The Person In The Mirror

In this meditation with open eyes, in front of a mirror, I will invite you to take a good look into your own soul. We will start by looking at all our mental conditionings, and then continue to look at our deepest thoughts, finally, at the end of the meditation we will go beyond our personality and into the deeper aspect of who we really are beyond the body and mind.

Transcript

Let's do a meditation I call the person in the mirror.

For this meditation,

You're going to need to have a mirror that is at sight height when you are sitting on a chair.

If you don't have one at this height,

You can do it standing up in front of any mirror.

It's best if the room has a very gentle light in it.

Today,

I'm going to guide you through this meditation and I'm going to time it in a way that I feel is comfortable for most people.

But you may want to pause in certain moments and take more time in order to go deeper into some aspects.

This meditation is going to take us all the way from the idea that we have about who we are to our real essence.

So you can pause the recording now and go set up the mirror and then return to this recording.

Okay,

Let's start.

Standing in front of the mirror,

I want you to take a moment and close your eyes and just get a feeling of yourself.

Now,

Open your eyes and look at your image in the mirror.

As you do this,

I want you to notice the thoughts that you have about yourself.

Observe the image that you have of yourself.

What are you thinking?

Do you like to look at yourself in the mirror?

Or maybe you don't like your own image.

Maybe you feel like you are the most beautiful person in the world or maybe the most ugly.

Take a moment without reacting to observe how you feel and think about yourself.

Usually,

The first thing that comes to mind are ideas,

Thoughts about how we look.

Notice the thoughts that you have about the image that is in the mirror in front of you.

Notice all your self-judgment.

Give a freedom to those parts of the mind that judge you.

Maybe you think that your nose is too big or that you have too many wrinkles,

That your teeth are crooked or maybe they're not wide enough.

Maybe your ears are too big or maybe they're too small.

Maybe your face is too round or not round enough.

Maybe you have a double chin or have freckles.

Just observe without reacting all these inner judgments that you have against yourself.

We spend the first part of our meditation observing these judgments.

I'm going to leave now a couple of minutes for you to observe this.

But if you want longer,

You can just pause the recording and then join when you are ready.

Now,

Let us go deeper.

Let us go deeper than the physical form.

All this time,

Keep looking at your image in the mirror.

Now,

Try to notice what you think about who you are.

Do you love yourself?

Or maybe you don't like parts of who you are.

Observe your deeper judgments and your ideas about yourself.

What do you truly think about yourself deep in your heart?

Okay,

Let's take it even deeper.

And to do that,

I want to invite you to choose one of your eyes to look into,

Either the left or the right,

And then stare into this eye without blinking.

Keep your mouth open and stare into the eye you chose without blinking.

And then simply observe all that is coming up.

Allow yourself to feel what you truly feel about yourself.

Allow yourself to admit everything that you think about yourself,

But hide from yourself.

Keep staring into the eye you chose without blinking.

It's not easy to admit things to ourselves.

Feel the emotions in your body as you look at yourself in the mirror.

It's not easy to see what we truly,

Deeply believe about ourselves.

If you want,

You can now change the eye into which you are looking.

If you were looking into your left eye,

Then stare now into your right eye.

Try to continue doing this exercise without blinking.

Keep the mouth open.

If you were staring into your right eye,

You can shift to the left eye.

And again,

See what is coming up.

Note if there is a difference between what came up when you were looking into your left eye and what's coming up now as you look into the right eye.

We will do this again for a couple of minutes.

And if you want more time,

You can simply pause the audio and then restart it when you are ready.

Allow your emotions to come out.

Allow yourself to see what it is that you truly believe about yourself.

What you feel about yourself.

Feel the emotions in your body as you look at yourself in the mirror.

All right.

Let's take it now even one step deeper.

If you have been blinking until now,

It's okay.

But from this moment on,

We want to try to observe ourselves without blinking.

You can either choose one of the eyes,

The one that you felt most comfortable looking into.

For most of us,

This will be the left eye.

Or you can observe yourself without focusing in any specific location.

It's as if you're staring into the center of the face,

Somewhere between the eyes.

