Read Online The World is My Mirror by Richard Bates - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Richard Bates
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English and incredibly engaging and gentle. His experiments are a practical way to discover absence. But the thing that stopped me in my tracks is the idea of ‘Face to No Face’.
The next time you find yourself engaged in conversation in close proximity with someone, imagine what they might see. The answer I hope you come up with is the face you see when you are looking in the mirror. Conversely, from your perspective, you see the face he sees when looking in a mirror; you are wearing each other’s face. His face is appearing in your consciousness. Consciousness is appearing as his face. You have every wrinkle, every blemish and every grey hair. You have the colour of his eyes and the colour of his skin. He is so close to you it is impossible to shake him off. You have taken on his appearance.
I am going to stick my neck out here and bet you do not feel like what you look like. I would say from your perspective you feel different to what your friend has got as his experience of you. Which do you prefer? Douglas would say you are capacity for the other person. Your emptiness allows for total fullness. Try as you might, you will not stop anything colouring your blank canvas. This is a good description of unconditional love: everything is allowed to be just what it is without restriction or regulation. It is all accepted.
This, if you rest with it, is jaw-dropping stuff. No longer are you just this small monkey-like creature walking around on two legs on a planet in a galaxy, in a universe. No, whatever shows up is in you and as you. Not the person ‘you’. I am using you as another way of saying experiencing or knowing.
This has always been the case, nothing new has happened. If you are not an object but capacity only, then you are not locatable in space or time. If you were findable you would have a boundary, an edge somewhere. There would be somewhere where you were not. Try and find this edge. If you could find an edge, then what has found this edge? May I suggest— edgelessness ? Can you see how futile it is looking for yourself? Whatever you find is only another apparent object. This is precisely where the mind cannot go. It will try for you, I promise. But armed with what I have just written, give it a day off, will ya? Let it help with the new patio or the decorating. It is good at that; it will enjoy planning the colour scheme and working out how many rolls of paper you need. You will be surprised how sharp it is when not burdened with past and future and maintaining a spook’s lifestyle.
In one of my favourite pieces, Douglas describes how, when we are young, we are told we are the image in the mirror and before too long we take this idea on board as our identity. He describes how this image locked behind glass escapes its enclosure, enters the body and turns around to look out on the world. This is the image we carry with us. This is what we imagine others see and if we are told our appearance is not up to much, we can carry around a very unlovable person for the rest of our lives.
I want to add something of my own here as well. The image we think others see is also an image of unworthiness and faults, an image that is coloured with all our past failings and thoughts about who we think we are. It is not just a physical image. There is a feeling and belief of being transparent to others and an unverified notion of the other person having access to this inner world of dread and fear. Walking around with this beast attached to you all the time, anxiety and depression are never far away. There is a sense you can never really relax in another’s company. There is a fear they will rumble what you are really like, and that is what we guard with the utmost vigilance. You never get a day off. This is exhausting and debilitating. Life becomes hell and there is the wish for no more tomorrows or the next day.
Not a great picture, hey! Not everyone feels like this I guess, but it
The next time you find yourself engaged in conversation in close proximity with someone, imagine what they might see. The answer I hope you come up with is the face you see when you are looking in the mirror. Conversely, from your perspective, you see the face he sees when looking in a mirror; you are wearing each other’s face. His face is appearing in your consciousness. Consciousness is appearing as his face. You have every wrinkle, every blemish and every grey hair. You have the colour of his eyes and the colour of his skin. He is so close to you it is impossible to shake him off. You have taken on his appearance.
I am going to stick my neck out here and bet you do not feel like what you look like. I would say from your perspective you feel different to what your friend has got as his experience of you. Which do you prefer? Douglas would say you are capacity for the other person. Your emptiness allows for total fullness. Try as you might, you will not stop anything colouring your blank canvas. This is a good description of unconditional love: everything is allowed to be just what it is without restriction or regulation. It is all accepted.
This, if you rest with it, is jaw-dropping stuff. No longer are you just this small monkey-like creature walking around on two legs on a planet in a galaxy, in a universe. No, whatever shows up is in you and as you. Not the person ‘you’. I am using you as another way of saying experiencing or knowing.
This has always been the case, nothing new has happened. If you are not an object but capacity only, then you are not locatable in space or time. If you were findable you would have a boundary, an edge somewhere. There would be somewhere where you were not. Try and find this edge. If you could find an edge, then what has found this edge? May I suggest— edgelessness ? Can you see how futile it is looking for yourself? Whatever you find is only another apparent object. This is precisely where the mind cannot go. It will try for you, I promise. But armed with what I have just written, give it a day off, will ya? Let it help with the new patio or the decorating. It is good at that; it will enjoy planning the colour scheme and working out how many rolls of paper you need. You will be surprised how sharp it is when not burdened with past and future and maintaining a spook’s lifestyle.
In one of my favourite pieces, Douglas describes how, when we are young, we are told we are the image in the mirror and before too long we take this idea on board as our identity. He describes how this image locked behind glass escapes its enclosure, enters the body and turns around to look out on the world. This is the image we carry with us. This is what we imagine others see and if we are told our appearance is not up to much, we can carry around a very unlovable person for the rest of our lives.
I want to add something of my own here as well. The image we think others see is also an image of unworthiness and faults, an image that is coloured with all our past failings and thoughts about who we think we are. It is not just a physical image. There is a feeling and belief of being transparent to others and an unverified notion of the other person having access to this inner world of dread and fear. Walking around with this beast attached to you all the time, anxiety and depression are never far away. There is a sense you can never really relax in another’s company. There is a fear they will rumble what you are really like, and that is what we guard with the utmost vigilance. You never get a day off. This is exhausting and debilitating. Life becomes hell and there is the wish for no more tomorrows or the next day.
Not a great picture, hey! Not everyone feels like this I guess, but it
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