Today something occurred to me during my evening meditation, that feels familiar but a better understanding was realised. Therefore, I don’t claim this to be anything new, but my take on something I’d like to share.

Despite trying to avoid negative thinking and judgments I quite often find myself having an imaginary argument with a real someone in my head. Deep down I think that they might actually harbour some of those opposing views about me, but every time I’m with this person we get on very well, despite having very different outlooks on life. What I realised today was that these so called arguments are actually projections of my own self-criticisms and I think I use this person as a puppet for my opposition because they fit the role. It’s like someone telling me some home truths that I haven’t necessarily been willing to admit to myself. It was quite revelatory in a way because I feel like I immediately faced up to some issues in my life and immediately dropped any imagined animosity toward this person.

This then got me thinking that all of the people in our lives are mirrors of our own thoughts, each fitting another role. For example, close friends with things in common reflect the things I like about myself and have the confidence to talk about without judgement. This might be at risk of sounding self-centred but not when you consider that everyone is doing this for everyone in their life. So it pays to mingle not just with our close ones but also with people we don’t see eye to eye with otherwise we just spend time with people we like, self-validating and becoming vain in the mirror.

I'm not sure that people actually are mirrors of our own thoughts, we simply perceive them to be this way, you perceptions and assumptions take dominance, whether they actually apply to the reality of the situation or not...people are not reflections of your perceptions, your perceptions are clouding your views and objectivity regarding these people...

Just my thoughts, though I'm not entirely sure that I understand what you were trying to communicate initially...

-eg

There is a large part of self realization that happens through relationships with others. I've known this for a long time, but didn't fully grasp onto it until 3-5 years ago when I was on OK cupid having many online conversations and going on more dates than I can remember. My intention did not start out as exploring self or any kind of significant self improvement, but nevertheless, this is exactly what happened.

I am fairly introverted by nature and by forcing myself to interact in so many ways with so many people on a fairly intimate level, this mirroring effect of seeing myself through the eyes of others became apparent. I would learn things about myself that sometimes weren't so great and self improvement would precipitate. I would learn positive things and reinforce them. I would find myself sitting across a table on a date thinking about how this person is perceiving me. Although this would often happen in a paranoid manner, I learned to find comfort in the fact that the other person was doing the same thing whether or not on a conscious level.

This would carry over into non-dating interactions and I quickly found myself self-realizing through this mirroring effect in the company of friends, family, and co-workers. I have come to realize the importance of socialization in the realm of self realization and self improvement. I have been in the past more prone to isolation and self discovery through solitary practice, but this has become less so with my discovery of seeing self through the lens of interaction.

E.G Yes, I understand what you mean, but I also don't think I'm articulating it very well. I suppose what I mean is that interaction with people reflect my thoughts more so than sitting alone to trying to make sense of them in my head.

Thanks for sharing that Syberdelic. It's funny because I consider myself to be introverted, which is often mistakenly confused with shyness. This has to some degree made me force myself to interact with people more as it can be all to easy to withdraw and get lost in your own private world.
It is difficult to think about how people perceive you without being a little paranoid but I think what I ended up doing was just putting words in to their mouths based on how i believed they perceived me but really it's just myself talking to myself.
For me it seems like the people in my life each play a role that reflect my thoughts back to me as each represent a facet of my personality. I feel I have made a similar discovery of seeing myself through this lens of interaction.

I also made the mistake for most of my life of pointing the specter of self improvement and reflection only inwards. There is a lot that this can accomplish, but the task will always be deficient. I feel like this is something that extroverted people take for granted and come to expect. It can be a very draining process for an introvert to fully participate in self reflection through others, but at the same time it is probably much easier for us (introverts) to see it as such and use it to it's full potential, deriving meaning from much more subtle things that an extrovert would gloss over.

Like so many other things in life, I feel like I always had this knowledge derived through basic knowledge and experience but until recent years didn't understand the scope and power of it. I feel like my life has become much more meaningful and rewarding since discovering the depth of the interpersonal mirror. The irony of this is that I took a class on interpersonal communication to "improve" my introversion many years before this discovery and there was no mention of such a thing.

Yeah, I had a feeling that I was misunderstanding what was being communicated.

I'll re-read, and re-respond accordingly.

-eg