We all want to stay healthy and happy all year-long, of course. Here’s a great article with some tips for staying healthy this winter. Toning for Peace finds #14 exceptionally interesting!! And you can do it all year-long…
It’s all about the hum! “Humming has been shown to increase nitric oxide in the nose, which is antimicrobial,” says Dr. Payne. To read the full article and item 14:
http://www.today.com/health/26-ways-avoid-getting-sick-winter-1D80290214?google_editors_picks=true
There are some seriously beautiful installations out there that feature mirrors. Check out these “mindmelting” amazing mirrors in art. These images are not to be missed!!
http://www.buzzfeed.com/kevintang/mind-melting-artworks-made-with-mirrors#t7qhwl
http://beautifuldecay.com/2013/11/29/dan-graham-four-artists-use-mirrors-artwork/
Daniel Rozen, mirror artist
http://www.smoothware.com/danny/
Mirror Cubes
http://twistedsifter.com/2013/12/light-bending-cube-of-one-way-mirrors-numen-for-use/
Here also is a fabulous blog post, How Mirrors Changed Art, from Thinking About Art that talks about some of the earliest mirrors and includes links to some interesting videos as well as some additional resources (though some of the links no longer function).
Ever wish you could just look into a crystal ball and see into your future? Would it be a blessing or a curse to have such vision?
The art of scrying, the practice of gazing into a reflective surface and becoming focused on a single point to remotely view another person, place or time, has been around as long as the human desire to foretell the future. The ancient Greeks and Celts practiced scrying as did the “wizards” of Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican cultures, the latter known for using polished obsidian.
In more recent culture, we see scrying in the Wizard of Oz, first when the fortune teller Dorothy meets after she runs away from home uses a crystal ball to focus in on her Auntie Em and again when the wicked witch uses one to follow Dorothy’s movements. We also see it in Snow White, when the evil queen uses the mirror to confirm her identity as the fairest in the land. And of course, it appears in even more recently in the Harry Potter series.
Any smooth and reflective surface will do…a bowl of water, a mirror, glass, or a candle. Nostradamus, in fact, used a bowl of water to see into the future while in a trance state, making it possible for him to to perceive and then interpret images that appeared through ripples, waves, and reflections upon and within the water.
At Mirror Spiritus, we aren’t so much interested in the practice of scrying as an end unto itself. It is neither something we practice nor teach, though it can spontaneously occur during mirror meditation for those with such proclivities. Certainly, when we quiet the mind and become focused on a single object, we open ourselves to deep relaxation and can receive messages from deep within. If you are interested in learning more about it, check out this short course in scrying from Hermetic.com.
“Some will not recognize the truthfulness of my mirror. Let them remember that I am not here to reflect the surface… but must penetrate inside. My mirror probes down to the heart.”
Paul Klee
“Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.”
Byron Katie
This is an introductory mirror meditation suitable for all levels. It draws upon the practice of Ho’oponopono, a practice of reconciliation and forgiveness. You will need a mirror. For more mirror meditation videos, please subscribe to the MirrorSpiritus youtube channel.
Rumi & the Mirror
Contemplate these beautiful quotes from Sufi poet, Rumi, during your mirror meditations.
~~“You have no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring You. Nothing seemed right. What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean. Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient. It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So I’ve brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me.”
~~“The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.”
~~“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
~~”We are pain and what cures pain, both. We are the sweet cold water and the jar that pours. I want to hold you close like a lute, so that we can cry out with loving. Would you rather throw stones at a mirror? I am your mirror and here are the stones.”
~~”Between the mirror and the heart is this single difference: the heart conceals secrets, while the mirror does not”
~~”If you could get rid of yourself just once, the secret of secrets would open to you. The face of the unknown,
hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
~~”Let go of your worries and be completely clear-hearted, like the face of a mirror that contains no images. If you want a clear mirror, behold yourself and see the shameless truth, which the mirror reflects. If metal can be polished to a mirror-like finish, what polishing might the mirror of the heart require? Between the mirror and the heart is this single difference: the heart conceals secrets, while the mirror does not.”
~~”Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a mirror up to where you’re bravely working. Expecting the worst, you look, and instead here’s the joyful face you’ve been wanting to see. Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you’d be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.”
~~”When the mirror of the heart becomes pure and clear, impressions of the other world will become manifest. The image and the image-maker will become visible, like the carpet and the carpet-spreader.”
Mirrors frequently appear in poetry. Here is a selection of poems featuring the mirror that seem to capture the mysterious and compelling qualities inherent in reflection. Rumi has also used mirror symbolism in his poems.
Lady at a Mirror by Rainer Maria Rilke
As in sleeping-drink spices
softly she loosens in the liquid-clear
mirror her fatigued demeanor;
and she puts her smile deep inside.
And she waits while the liquid
rises from it; then she pours her hair
into the mirror, and, lifting one
wondrous shoulder from the evening gown,
she drinks quietly from her image. She drinks
what a lover would drink feeling dazed,
searching it, full of mistrust; and she only
beckons to her maid when at the bottom
of her mirror she finds candles, wardrobes,
and the cloudy dregs of a late hour.
Translated by Edward Snow
Telling You All by Rainer Maria Wilke
Telling you all would take too long.
Besides, we read in the Bible
how the good is harmful
and how misfortune is good.
Let’s invite something new
by unifying our silences;
if, then and there, we advance,
we’ll know it soon enough.
And yet towards evening,
when his memory is persistent,
one belated curiousity
stops him before the mirror.
We don’t know if he is frightened.
But he stays, he is engrossed,
and, facing his reflection,
transports himself somewhere else.
The Muses Mirror by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
EARLY one day, the Muse, when eagerly bent on adornment,
Follow’d a swift-running streamlet, the quietest nook by it seeking.
Quickly and noisily flowing, the changeful surface distorted
Ever her moving form; the goddess departed in anger.
Yet the stream call’d mockingly after her, saying: “What, truly!
Wilt thou not view, then, the truth, in my mirror so clearly depicted?”
But she already was far away, on the brink of the ocean,
In her figure rejoicing, and duly arranging her garland.
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