Who looks at you in the mirror?
Who are you? I don’t mean your name, because that can be changed. I don’t mean where you came from, because that is just history. What you do – that’s either your passion, your pain, your prison or your predicament.
What I’m asking today goes so much deeper than that. I’m talking about the consciousness inside of you that watches you.
And always has.
When I was 17, I was a pretty troubled kid. I had a lot of anger inside of me, and also fear, confusion, sadness, loneliness and doubt. I acted out in stupid ways. Skipping school, angry outbursts.
I even remember one day sitting alone in my bedroom, repeatedly plunging a knife into my mattress. No, I wasn’t imagining anyone. I honestly wasn’t really thinking at all. I was just finding some way to relieve the pain I was feeling.
That’s when I really became familiar with the consciousness.
I became aware of myself watching myself. Or should I say the other self… I’m still not sure? But I realized that the me that was watching me was concerned. It was if I could hear the other me saying gently “Alan, I’m not entirely sure why you are doing this, but this is not normal, and you have to figure this out”.
Although it was me, it was also not me, in that this was not the me who was in pain, and struggling to find answers.
This was a different me. Wiser, older, detached from the emotions that were causing so much pain, and able to see what I could not, because I was in the middle of the storm.
Whereas he was beyond all that.
Since then I have come to realize that my consciousness is not always me. I know that sounds crazy, it does as I’m writing this, but there have been times when I see myself while I am myself.
It happens more and more now, this continual analysis, this watchfulness, this continual education from someone who seems to know me better than I know myself.
As he has come to know me better, and I have come to listen closer, and trust more deeply in him, I find myself growing older, hopefully wiser, and more at peace with myself and the universe that I find myself in.
Now as I look in the mirror, I can almost see both of us at the same time. Me, and the me who watches me. Yet the more distinct we become in the mirror, the less distinct we become inside my soul. Maybe that’s a good sign, or maybe it’s not, I can’t be sure.
But I sense that the more I allow my consciousness to blend with me, I am finding greater peace, clearer purpose, compounding passion, and a greater sense of my power.
Not in a rule the world sense, but more of an ability to help, to heal, to comfort, console and guide.
As we/me merge together, we are both losing ourselves in the service of others, and I can’t help but think that’s a good thing.
So I would ask you today, who is watching you, and are you listening to them?
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings