I have recently been encountered with something that used to bother me a lot, it was the idea that I have heard in many spiritual communities that whatever you experience and whoever comes into your life experience is a mirror reflection of you. This refers to the idea for example, that if you are only kind, loving, pure, etc, only kind, loving, pure people and life circumstances will be around you. Essentially, everything that you see around you that is negative has somehow to do with you. In our highly dysfunctional world, this is basically saying that you attract the negative life circumstances, people and experiences. Although this concept was in the movie the Secret as well, I am here today to completely and absolutely challenge it.
It may be true that at certain levels of awareness, what you are struggling with and experiencing could be related to your thoughts, feelings and perceptions. For example, if you are an alcoholic and find that most of your friends and friendships are based around alcohol and they may also have a problem with alcohol…yes, you are being surrounded by what is already a reflection of something that is going on with you. Alcohol attachment exists in you, and can be a way you connect with others. There is a common expression that ‘you’ are a mix of the 5 people you spend the most time with, so be careful who you allow into your life and spend time around.
This can also be absolutely true with success or difficulty. The individuals you surround yourself with, can lift you up, or bring you down.
BUT…again this is ONLY at a certain level of awareness and consciousness that this is true. The more you work on yourself and being the happiest, most loving version of yourself you can be, the more this mirror and attraction idea has limited application. To think that you are the center of the world so much that everything you do and experience is all about you and a mirror of you or you have attracted it…well that is just a bit limited.
I want to put out there the possibility that maybe there is an intelligent energy that is larger than us and on one level, yes we do attract and bring into our life the people, places and circumstances, or yes something in them is mirrored in us. But the more you are healed and feel whole, the more this is not necessarily the case. Imagine that everything is intelligent energy and the manifestation of this intelligent energy into form, function and expression. Is it possible, that things come into your life that can cause disruption and pain, but it’s not because it has to do with showing you who YOU are. In fact, it’s the opposite, it has to do with showing you who you are not. For example, if you have many narcissists in your life, maybe they are not a mirror to you, but rather the manifestation of what you are not, so you can better understand who and what YOU (and I mean the big YOU here) actually are. Through the experience around narcissistic, self-centered individuals, you can learn you are kind, caring, sacrificial, empathetic, loving, and concerned with others. You can see who you don’t want to be, and what actually feels aligned and true for you. Generally, I have found, what is most ‘us’ is what feels most aligned and most natural. If something is painful, or feels off…maybe that is feedback that it doesn’t really fit you even if it’s in your life.
I have created an updated Happiness-Based Mindfulness Program and it is comprised of 12 weeks’ worth of information that I know and have seen in my own life and in others’ lives, improves and changes your levels of happiness no matter what your situation. In coming episodes, I am going to explore each week so you can have the overall information if it is helpful for you.
The first week deals with the topic of being trapped in patterns and loops and reactive cycles. In this way, when we are stuck in an unconscious cycle that loops round and round, we can easily attract certain people, experiences and circumstances into our lives. Our unconscious reactivity can create its own vortex and energetic momentum that can sometimes be hard to undo. For example, if you are feeling highly anxious and sometimes tells you to be peaceful. Well…can you do it? Probably not, you probably have an energetic momentum built up that has to play itself out first. When it burns itself out, it is easier to change or alter directions and choose a different emotion, experience, thought or belief. But first that reactivity needs to calm itself down.
So this New Year, New You, what can help with interrupting those negative or painful loops you may be caught in? Is it looking around you at your circumstances, people, places or feelings as reflections of who you really are? Are the people around you a mirror of something inside of you that is struggling?
Are the situations around you indicative of who you are not? What can you learn from this contrast about who you really are?
Are there any loops you want to work on and pivot to something new?
What kind of life and self is most expressive of who you really are? Whatever this version of you is, will help create, not just attract, the life most reflective of who you truly are and what you stand for and the good you want to bring into this world.
