Mirrors
In the Mirrors map, only taught by a few international teachers in specific workshops, we explore our automatic patterns, and also learn to see the other (and ourselves) underneath / beyond those patterns (Gabrielle referred to these patterns as “Ego Characters”). We play with more general characters and ways of acting such as envy and avarice and also our own specific patterns of behaviour, and learn to pick up on them, name them, embody them, exaggerate them and practice not identifying so much with them, so that we might, even when under pressure, move more closely to our true selves, to our soul, to each other and to life. In this way they have less of a hold on us in our daily lives. With the technique of 'repetition', we learn to name what we see in the other person, and to feel out then (possibly) let in what they see in us. Experience in the other maps of the practice helps us to open up to the challenges of this level, to fall back on our fundamental practice and to integrate what has happened in the various Mirrors explorations.
BEING, LOVING, KNOWING, SEEING, HEALING
I (Edo) have learned a lot about some of my behaviours, and been able to free myself of a number of them, through some two hundred hours of Mirrors practice. I adore the technique of repetition which stimulates me to take an honest and candid look at the other, and which often surprises me in terms what the other person says, whilst we search for what lies beneath the surface.
I (Nancy) find Mirrors fascinating, seeing more clearly mine and others’ soul-selves and beginning to separate them out from the automatic behaviours of my ego characters/ patterns. I find the journey of Mirrors, at times totally delicious and enlivening and, at the other end of the scale, sometimes really rocky and excruciating, but overall, so satisfying and enriching. I always have more to learn and I’m so grateful for this work and humbled by it. I experience being shaken to the core and then put together again in a very gentle, most benevolent, compassionate way. Also, there is dancing in Mirrors, dancing wave after wave to move this all through and to integrate it.