by Tania Kotsos
Everyone is your mirror. This is the greatest of all relationships secrets and the only one you really need to understand to transform all your relationships. Here it is again – every single person in your life is your mirror. What this means is that others are simply reflecting parts of your own consciousness back to you, giving you an opportunity to really see yourself and ultimately to grow. The qualities you most admire in others are your own and the same goes for those qualities you dislike. To change anything in your relationships, be the change you want to see.
Mirror Mirror on the Wall: Learn to recognise yourself in other people. Everything and everyone is your mirror. It is only when you understand what it truly means to see yourself reflected back at you, that there is no room for blame, there is no room for judgement and there is no room to feel like a victim of another person’s actions or words. There is only room for real love based on understanding and gratitude. Compromise comes easy, forgiveness is a given and growth is inevitable. While this truth applies to all of your relationships, from your family, to your friends and colleagues, and even to those you deem your “enemy”, it is your relationship with your significant other that enables you to take the closest, most accurate look at who you are.
When Only the Face Seems to Change: It is certainly no secret that all your intimate relationships tend to be similar. Surely you have noticed how the fundamentals seem to remain the same while only the face changes. The repetition of the same problems, the same feelings and the same insecurities often leave you despondent and even reluctant to try again. You surrender yourself to the belief that relationships are difficult and require much compromise and that the only relationship secret out there is luck, timing or even Divine Will. You can’t help but notice how what starts off with such hope often ends with no hope at all.
There is One Common Denominator: What you perhaps haven’t noticed though, is that in all these repetitive relationships there has always only been one common denominator – YOU. Whoever the person is that you have next to you, no matter how many times you change him or her, the fundamentals of your relationship will remain unchanged (albeit to varying degrees) because they are simply mirroring you. It can be no other way. This realisation may frustrate you at first and you may even reject the truth that everyone is your mirror. However, you will quickly come to see it as great news because it means that you too can enjoy those loving relationships that previously seemed out of reach. To do so, the only person you need to influence is yourself.
What are You Really Seeing in the Mirror: To internalise this truth, that everyone is your mirror, you must first understand it. Your relationships with others are your opportunity to experience yourself and grow. They are a perfect mirror of your inner relationship with yourself and the beliefs you have acquired about life and love. Everything you admire in another person belongs to you and the same goes for all that which you dislike. In order for you to recognise a certain quality in another, then it must be part of your consciousness. You could not see it otherwise. Essentially, the bottom-line cause of break-ups and divorce, is when one or both of the partners can no longer stand to see themselves in the other person. To best understand how everyone is your mirror, think in terms of these three categories: your beliefs, your qualities, and your actions.
1. Your Beliefs are Staring You in the Face: Your beliefs about relationships, about men, about women, about love and life in general are all there for you to see in your relationships. We have all acquired certain beliefs throughout our lifetime that cause us to react and act in certain habitual ways that either support us or don’t. This is most notable in our relationships because in order to experience anything or anyone you must first relate to it. For instance, if you believe that men or women are not to be trusted (no matter how trustworthy you are), or if you yourself have been willing to be the “other woman” or “other man” in the past, then by the Law of Attraction you will attract relationships in which a lack of trust is a major issue because that is where you have chosen to vibrate. Even if your partner is being faithful to you, you will look for reasons to prove otherwise and, as the saying goes, you always find what you are looking for.
Where Did Your Beliefs Come From? The problem is that you did not consciously choose many (if not any) of those beliefs that govern your experiences and relationships at the subconscious level. Instead, your beliefs were, unbeknown to you, handed to you by society, the media, your parents and your friends. There are also those beliefs that came part and parcel with your culture and upbringing, and the stricter your culture in the area of relationships, the more ingrained those specific beliefs. Since your relationships are based on those beliefs, your experiences only prove to re-enforce them for you, thereby creating something of a virtuous or vicious cycle depending on whether your beliefs support a healthy and balanced relationship or not.
2. Owning Up to Your Qualities: Every quality that you see in your partner, whether you admire it or not, is your mirror – it is showing you who you are. The more you dislike a certain quality, the more it is showing you a part of your consciousness that you are not acknowledging. For instance, if you dislike your partner’s jealous nature, you will find that you too are jealous perhaps not of him or her but of others. If your partner’s competitiveness annoys you, you will find that you too are competitive. If your partner’s negativity or insecurities get you down, you will find that you too have a negative nature and the same insecurities. The only reason that these qualities are annoying you is because they are also yours. As long as you do not acknowledge them as your own they will continue to frustrate you, while owning up to them provides you with the chance to grow.
When Positive Qualities Annoy You: Interestingly, you may find that even some positive qualities annoy you. For example, if your partner’s overly kind and giving nature frustrates you, it is showing you that you too want to become more kind and giving but are resisting doing so. Alternatively, your partners’ ability to forgive may make you uneasy. Instead of becoming frustrated, see it as an opportunity to learn forgiveness. This ties into why opposites appear to attract as explained later in this article.
3. Your Actions – How Do You Treat Yourself and Others? When your partner acts in a particular way that upsets you, you will find that you too act in the same way, most likely not towards him or her but towards yourself and probably others. The more a particular action frustrates you, the more it reflects a part of you that you are not owning. If your partner treats you with disrespect, look within yourself and see who you treat with similar disrespect, whether it be a friend, a family member or yourself. If your partner criticises you, you will find that you are critical of yourself and most probably of others. If your partner ignores your needs, you will find that you too ignore your own needs or those of others. Ultimately, you teach others how to treat you by how you treat yourself.
Reconciling Opposites Attract with Like Attracts Like: You may have heard that opposites attract and indeed this often appears to be the case. So how can relationships always be your mirror if opposites attract? The answer lies in the Law of Polarity that states that “everything is dual, everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree”. In other words, qualities that appear to be opposites are in fact two extremes of the same quality. For instance hot and cold may appear to be opposite but are varying degrees of that which we call temperature. The same applies to all human qualities and emotions.
You may find that the quality you see in your partner appears to be the opposite of your own quality, but in fact it is the same quality expressed in a different way. It is still your mirror. For example, the introvert attracts the extrovert, the weak attracts the strong, the giving attracts the taking. Such seemingly opposite partners attract each other so that they can learn from each other and bring their own extreme quality into balance. In order to attract your opposite, you yourself have to be at the other end of the spectrum and so are unbalanced as far as that quality is concerned. Simply put, opposites attract in search of balance. When none of your qualities are at either extreme of the spectrum, then you can no longer attract its opposite.
Abusive Relationships are No Exception: This advice is aimed at healing and transforming your relationships. Emotionally and physically abusive relationships are no exception. Their reflection is no less accurate than that of any other relationship. At the root of abusive relationships you will usually find a severe lack of self-worth in the abused partner, which is re-iterated by their refusal to leave the abuser. The only way to rise above such relationships is through the power of self-love. In fact, it is the foundation of this great secret that everyone is your mirror.
Article continued here: How to Change Your Relationships
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source:
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