Heron My Soup

It had been a week of aha moments and revelations. Between a painful break-up and the death of a favorite aunt there had been a lot of transformation and change. My head and my heart have been very muzzy (one of my favorite terms which I half thought I'd made up, then discovered that John Keats used it -- "Great minds..." ;)) but, as I tend to forget while still inside such states, this is the primordial soup for growth and learning.

So during that time while I was reading Medicine Cards at a local bookstore, seeing as I had my cards out already (I never seem to think of pulling them out for myself -- go fig!) I pulled one just to see who would pop up. My old friend Heron! His message is largely about self-reflection. The only thing is that he was reversed... D'oh! In reverse Heron speaks about too much self-reflection being not such a good thing which bogs you down. One of Heron's attributes is standing tall, connected to the earth yet standing over the water (emotions). If Heron is not standing upright, he's getting mired in the muck of the pond.

And this affects me how? In the break-up I became aware, through parting words, of character traits, issues, and such, that I needed to work on. And so I whole-heartedly began examining these things, turning over every single little item to see if it were true or not, to find out what was wrong with me, and how I needed to improve. Boy, that pond water gets murky in a hurry with so much self-reflection splashing and floundering around in it!

The thing that finally occurred to me is that, yes, relationships are mirrors for us, with each individual seeing themselves reflected in the other, BUT just because someone sees something mirrored in me does not mean that that something is actually there. The clearer a mirror I become, by becoming more and more authentic, the more clearly others will see themselves in me, including and especially the stuff they don't want to see. There's a whole Zen-connection thing here about being like water and reflecting the geese flying overhead without holding on to them. It is good to look at what the other sees in me, but trust my heart as to whether it needs to be changed, or even whether it is there at all. If I am already living from my heart, being my true self, then I already know whether those things are true or not, and I know that I'm not perfect and that I'm doing my best, so that I can be gentle with myself as I change and adjust (If I choose to change), even if others aren't treating me that way.

That is not to say that I am a perfectly clear, unblemished, and undistorted mirror. Nor is it to say, "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo! I have nothing to learn from you!"

On the flip-side, just because I see something in someone else doesn't mean it's actually there. This seems to be where not judging someone else comes in because, what it looks like to me may be something totally different to the other person. Whatever it is, it is my own reflection.

Have you ever noticed that while looking at your shadow on the ground you can't tell if it's looking toward or away from you? It looks the same either way. Often, exact opposites look exactly the same! What I'm seeing in someone else could be exactly the opposite of what I think I see.

Or what I'm seeing as a whole is only a tip-of-the-iceberg that I can't or won't understand without a bigger perspective. That's a bit of a mind blower.

The other thing I realized is that the reflections are also not time-sensitive, meaning that what I'm seeing in someone else may not be a current image but actually something from the past. I find that people tend to think of things happening in a circle with the same things happening over and over again. I do that all the time -- "Holy crap! What am I doing back here again?!" Actually I've discovered that I'm on an ever rising spiral so it may feel like I'm going in a circle, or even going backwards, but every time I encounter the 'same' things coming around, I am actually seeing it from a different, higher perspective. The past is constantly being mirrored to me in order to see it and say, "Ah yes. I've been there before, and look how far I've come since then!" In this case I felt the opportunity to give a past-self of mine the patience and compassion that he didn't get when I was going through similar circumstances. I felt parts of me healing that I didn't know were there.

So there is still some pain present, and some befuddlement, over what happened, but like Heron I've been able to stand tall again with a bit more perspective and surety about my own path as I snatch up the nourishing morsels of insight that swim into my reflection on the water, and, unlike the proverbial 'dog with the bone,' I learn to recognize the difference between my self and my image.