Like much of humanity I need occasional company and genuine connections, and recently I had caught myself yearning for that authentic joyous comraderie that says “I see you”. This feeling had been spawned from an overdose of solitude. Yet when I reached out and congregated with people I often found myself sitting silently because the person I am with is too busy talking to stop, listen, and genuinely cultivate heart-to-heart connection with another. Not always, but often.
There is of course some truth in the age old ‘New Age’ teachings that tell us that to experience true connection we must first find love within the self, this can be a big ask. I feel self-acceptance is a good place to start. I also feel that self-acceptance and self-love truly blossoms when we experience ourselves through being genuinely witnessed by another. When we sit together, share and can genuinely say “I see You”. When we don’t receive the occasional dose of being witnessed it is easy to sink into unproductive navel gazing which is essentially mental masturbation, it can be useful once in a while but not great as a constant!
Over a course of months I have, between my long bouts of solitude, sporadically hosted, entertained, and joined with others. And I have listened to many spiritual clichés that have been regurgitated into the conversation, which has been quite tiring. From the “This was meant to happen and is in perfect alignment”, which in effect eliminates choice and removes responsibility from the experiencer, not least finding a solution, to the spiritual cliché of, “You are only seeing ‘that’ in the person because they are a mirror of who you are”. Hmm. I call this spiritual bypassing.
I too believe in Divine Intervention, but sometimes something has happened because I, or someone else, has simply not paid attention. And often what you see in another is actually what is there, and has nothing to do with what is within you as the Observer. I feel that we all need to trust ourselves and have discernment. Not everything is a mirror of the Self. Some things are giving us message about what we are not, or more precisely, who we are not. Yet others are the individual’s projections looking for a dumping ground. What does belong to each of us is how we choose to respond. Our respond-ability is more important and reflects the truth of what is held inside at that moment.
We co-create our reality as individuals and as a collective and in so many ways this world does serve as a mirror to the internal Self. But the internal Self also acts as an observer and interpreter to what is perceived as the external world. There is a spiralling dance that goes on between the perceived external world and inner worlds, what we believe is what we perceive, this is true. But the conundrum is, what is the ‘Truth’ of what we see in this multidimensional, quantumly entangled Realm we call Earth?
I feel that all of it is the truth, and none of it is the truth. I guess this sounds like a Zen Koan. But in essence what I am saying is that, in this particular Earth Realm at least, there is no one Truth and if you think that you have found the answer then you have probably inadvertently put yourself into a box of belief systems that will then dictate the perception you have of yourself and of the world you exist in. This in turn influences how you interpret an experience and what you then experience as your ‘reality’. Which in turn influences how you interact with your ‘reality’ and how the ‘reality’ responds back to you.
In this way our choices create what we perceive as our reality. The problem with believing that we alone are responsible for creating our own reality is that this denies the existence of other variables which are (generally) other human beings. These other human beings have their own complexities and perceptions of reality, and we cannot control what another chooses to think, do, feel, receive, project or to echo back to us. Each time we interact with another person or group, in the flesh or virtually, we create a new reality bubble as the two (or more) realities blend into what appears to be a ‘shared’ reality with each person believing that what they are experiencing is “the truth” and that the other is experiencing and sharing the same ‘truth’.
I feel we perceive our personal reality and this becomes an imagined creation that we believe is true, we then attempt to confirm and make true through our reactions that come from those perceptions. The world then either confirms or denies our perceived reality. It ‘reflects’ back to us. This does not mean everybody is a mirror reflecting back to us who we are, it means that we create our reality in our minds and in our interpretations of what we experience and perceive and this is filtered through our personal perceptual lens. And a simple ‘truth’ is that there are people who are not aware that they are actually projecting their own self onto another rather than developing genuine self-awareness. We have seen this with many a Guru over the ages, and now.
This is why I speak and teach of heart-based experience, because the heart translates energy in terms of frequency and vibration and if we pay attention and remain aware we know whether something is mirroring an aspect of ourselves or not, and we are conscious of those times when we may be projecting our shadow onto another. We can all feel whether we are in a shared reality bubble or whether we are in fact existing, at that moment, in a parallel universe touching the edges of the external reality that is being played out in that moment.