And you are relaxing your focus a little bit and taking in all of your presence,

All of the image of who you are.

Both options are fine.

But from this moment on,

Try not to blink at all.

The effects of this meditation are going to appear from this action of not blinking.

You must also keep your eyes steady,

Not moving.

Wherever your eyes are pointing now,

Whichever point you are focusing on,

Or if you are relaxing your gaze,

The point through which you are observing right now,

Let your eyes rest there without moving.

First,

Get a good feeling of this person.

You can look in the mirror and repeat your name to yourself.

Send this person positive thoughts.

If before,

You had negative thoughts,

These were coming from your subconscious mind.

These were voices that are either of your tormented mind,

Of the parts of your personality that you try to push back,

Or of your inner critic,

Or maybe these were even voices that you internalized,

Voices that do not belong to you,

Things you've heard from other people.

As I say this now,

It might dawn upon you that these voices did not belong to you.

You may realize,

Oh my God,

This is the voice of this or that person,

Usually somebody very close to you.

So now,

We are going to bring our own voice.

Speak to yourself as if you are the third person.

Tell yourself all the good things that you know about who you are.

As you are staring at your image in the mirror without blinking,

You may start to notice that it shifts and changes.

That is fine.

What is happening is that your subconscious mind is projecting things onto your face.

You may start to see the faces of other people,

Maybe the faces of the voices that you had before.

Some people think that some of the faces that appear can be our own faces from a past life.

These faces,

While being interesting,

Are but a distraction.

However,

We're going to use them.

Keep staring with your mouth open,

Without blinking,

Looking at the face in the mirror.

And as this happens,

You're going to notice that you feel to be separate from that person.

You are staring into the mirror,

Which is where we normally believe to see ourselves.

But as time moves on,

You start to feel that you are separate from this image.

You are not the person in the mirror.

When this will start to happen to you,

You may start to feel that your location in 3D space is not really inside of your body,

But it's either around the body,

Between your body and the body in the mirror,

Or located in the center of the chest of your body,

But not in your head.

If you have this feeling,

Simply allow it to be.

If you don't,

You can try to bring your attention to one of these areas that I have mentioned.

It's either the space around the physical body,

The space between your body and the image in the mirror,

Or in the center of your chest.

And then,

As you do this,

You can close your mouth if you want,

Or you can keep it open,

But keep staring at that single point that you chose,

Without blinking.

And now,

Begin to ask yourself,

Who am I?

Who am I?

Who am I really?

I am not this body that is in the mirror,

That is just an image.

And yet,

I see that body,

And I believed myself to be it.

We take this feeling,

That we are not the image in the mirror,

And we expand it,

So we no longer feel that we are the body that is standing in front of the mirror.

We are not the body standing in front of the mirror,

And neither are we the thoughts that occur in this body.

And then we ask again,

Who am I?

This question which starts in the mind,

And then simply becomes an inquiry,

A question mark,

A curiosity to find out who we really are.

Remain without blinking,

Gazing into the same spot,

And just feeling this question.

Who am I?

We will stay with it for a while,

And if you want,

You can pause the recording.

But if you do so,

Do so without moving at all.

Who am I?

Remain without blinking and without moving your gaze,

Feeling that you are not the body,

Nor the image of the body in the mirror,

And ask yourself,

Who am I?

When you are ready to conclude,

Bring the attention to the center of your chest.

Then close the eyes,

Clap the palms one to the other,

And rub them,

Until you feel that they are very warm.

And then place them over your eyes,

So the center of your palm is just in front of the eye,

Not touching,

And simply feel the warmth radiating from your hands.

Allow your eyes to relax.

Finally,

You can give a thanks to yourself.

Gently open the eyes and stare lovingly into the person in the mirror,

Giving them all your love.

It takes a great courage to see the little self,

The mind,

And patterns that inhabit the body,

This part that we almost always identify ourselves to be.

But it is only after we are able to accept this part that we are able to go beyond it and feel our true nature,

To be loving consciousness itself.

Thank you for joining me in this meditation about the person in the mirror.

I wish you a great and wonderful day.

Namaste.