When we look into the mirror during mirror meditation, what do we see?

Spiritual teacher, Mooji, has an awesome youtube meditation in which he has you visualize yourself standing on a scale removing everything that is not natural to you. In other words, you remove your clothes, your dental fillings, and your nail polish, and once that is through, you remove the memories and thoughts which did not exist for you when you were born. In other words, it is a stripping away of all that is unnatural to our being. When we practice this, we get a sense of just how light our actual being is. Osho, another spiritual teacher, defines meditation as “the art of cleaning your mirror from all the dust that the society, the religion, the educational system has poured on you, to take away everything that has not been born with you, to bring you to your absolute innocence as you were born as a child”.

When Osho was asked why during mirror meditation, one meditator felt like he wasn’t looking at or seeing himself, Osho explained that this is absolutely correct! The reflection we see isn’t us. We are what is perceiving the reflection. He says, “if you think you are mirrored in the mirror, that is a lie…” It just happens to be one we all agree upon, and therefore it seems logical and real. He goes on to say, “Your consciousness cannot be reflected by the mirror,” unless, he says, that mirror is love.

Osho’s teaching on this is so profoundly beautiful. He explains how lovers can sometimes mirror each other through their deep intimacy. The personalities disappear and only love remains. The experience is akin to two mirrors reflecting one another thus reflecting infinity. That’s what two clear mirrors do when they face each other. They create infinity. This is one of the reasons why practicing mirror meditation with someone you love (being one another’s mirror) can be so profound.

When you are practicing mirror meditation alone, do the practice, whatever the focus, and engage with yourself, but always try to keep in the back of your mind that what you see is NOT you. Always bring any mirror meditation session to a close by being still and empty, practicing the recognition that you are the pure consciousness aware of the reflection and not what is being reflected.

Source: God’s Got a Thing About You, Chapter 17 – Osho