Mirror me

I saw a Gandhi quote on Pinterest the other day and it’s been on my mind ever since. “Nobody can hurt me without my permission”. These words cause the feeling of gratitude to expand in my heart ” I do not give you permission to pollute my happiness or my world”. I feel very strongly about this message. My pain is mine, it’s my stuff as I have often read in many books, other people are a mirror to show us where we having more healing to do. So while others may ‘appear’ to upset or hurt us, this is never the case and not true. The people around you are a mirror, that is all and to understand this teaching in your own experience is profoundly life changing.

I can remember when I first ‘got’ this teaching. I was alone one morning several years ago, in a great deal of emotional pain and feeling blindsided by it. I called a friend of mine who is a teacher of The Course in Miracles. I shared with her how I was feeling about all the things my boyfriend at the time was saying to me. My dialogue was something like this “he makes me so mad, he is so rude and so arrogant, he really hurt my feelings” I was crying and distraught. All my friend said was this “Lara, he’s a mirror, he is showing you what you still need to heal within yourself”. While I had read about this ‘mirror business’ before, I had very obviously NOT previously SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED there was any truth to it. In that moment when she spoke those words, I HEARD her, deep inside me something shifted, like my eyes opened inside of me for a moment and I could see and feel very deeply that she was right. There was a truth here now that while I could not explain I could feel was very true. I sat in my car and she sat whenever she was on the phone in silence for some minutes, as I look back now, I would say the energy moving through my body, heart and mind was so very powerful and strong like a hot rush of anger and adrenaline all at once. Next Susan said “you will want to thank him, to be grateful to him for showing you where you still have healing to do”. I wasn’t fully ready to take that on as I was still coming down from the impact of ‘getting’ this amazing truth and yet I could again feel the honesty and wisdom in her words. I knew now that I had some very honest work to do within myself. I went home and sat quietly and asked myself a number of questions about the source of my pain and this process (a few weeks of committed attention and honesty) ultimately revealed my anger towards my father, my pain I had created and held for years and never dealt with until that day after my blessed friend gently shook me and woke me up to a liberating truth. My gratitude extends today and always to Susan Parks Hunt~amazing teacher of A Course in Miracles for over 33 years now. To understand, see, feel, get that only you can heal you and others will show you is impactful and so very powerful. After this, you have a tool to heal your life and you will no longer attempt to hold others hostage, blaming and pointing the finger at them, because you will know it was never about them, it’s always about you.

Never make your pain about someone else. You are the keeper of your inner domain, your peace, joy and emotional independence.