Because I can balance it in my mind. I can take what I see, conjure it in my mind,
and then cast a balance upon it from my imagination. I will add a touch here and take away a touch
there. Like an artist, I will paint my
heart’s desire on the canvas of the mind.
When properly done, the result is growth and pure delight. When not so properly done, I hang dangerously
from a tiny branch suspended over a high cliff with razor-sharp, jagged rocks
below me. But it reminds me that I’m
still alive. It encourages me to work
harder.
Looking at the results in our life is like looking in a
mirror. All you see is the sum total of
what you have done so far. To be sure,
it is an excellent guide to show us what we did right and what we could have
done better, but if it is mistaken for reality instead of a reflection of the
past only, then it becomes dangerous. To
mistake effect for cause is a crime you commit against your soul. To worship effect as if it were primary
instead of secondary (thereby ignoring cause altogether) is to give away your
godliness. And the merchant is only too
happy to greedily snatch it from you.
If you look in the mirror and see its reflection as solid
reality, then you are a slave. If you
look in the mirror and see it as a current measurement only, then there is hope
for you. To look in the mirror is one
thing, but to continually sneak back and look in the mirror is to be slavish to
your past, which the mirror reflects perfectly.
But there is something else more terrible at play here, because if you
continually use the mirror as a crutch instead of a tool, you begin to
unconsciously conjure the identical results in your mind. Instead of seeing what you do, you start
doing what you see.
You become stuck. You
cannot move. You see your reflection and
then you reflect what you see. It is a
trap because you will continue to live and move and have your being, but you
will do it unconsciously instead of purposely, mistaking the mirror for your
mind, and God help you when you see the unintended results finally reflected.
Surely you remember the lesson from Snow White?
“Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
“My Queen, you are the fairest of them all.”
“Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
“Famed is thy beauty, Majesty. But hold, a lovely maid I see. Rags cannot hide her gentle grace. Alas, she is more fair than thee.”
The Queen had no future because she was stuck in a
perpetual past. La-la-la-la-la-la-la
forever and ever on one note only. She
mistook her reflection for herself and sought to continually keep that delicate
balance, to continually be what she had been and not what she was at the moment
or could have been. In order to be
successful, she needed to leave the mirror, but as I said of mirrors, she was
enslaved. There would be no conjuring in
her mind of what she wanted to be, only acknowledgement of an old, tarnished
image.
These bony white fingers reach out all around us as we continue
to walk through the Season of Death. They
seek to remind us that all things die, and there is beauty in that. There is beauty in the end because only the
mind can conjure anew, and it knows that the Omega is also the Alpha, that the
spinning yin and yang never cease, that what was old is new and what was new is
old. Our eyes can only see the
culmination of the past. They cannot see
the fruit of the future. That is for the
heart and mind only. Leave the mirror. Give up being a slave to the past and become
the master builder of your destiny.
