Part 2 of Mirrors: Learning from What is Reflected
Part 1 is here.
The inspiration to write the posts on mirroring arose through reflecting on my various interests, how they are related, and my motivation to delve into each of these topics over the years.
By contemplating aspects of life as a mirror, I don’t intend to dismiss difficult experiences or injustices. There are moments when contemplating life experiences as a mirror is empowering, and times when it’s not. For example, when we are experiencing a crisis, what we likely need is to directly tend to what’s happening, vs. contemplate what we can learn from what’s happening. Timing makes a difference, as well as the intention to find grounded relation with what happened or what is in order to empower ourselves and each other.
I’ve written about contemplating life as a mirror in seven different ways. Each section points towards ways we can learn and grow by including more, including what’s difficult, and integrating and potentially transcending contexts we are ready to outgrow.
Now, onward to Part 2.
In Part 1, I touched on:
Meditative Silence as a mirror
Relationships as a mirror
The World as a mirror
Social Architecture as a mirror
Part 2 includes a bit about:
Ancestral Legacies as a mirror
Birth Experience as a mirror
The Stars as a mirror
Ancestral Legacies as a Mirror
In the last 4 or 5 years, studying ancestral healing has opened up my world in surprising ways, deepening self-understanding and changing my perspective. What I learned through Daniel Foor’s book and online course, Ancestral Medicine, has become foundational for me, particular in how grounding I experience my contact with my various ancestral lineages. Ancestral healing studies with Thomas Hübl, along with his courses focused on healing, mysticism, and collective trauma facilitator training continue to be a foundational resource and community in my life.
I’ve learned that we can restore belonging and a sense of rootedness through felt connection with our ancestral lineages. Hyper-individualism, a predominate construct in today’s world, cuts us off from knowing ourselves as an outgrowth of our ancestral lineage(s).
Attachment plays a part here. Our early connection with our caregivers impacts how our nervous systems are wired. Our innate intelligence supports us to adapt, survive and optimize our experience within our relational environment. These early adaptations, which can take many forms, occur before our front brain is online, operating unconsciously. Whatever our adaptations, they are functions of resilience: our body/mind/heart’s capacity to find a way through our experiences, just as our ancestors found a way. And thus, we are here.
In a healing process, we tend to begin with individual healing. As we open more complexity, we may discover that some issues we are dealing with are not only individual. The understanding, ‘It is part of my life, and it belongs not only to me,’ enlarges the context. Whatever our ancestors couldn’t resolve remains (in some form) as an issue for us to resolve.
There is a connection between contemplating social architecture as a mirror and ancestral legacies as a mirror, as our ancestors’ experiences unfolded in relation to the time, place, and social situation they lived in. Just as we adapt into our caregiver environments and/or family systems, our family systems are embedded into a larger cultural and social location, which was embedded within a particular point historically. So too, with all our ancestors. Each of our histories is embedded within and inter-woven with other histories.
Reflecting on our ancestral legacies is about connection, interconnection, inhabiting our bodies, and bridging engagement among present and past, as well as within ourselves and with each other. Contemplating our ancestral legacies opens our consciousness to a bigger river of time including and beyond the duration of our lives. It can be very meaningful to feel ourselves a part of something that began before we were here, something much more ancient.
The ancestral healing process includes unpacking the specific gifts and burdens in our lives that we each carry as ancestral legacy. The legacies take on a different context when we perceive them through an ancestral lense vs. identifying them as only individual. New possibilities emerge as we have the right-sized container for the size of the issues we are dealing with — like how much liquid can fit in a certain sized cup. Ancestral-sized issues need an ancestral-sized (and attuned) consciousness to integrate, allowing us to expand the gifts and gradually melt the burdens.
Birth Experience as a Mirror
Birth is a significant initiation as we transition from beings in the womb to breathing on our own. Our entry into this world impacts our nervous systems and emotional patterns, and impacts how we relate, as well as the lense we see the world through. These foundational perspectives / lenses are usually invisible to our consciousness and may get reflected back in various ways through themes in our life experience.
Like any pattern we become conscious of and want to transform, melting or evolving from our birth patterns is possible. I first learned about working with pre- and peri-natal and birth patterns (for myself and with clients) in 2009 with Katie Hendricks as part of her 2-year Leadership and Transformation Training. Multiple modalities support a somatic connection to our experience of the birth transition, and to pre- and peri-natal stages. A somatic approach to reflecting on our birth experience as a mirror can facilitate melting into a softer, warmer, more contactful way of inhabiting our bodies and our lives.
Recently, I am returning to focus on unwinding early patterns and find it empowering, like becoming a doula to my ever-emerging Self even as I continue to integrate residual experiences from these early stages. This healing work unfolds in a spiral, deepening over time.
The Stars as a Mirror
I enjoy reflecting on the stars (via astrological transits and various kinds of charts). I was first drawn to astrology a few decades ago as I experienced receiving a kind of empathy through natal chart readings, which grew my self-understanding. Learning about various astrological systems was fun, and I occasionally brought it into my work over the years.
Reflecting on the stars as a mirror, I want to be clear about cause. When (subjectively) meaningful things co-arise, there is a tendency to attempt to find safety in the form of trying to understand what causes what. For that matter, it is a common phenomenon to struggle to cognitively understand when we are scared, confused, or overwhelmed. As if, by understanding, we could get rid of the difficult feeling or state. I’m not saying that understanding what causes what isn’t important. It is part of developing and maturing. And it’s not always simple, clear, or even possible.
I don’t look to astrology from a causal perspective, as in ‘my sun in Leo causes me to have certain personality traits or behave in certain ways,’ but as a mirror which contributes to self-exploration. Astrology itself is a type of mirror, based on what is reflected in the sky at the moment of birth. Human Design and Gene Keys charts include an additional element of a second chart calculated 88 days before birth, reflecting the beginning of the last third of a full-term pregnancy.
Regardless of the content of a particular chart, we all were born under the wholeness of sky: we all have the whole sky in our chart. Based on what was happening in the sky at the precise location and moment you were born (and also based on which astrological system you are looking at as there are different ways to calculate), you may discover synchronicities with your chart (of whatever astrological system you are drawn to) and what you experience so far in your life.
Each archetypal quality alluded to in a chart carries a range of potential expressions. They are not moral distinctions. My perspective is none of the information reflected in a chart is inherently better or worse than any other information. Just as a multiplicity of qualities in Nature co-exist and are interdependent, so are qualities in the cosmos which are reflected in an astrological chart. Each bit of information in a chart emanates a quality which is an essential aspect of wholeness.
If you choose to engage with any kind of astrological chart, I recommend you not take anything in your chart as a fact about you, particularly about your future, nor a rule about how you should be. It is a mirror to explore, relate with, and learn through your embodied experience if you choose.
Conclusion
Patterns that are operating unconsciously tend to replay themselves through us. Without a ground of presence and an orientation with curiosity, our unconscious patterns tend to repeat and are often experienced as happening to us. When we’re aware of a pattern we wish to transform, we begin to discover and integrate what’s here for us, creating intimacy with our somatic experience.
We need to find ways to restore and bridge new connections with ourselves, each other, and our Earth. Our capacity to sense, feel, and orient to life in a grounded way with an intention to discover a response aligned with our values opens new possibilities. We can refine our intentions or create new ones and make new choices.
What are your mirrors, your paths? I invite you to drop me a line and let me know.
Reach out if you want to explore working with me. Each of the sections I have written are aspects of my work.