Man in the Mirror PROJECT - Diamonds in the Rough

There is a story of a pen in Buddhist tradition.  The teacher places a pen before you and asks what it is.  When you say its a pen, he or she describes that it is not a pen to a dog, and may be a toy for a child.

It is a lesson in emptiness.  We all will put labels on things and with those labels we also place the associated attachments to them.  If we are a wife, it means we are this, that and the other.  If we identify someone as a nun, she is holy, good, and celibate.  We make assumptions about what we label and assume others labels and definitions are the same as our own.  They are not.  It is evidenced all over the world.  Peace for some maybe a quiet nights sleep.  Holiness may be a miracle and war may be the only idea accepted for some to change things.

We box ourselves in according to these beliefs.  We have picked them up from our society, our neighbors, our family, our friends.  We stand alone in them, and sometimes solitary in our thinking of them, even combating ourselves with negative ideas about who we are.  This is the real work of Man in the Mirror.  What do you believe, what do you think, why do you think it and have you tested the theory to find out if it's true?

Blanket statements about others such as mothers are enduring, fathers are the protectors of the family contradict what is actually happening in society.  Inside, we may feel less than because the definitions of father/mother don't coincide with what our experience has been.  The same is true for every definition of ourselves and others we have placed in our minds.  Our patterns, our thoughts are uniquely given to us, uniquely planted subconsciously even by the way we are made to feel.  The two go hand in hand, so if I am told I am ugly, I also feel it.  If I am told by society I am a cripple, I feel I am more than I did before I was told.  Sometimes just a glance can transmit a feeling to individuals sensitive to others projections of thought.

All of these ideas, concepts and beliefs swirl around us like leaves blowing in the wind.  They can make our minds busy all of the time and often block the light of our true selves from coming through.   We become our worst enemies by repeating our beliefs about ourselves and who we are without even knowing it.  We pull shades on the light of who we truly are because we have been told and believed we are less than for so long, it's simply not feasible to believe otherwise.  How can I be so powerful when I FEEL so inadequate?

Natural diamonds

Imagine a diamond when it's found in it's natural state.  They are rough and unpolished.  The exterior boasts hard milky substance that must be cleared away to get to the true clear brilliance underneath.  You are the same way.  The thoughts you have created are the hard milky substance that surrounds you.  The real you is the brilliant part inside.  Bright and shiny, clear and perfect.  To get to the real part of you, we must begin by noticing.  Just noticing our thoughts for the next few days.

When you feel yourself getting irritated, upset, going to reach for that one more cookie, or feeling sad, sit in the emotion and dig deeper.  Ask yourself why you feel the way you do:

Is it something someone said, someone did or something that happened?

Name the emotion you feel, then break it down further.  If it's anger why are you angry?  Is it because someone hurt your feelings, made you feel ashamed, jealous, rejected, abandon?  Be honest with yourself and name it.

Now what is already in you is why this feeling has erupted.  Inside you have connected your external experience with something, some pattern already within you.  These are the first steps in identifying it.  What is in you that made you feel the way you felt and why?

This is a for instance:

My day was going quite well.  I went to the drugstore to buy milk and caught a elderly man briskly walking toward the refrigerated cases impatiently.  I stepped aside and he forcefully opened the door extracting a gallon of milk for himself.  I noticed I began to get angry.  More so, I was irritated with his behavior.  Who did he think he was barging into that space and making me feel as if I had to step aside to accommodate him?

Digging deeper I realize the man reminded me of an experience with another older man.  He walked the same way, acted the same way, and I had reacted the same way.  His actions made me feel as though I needed to change my actions to accommodate him.  I had learned this from my family.  If my father was angry, you learned very quickly to act a certain way.  If you didn't, you would upset the family further and that would be a no no.  Most likely this behavior and pattern came from his family upbringing and there in lies the cycle.

Now is the tricky part.  Is this behavior correct?  Our minds may go to a place of right and wrong, or acceptance or shrugging it off, but energetically this pattern has been established in our fields. Energetically this energy has created a little puddle of cloudy substance that has been over laid on our essence.  We have diminished our worth because of the behavior of someone else.  This does not resolve the issue in our feeling body, nor does it help the continued behavior of the person that has perpetrated or brought up the feeling within us.  We can't change the person, but we can change ourselves and how we react to the person and the situation.   When it happens again we get an opportunity to see how well we have done.

Play the scenario out in your head again:

Next time that happens I will . . . . .

When I begin to feel that emotion again, I'll know it's coming from . . . .

I will re-route my internal wiring and release the emotion by knowing it's only from . . . .

I deserve more freedom in my life from that emotion and no longer need to carry that type of energy with me.

Starting here we can begin to release some of the energies that have been stored for lifetimes in our energetic fields.  If we remain conscious of how we feel and when it happens, we will be better able to grasp what it is we need to release.  Sooner or later your hard milky substance will be gone and the bright shiny diamond you truly are will begin to emerge.