divine

I find so much of sin and blot,

I dare to draw a line

Betwixt the two, where gods have not

• Uncharity