The Mirror Analogy

[A Fellow Lighter]

Imagine that nothing existed, nothing but you and a mirror. Now imagine that somehow the mirror could only show you your thoughts rather than your reflection. This mirror only ever shows you what you think you are rather than what you actually look like. Everything you see in the mirror is what you imagine yourself to be. The mirror has no spatial or any dimensional limitations, so you're free to think or imagine anything.

Alright, you can stop imagining. This mystical mirror is an analogy for what I've uncovered to be infinity and the nature of all beingness. You can call it consciousness if you want to. I just call it infinity because that is what I've realised, and this analogy is the closest thing I've come up with to make human sense of it.

Infinity, as I've learned it, is not an endless series of something. It is not an endless number of parallel, or otherwise, worlds or anything. How so? Because all of that is still finite – a thing in its own accord. True infinity is that without finitude, no magnitude of any kind and no figuration of any kind. [But this is just for you to consider]

Back to the mirror. This mirror is the infinity. And like I said, this is the closest thing I've gotten to in terms of putting it into language the nature of reality. It's literally just this one mirror, and no rule or law as to what you can imagine. The mind or will is your only limitation. 

[tuku747]

Tu-shun, a Chinese Buddhist who lived around the turn of the 7th century, developed a profound metaphor for the structure of reality called The Net of Indra.

“Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell, or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.”

Let’s say you were to put a dot in one jewel, there would be dots in all the jewels in all directions. That’s how we know it is one jewel. If you remember this metaphor when you think of our tiny microbe cousins and our Mother Gaia, and even our solar and galactic Logoi, as well as our human mind/body/spirit complexes, it is easier to see the present oneness of the Creator’s experience in this very “now”.

If we are a tiny cell of a single, and extremely sophisticated entity, the synchronicities we all experience, like the right book showing up just at the right time or signals from nature make sense. Q’uo calls this “the hall of mirrors in which all things speak to you.”

[Moksha]

I like your mirror analogy for the cosmos. It is bound by the frame of relativity, but anything within its frame can be expressed. It is infinitely imaginable, but everything imagined is still a reflection of the absolute.

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

46 minutes ago, tuku747 said:

“Imagine a vast net; at each crossing point there is a jewel; each jewel is perfectly clear and reflects all the other jewels in the net, the way two mirrors placed opposite each other will reflect an image ad infinitum. The jewel in this metaphor stands for an individual being, or an individual consciousness, or a cell, or an atom. Every jewel is intimately connected with all other jewels in the universe, and a change in one jewel means a change, however slight, in every other jewel.”

That's crazy, I actually had a dream a few weeks ago, that took place in a similar structure! I was in a cell, in this grid like structure, and in each direction there were an infinite reflections of myself, all being contorted and twisted in unimaginable ways and experiencing what I can only describe as "non-physical" suffering. I don't know how to describe this form of suffering, but I'd put it like this: I was suffering the consequences of my own selfishness (that probably sounds confusing, but that's the best I can do), but from the pov of each of these other versions of myself simultaneously. Almost like an eternal realization of my own devilish nature.

I've never really had nightmares, but that's probably the closest I've come to experiencing one. It was really really painful. Like my dreams are really weird, so nothing really shocks me, but that actually sat with me for a minute.

Edited April 12, 2023 by DefinitelyNotARobot

[Dazgwny]

Maybe your mirror, is completely correct. If you look out as far as possible, right up into the sky, that endless void we call space, the universe, out there somewhere, completely empty, void of anything. Maybe that is your very own reflection, that thing, out there, which you can’t see, that completely empty void… you looking at yourself, you looking back at you, at your very own reflection. From nothing to nothing. Ever thought about that? Maybe if you look deep enough you’ll just see yourself out there, looking straight back at yourself. Pure void, pure emptiness, hallucinating a grand load of shit in between 

[A Fellow Lighter]

@tuku747 so I wish there were also a way to illustrate my analogy. But I can't because the illustration is already the present eternal truth of reality being experienced.

@Moksha @Dazgwny

Though I understand your concepts, the mirror I'm talking about transcends them profoundly.

See, this mirror is unbound by anything, no frame whatsoever. And this mirror literally reflects only what you're thinking. So the “frame of relativity” would also be a thought appearing in the mirror. The cosmos and space between would also be a thought appearing in the mirror. The ‘Mirror Analogy’ is also but a thought appearing in the mirror. Everything appearing in the mirror is a thought. And not just any random thought, they are all your thoughts, getting reflected as you think.

[A Fellow Lighter]

The closest experience I can relate with this analogy of the Mystical Mirror is that condition of lucid dreaming. In such a dream, the events happen as you imagine them, as you sequence them and such-and-such. 

So it is with the mirror, except there is no higher world or realm to awaken to. The experience is not a dream. It only becomes like a dream when you're lost in thought, when you've forgotten all about the mirror and believe that what appears is what ultimately is. 

Like I've said, this is what I've uncovered and realised to be true  infinity. Of course, such a realisation has nothing at all to do with the principles of how an actual mirror works. What you realise is that you are the mirror. And forgetting that is what keeps you dreaming rather than thinking lucidly. An experience is but a thought to God.

[Water by the River]

Off-topic, I know.... .  Sorry.

But still hiring 

Water by the River

[Moksha]

4 hours ago, A Fellow Lighter said:

See, this mirror is unbound by anything, no frame whatsoever. 

The unbounded has no frames. It is absolute reality, beyond all dreams.

The absolute looks through infinite mirrors, binding its awareness through them. Sometimes it loses itself entirely in them, and sometimes it realizes itself, but the frames through which it looks are still the boundaries of imagination. Even when the absolute is lucid within the dream, there must be the wispiest frame for the dream to appear that it exists.

Regardless of apparent lucidity, they are dreams and all of them eventually dissolve back into the unbound absolute which always is.