If we take the literal belief that everything we experience is a reflection of our inner world, then it can lead to further navel gazing, what in the New Age dictums is called ‘Processing” where life becomes a continual practice of experience, processing, experience and even more processing. Where is the room for just Living? If a person looks at everything as being a mirror of the Self then that makes for a lot of processing and not a lot of self-acceptance.
We live in a world of contrast and duality and this affects our perception. Add to this the multidimensionality of this Earth Realm… well that is a lot of processing! The paradox is to know who you are, separate from others, whilst still holding the awareness that we are also connected through Unity Consciousness.
In my experience, sometimes who you experience as an unpleasant person is actually just that, an unpleasant person. The person who snubs you at the office or in the yoga studio, is just that, a person who snubs you. You can process that as a reflection of something being mirrored back to you as needing to be ‘processed’ in yourself, or see them as how they are behaving in that moment, it is their ‘stuff’. Sometimes the person you meet with an open heart is just that an open heart. You can choose to perceive them with an equally open heart or not. It is your response that is your responsibility, and that is where we need to focus. Respond-ability
I have found that the more we live life through our hearts, the more neutral we become and the more we can respond in the moment. As we begin to realise that this world is full of contradiction and paradox, we learn to negotiate this paradox with more flexibility and flow, with neutrality. This neutrality I am speaking of is called Zero Point and can serve as a mirror to others, whereby the ‘you’ another thinks they see is actually a projection of their own inner perceptions and beliefs. I am sure you have sat and listened to someone telling you who they think you are and yet you KNOW that what they saying is a projection of their own thoughts and actions and nothing what so ever to do with who you are? I know I have.
Add to this the world of virtual reality. This world of narcissism is expanding with people being encouraged by the constant urgings of social media to become “someone”, whilst the shadow that lies beneath the social face becomes unfairly projected onto another. It is so interesting how over the past decade the concept of ‘narcisissm’, once only the province of “Head” Masters, has fast become a household word and not only understood, but increasingly experienced by many. The challenge is that in neutrality we often serve as blank slates for another to project and compose their own Self onto.
As I mentioned earlier, recently I was feeling intense loneliness and had endeavoured to reach out to a few people. My loneliness felt the need for co-creation, for a mirror that was not me looking back at me but rather another witnessing and seeing who I Am. These friends were, as we all seem often to be, too busy to connect. I understood, I too am often ‘too’ busy and I totally get how that is. But I was also feeling sad and unseen. This was an experience of feeling rather than rational thought.
Of course, as all diligent self-aware (paranoid) people do, I first looked within myself. “Is it me?” “Have I thought so pessimistically recently that I have manifested this to happen where I no longer have connections to reach out to?” “am I not a nice person?”, “I am not important to anybody,” and so on and so forth in a paranoid stream of consciousness that I call ‘mental masturbation’, (but without the expectation of joyous climax!).
I, in my Adult Self understood that Life happens, appointments appear, people are travelling, we are all busy. There have also been times when I have not intuited that a family member or friend has not been doing well and have been too busy. So, certainly I understood rationally. However, my Shadow Child didn’t feel like understanding, she felt the perceived neglected part, and the previously hidden part of herself rose up in full force and sulked!
Not a good look, but certainly enlightening to that part of myself that lay hidden in her lair like a sleeping dragon, until she woke up and demanded to be attended to. All I could say to her was “I see You”. And in recognising the dragon and bringing her out into the Light to be seen, she integrated in the acknowledgement and acceptance of who She is and made her voice heard in a different way. She felt witnessed.
She encouraged me to step out into the World, so off I went to the UK. I connected, I was seen, and not only the parts of me that wished to be seen, I shared, I co-created joyous connection, I also co-created in shadow projection, in being a part of the Unity Consciousness that we all are.
