Heloisa to Piet and Rod
Piet, Rod and Steven,
Yesterday
I persistently tried to work with the practice suggested by Piet. I
tried to be
looking at a mirror that reflected all the images around me, including
myself
with all my thoughts, feelings and past history. I continuously told
myself
that those images had no real substance for they were mere reflections.
When
walking on busy streets and being in public places, I started to
envision the
external environment as reflections on a mirror. In doing this, I felt
a
significant shift. The perceptions of my external surroundings and of
others
totally changed. Everything got a dream like quality, which totally
fascinated
me. When having to interact with others I got out of that state, but
was
quickly able to go back to it. After a while, I became aware that I (as
I
usually think of myself) also became a reflection on that mirror.
Slowly I
became aware of everything around me, as if ‘I” was
the mirror reflecting all the images without
judgments and with no attempts to filter scenes that I usually find so
painful,
(such as poverty, so prevalent in Brazil). It no longer
mattered if I
was surrounded or not by a beautiful and pleasant environment. All it
mattered
was that I was simply noticing that there was an effortless awareness
of
everything around me.
When we
become a Witness of our surroundings and all our surroundings arise in
us, we
reach total Freedom. We no longer become this vulnerable separate-self
that can
so easily be affected by external events, for we have broken the
duality of
self and others.
Heloisa