In which mirrors do we see our ourselves?
Through feeling and reflection, we enter vital regenerative processes.
There are many kinds of mirror through which to see ourselves. The environments we live in are one kind of mirror.
During my years of working in forensic settings, I saw how environments of concrete can dull and deaden the senses. The effect on me has been to heighten my appreciation for the senses – and to sharpen my awareness of ways that physical environments affect the way we feel about ourselves.
I am not sure what effect screens are having on us all. I’m aware, though, that screens can hold a strong visual appeal, at times as though to make what takes place on the screen more real than real life. Would you necessarily notice if screen time was affecting you at a sensory level?
I feel a strong resonance with these observations from the Foreword to Andreas Weber’s Biology of Wonder:
By taking time off from our technologies, turning away from the gleaming screens that hold us hypnotised within an almost exclusively human sphere, we begin to loosen our creaturely senses from the over-civilized assumptions that stifle our experience of the breathing world. (page xiii)
Contact with the natural world is such a vital mirror. I find that observing flowers, insects and spiders is especially rewarding as I can simply make time to stop and observe. I took the picture of a mullein moth caterpillar as it was feeding on big furry mullein leaves. I was fascinated to learn from a Wikipedia entry that these caterpillars burrow into the ground where they build strong cocoons. Studies have found that the pupal stage below ground can last for as many as 5 years before the moths emerge. Such a length of time buried in the ground fills me with awe and I’m humbled by a sense of just how easily we can disregard these creatures from our lives.
That which we disregard and which goes unattended is what can be made space for in personal therapy, as well. Therapy is regenerative in part because it involves attending to the known and the unknown about yourself. There’s what you see and there is also what you don’t see about yourself. Therapy works by creating a safe environment for becoming receptive to both.