Mirror

"Love Is Like a Mirror"
The Mirror, as Zen masters say, is without ego and without mind. If a face comes in front of it, it reflects a face. If a table comes by, it reflects a table. It shows a crooked object to be crooked and a straight object to be straight. Everything is revealed as it really is. There is no discriminating mind or self-consciousness on the part of the mirror. If something comes, the mirror reflects it; if it moves on, the mirror lets it move on. The mirror is always empty of itself and therefore able to receive the other. The mirror has no preconditions for entry, no preconditions for acceptance. It receives and reflects back what is there, nothing more or nothing less. The mirror is the perfect lover and the perfect contemplative. It does not evaluate, judge or act. It takes the advice of the philosopher Wittgenstein: “Don’t think, just look.” If we are to see as God sees, we must first become mirrors. We must become no-thing so that we can receive some-thing. That is probably the only way that love is ever going to happen. To love demands a complete transformation of consciousness, a transformation that has been the goal of all religious founders, saints, mystics and gurus since we began to talk about love. And the transformation of consciousness is this: We must be liberated from ourselves. We really need to be saved from the tyranny of our own judgments, opinions and feelings about everything, the “undisciplined squads of emotions” that T.S. Eliot criticizes in his poetry. We must stop believing our false subjectivity that chooses to objectify God and our own soul. (Which is the likely reason why most Western individualist hate themselves. We treat our own souls as objects to be dissected, judged and perfected.)
- Richard Rohr, from “Image and Likeness: The Restoration of the Divine Image”

I think that, in order to truly love, and accept love, we must empty ourselves of judgement and preconceived notions. We must also be willing to accept people and then let them go without holding them down. This is one of the hardest things to do. We are so posessive that we want to hold on when we find a good thing. This is a lesson I will likely be learning every day for the rest of my life. I want to be a person who can love honestly at all times, holding on when it is needed, and also letting go when that is needed. To know the difference requires great wisdom that is very slow in coming. Furthermore, to accept the great and unconditional love of God requires that I get rid of the hindrances (mostly self-judgement and material distractions) that blind me to His love. If our lives are too full of other things, we cannot receive God. I find it sad that we are so caught up in our own little worlds that we cannot see and understand His great love. I suspect that if we could, our present lives would drop away and we would be infinitely changed. I pray that this would happen.