We Are Only Ever Seeing Ourselves

Many spiritual teachings inspire us to an awareness that we only ever meet ourselves; that every person we see is a mirror on our soul. I have come to learn what a beautiful blessing and teaching this is.

Everyone we have every met or seen in our lives merely shows us an aspect of ourselves. We are given the opportunity to observe ourselves.

This teaching is perhaps most challenging to accept when we look upon someone and condemn them for being any host of personalities or characters that society would frown upon—everything from the thief, rapist, dictator or child molester. Whatever it is we are seeing, is merely a reflection of that aspect of ourselves that lays in our sub-conscious or unconscious.

Equally true, however, are those people we look upon and see beauty or good. These aspects of ourselves also lay just below the surface of our conscious awareness. But they are there. That is why we are seeing them.

So what are we to do with this teaching, this awareness?

With an awareness of this teaching in our lives, we are given the opportunity to be less reactive to anyone or anything that appears in our lives. As each person comes in and out of our lives, we learn to become more an observer of the other person rather than a reactor to the other person. We begin to become more curious or interested in other people, regardless of what the other person appears to be showing us.

Where this teaching guides us is to the ultimate awareness that because we only ever see ourselves in other people, there actually is no other person. There is no person that is separate and distinct from us. This awareness brings us into unity consciousness as we realize the oneness that surrounds us at all times.

Robert Meagher has been ordained as an Interfaith Minister and certified as a Sacred Attention Therapy (SAT) Therapist. Robert is the Founder and Spiritual Director for Spiritual Guidance and Co-Founder of the Center for Human Awakening.