Whilst travelling I had a vision of our Holographic Earth Realm which seemed so poignant as I had been thinking about the experience of mirroring and witnessing. I had stayed with a friend and we were saying goodbyes. As I walked away I could see in my minds eye a vision so complex yet so simple. As we separated I was still feeling our shared reality bubble, but as I watched her grow smaller in the distance I could see she was already retreating into her reality bubble, and I could feel myself ‘exiting’ our shared reality bubble and travelling on in my reality bubble into another dimension, a parallel universe. I felt the strangeness of existing apart from my beloved friend and wondering at her experience of existing apart from me. Yet we both disappeared into our separate, yet not separate, reality bubbles as we parted. I felt the nostalgia of having felt this separation of so many other dearly beloveds across the Earth and across the ages, sharing the stage briefly through lifetimes, and between the worlds.
As I was driving through the connecting streets the people I passed were also in their bubbles of reality. I felt like a shadow person briefly entering and spectating, yet not really participating, I was an observer as I drove past, a perceiver of what appeared to be a shared reality as I quickly travelled through the streets.
I was shown in this vision how each of these reality bubbles were different dimensions upon this Earth Realm. Each person contributing to the co-creation of community, the sound, the flavours, the colours and smells, unifying the experiences of that dimension. And as they separated they intersected a new dimension, also with its community, sound, flavour, smells and so on. As I watched I realised I could join that reality in thought and sometimes feeling, but it remained my reality bubble, my perceptual lens, that was interpreting, it was not their reality I was experiencing, it was mine. So it is for all of us.
As the vision expanded I could clearly see this Earth Realm existing as an interconnected etheric web, and within this the co-creation of billions of reality bubbles, intersecting and blending into each other, perceived of course, make-believe, yet physically solid to the experiencer. These intersecting bubbles were dimensions of experience, they also all had unique signature, unique truths of that reality bubble. All of it the truth and none of it the truth, truth only in the perceptions of the observer as they survey, or participate, in the dance.
I saw that as I travel through many different lands, as many of us do, we each time-travel through various dimensions, or bubbles of reality, and they were also travelling through us. As we travel we take ourselves with us, yet a different aspect of ourselves may emerge and be perceived, received, ‘seen’ in each of these reality bubbles. We are ourselves yet somehow we have time travelled through and into different experiences which are dimensions within which the reality bubbles exist. These realities are felt through frequency and vibration which make them dimensions. And I am talking only of what appears to be this Earth Realm and not touching on what is connected beyond. We are participating observers in this world, seen and unseen.
There is a well-known Zen Koan that asks, “If a tree falls in the forest does anybody hear?” In the midst of the forest, a different dimension to the city for instance, there is a singular flavour, sound, smell and experience, a different ‘vibe’ we could say. I guess the koan is asking whether the forest exists if it is not observed.
I have come to believe the whole of creation needs to be witnessed, to be seen and to be heard. And the tree in the forest? Well the perhaps in their particular dimension of reality bubbles the other trees witness, and the birds, the insects the wildlife that have perhaps shared their journey with the tree. And nowadays the lone drone that flies over filming it all.
It seems like obscure vision, but at the same time it is interesting to feel into and I had been given the vision for a reason. The reason? Enjoy the ride! Bless with gratitude the opportunity to experience different dimensions in this Earth Realm. Feel into the dimension you are passing through, observe without judgement the strangers you pass. Accept when you remain unseen that perhaps their reality bubble does not encompass your dimensional experience, and visa versa of course. Give thanks to the person who witnesses you and sees you and joins you in their way to create a new, shared reality bubble. It was an amazing vision and understanding of something so simple yet complex. It was a vision of a unified field of consciousness experiencing its’ Self.
This has turned out to be a long peace, talk about mental masturbation! This however felt, for me at least, to have a climax that remains for the moment in my reality bubble. So, I leave you now to your reality bubble as I journey in the ether of this multidimensional, virtual reality bubble we call “The Web”
Back in Ibiza, enjoying quiet inner reflection and re-kindled appreciation for Life, work, and solitude. Witnessing the flowers, tress and wildlife and giving thanks for them witnessing me as I witness them. Aho!
Special love and thanks to Storm Hawthorne and April Olas for being there and witnessing me when I most needed it.
With love as always from my heart to yours x