Check out this interesting and thought provoking article, I found written by:
Have you heard of the mirror test for self-awareness? Animals are shown their reflection in a mirror, and based on certain criteria, it is judged whether the animals recognize the reflection as themselves. If you read up on it, you’ll discover that it’s a rather ‘elite’ group of animals who can pass this test, including elephants and magpies. Writer Nicole Branan, in a Scientific American article, states that: “When you look in the mirror, you know you are seeing yourself.” But many other animals just don’t get it.
Wait A Minute!
Of course, one could equally observe Ms. Branan’s statement and note that the primate known as Homo sapiens is also mistaken when it looks in the mirror. Her statement holds a lot of truth – when a human looks in the mirror, it does indeed ‘know’ that it’s seeing itself. Or at least it believes it’s seeing itself. That’s the illusion we’re experiencing, but the obvious truth is that we’re seeing a 2-dimensional reflection – we’re not seeing ourselves at all.
Sure, But Who Cares?
Herein lies the basic flaw in our perception of the world. We see symbols and take them for the ‘real deal’. We look in the mirror and say ‘I look terrible!’ instead of ‘That reflection looks terrible!’ This distinction may seem irrelevant to us, but it lies at the root of Maya. It’s not just in mirrors, but in every facet of our lives that we mistake symbols for reality. Using the mirror example, consider what happens if we see a distorted image of ourselves. Let’s pretend that our bathroom mirror makes us look overweight. This could create considerable stress and agitation in our lives, perhaps influencing our outlook so strongly that we go on a diet or start a weight-loss program, all because we’re mistaking the symbol (our reflection) for ourselves. Usually, we try to solve these problems by getting a new mirror – in other words, changing the symbol-world. But we could do even better if we simply recognized that the reflection is not ourselves.
Ubiquitous
This mistaken view of the world permeates our lives. When someone tells us that we’re stupid, we often forget that the person is saying something about themselves (regarding their current perception, biases, and world-view), and nothing whatsoever about ourselves. When we feel emotions, we often attribute them to some outside influence, instead of our own resistance and inner conflict. Indeed, everywhere we look, our mind is busy laying symbols over the world, essentially hiding the ‘real deal’ from our gaze.
But What About Those Dumb Animals?
I sometimes wonder if instead of doing mirror tests on animals, we should do them on human beings. Only, in place of glass mirrors let’s use the mirrors that are all around us – other people, our perception of ourselves, or the computer monitor or LCD screen you’re looking at right now. How many of us would recognize ourselves in a pine cone, in our neighbor’s car, or in an ice cream sundae? Our own self-awareness is faulty indeed, giving us the impression of being a driver in our head, controlling (or struggling to control) the actions of our body and mind. This, of course, is a highly symbolic sense of self, akin to mistaking your reflection for your real, actual being.
It’s an amazing journey when we begin to see what the reflection in a mirror really is. And from there, we can continue on to realize the nature of many of the other ‘things’ we see around us. The result is an organic world-view quite unlike the one we know now. Here’s your invitation to take the journey yourself.
This guest post was written by: Kenton Whitman.
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