Loving Reflection

The glowing garden I walked in was full of the most impossible light, I could feel it shining through my cells into the centre of my body so that I felt as insubstantial as the air around me. The beauty of this light and the garden it illuminated, released silver tears of grief and worry from me, untying the last knots of my solid existence, followed by tears of gratitude.

Slowly walking around the garden I could hear and feel a gentle murmur of bees humming and felt the sound of birds singing as a rising and falling sensation of happiness, connection and ecstatic love within my body.

I didn't begin flying but as I approached the mirror I was no longer walking, it and I were drawn through existence to each like rushing rays of the light to bring me face to face with its cool, smooth, glass which as I touched, I could feel the weight of and I became more solid again. Seeing became easier in the solid mirror and as soon as I saw my hair I knew I was dreaming. Looking down at my hands I was mesmerised watching them turn as I turned them, reflecting in the mirror. I stroked my arms and held myself smiling at my reflection.

Exploring the scenery of the garden again, this time in the mirror's reflection, it was all more greenly vibrant and real. I could still hear the birds and insects but although I felt joy and excitement and delight, my emotions were separate to their sounds now. I stood a long time, watching and daydreaming? just being peaceful and happy until I noticed a familiar guide walking slowly toward me in the mirror's image.

The realisation that I strongly didn't want him to approach me dawned as I began to feel fear and panic rising through me that severed the clarity of my connection, Losing control of the dream, time jumped forward in starts, so that he was next to me before I could breathe. I held on to the frame of the mirror tightly looking down so as not to connect with him but I sensed his calm gentle presence standing next to my right shoulder. I could feel he was smiling and almost, gently, lovingly, laughing as he began to reach over my shoulder. I saw his hand and all awareness of sensations within me ceased as a yawning space in existence opened up around me and I sensed the ginnungagap behind all I could see.

Tightly as I held on to the mirror, when his fingers lightly tapped the frame it became air again for a moment and slipped, literally, through my fingers. As everything re-solidified, I could hear the mirror falling, thudding, cracking and shattering into thousands of fragments and everything was gone.

I could no longer sense or see anything around me through the grief, just the fragments of mirror in front of me, in which I desperately searched for all I had just lost, finding only distortions, stretched out twisted dark lines and things that made me feel afraid to focus. As much as I resisted seeing the dark things, trying to glance over them quickly, each one stabbed its image deeply straight into my centre bringing feelings of fear, abandonment, self-disgust and self-hatred, grief, remorse, embarrassment and shame.

I knew what each distorted image contained, many things I have done, the mistakes I have made, the life I took, the damage I have done to the earth, the ways I have betrayed trust placed in me through my own cowardice, my failures as a parent, all bringing more grief and unbearable remorse. Things that happened to me that I did not want to see at all, the feelings of shame and hot tears, the terror of anyone seeing that me, and my further, deeper shame of shutting that me, unhealed and unprotected, into cold isolation, leaving her to live the nightmare of how she felt, always alone. I was the abuser locking her in, ignoring her endless nightmare and abandoning her.

Trying not to feel, my eyes frantically searched unable to see clearly through the storm of feelings, not wanting to look too well as each moment of focus cut me again and again almost drowning me in dread, until suddenly, finally, came peace. The tide of images and feelings subsided and I realised I was looking into my own eyes, my face looking out at me complete and whole and contained in one shard of glass. Smiling, her/my attention taken and absorbed completely by the beauty she was lost in. The love I saw pouring out of her face felt more tangible and solid than any of my terrors now seemed in retrospect. This was reality, this was truth, this was the centre of my existence, endlessly Loving.

Looking into the Love in that one shard of glass I was healed and held forever.

I looked into the image, searching around for the beauty, searching in the little pieces of sky and garden greenery I could still see reflected around her, trying to listen for the birds or the hum, looking at her beautiful dress and body, perfect and warm and healthy. She was so beautiful and the split second I realised how beautiful she was and an inkling of envy arose in me for her beauty I realised the Love pouring out of her was her Love for me! The amazing beauty I wanted to witness was the me she could see looking back at her in the mirror.

Everything I knew about myself, fell, cracked in two, opened, tumbled out, spread, obliterated and was warmed into an incoherent cloud of passionate, gentle, over-powering Love.

I floated in the cloud, letting every atom of me be soaked and filled, saturated to overflowing, at which point I could suddenly, exquisitely, feel the love so intensely the whole process would begin again until eventually, very gradually I drifted back to consciousness.

Among the thousands of shards of mirror I could see the one with my face reflected in it immediately and had no need to look at any other, but I did anyway, looking at the pieces of my story with Love and compassion and welcoming joy that all these human, humane moments of life and decisions were mine. I sent out reassuring love and a sense of embracing to each of the shards for a long while until I felt finished and ready to bend down and pick up the shard with my face reflected. All the others were clear.

Taking the shard I sat with my guide who handed me a piece of glass-paper to sand the sharp edges so that I could hold the tiny mirror safely, and he showed me future images of myself sharing the mirror with others.

I saw and felt my Love, compassion, joy and sometimes gentle amusement at watching people's reactions...some holding tightly and crying, some dismissing and not looking, some giving up the glass easily, some needing to hold and gaze for a very long time, others showing me their reflection so that we could enjoy the beauty and Love together, which touched me with Love ever more deeply all over again. I could sense happy tears of gratitude and the beauty of the garden again.

Able, for the first moment, to look deeply and clearly into the face of my guide I became aware that he was more than one, I saw many I recognised in the flickering images I inferred from his calm loving face, and many new faces too. I thanked them all with Love and we hugged and held for a while before I had to leave and return to my everyday world.