16 How Do I Reflect?
Mikala had learned to journal when she did her college internship. The program had required Mikala to choose something that happened to her or around her in the workplace every day about which to journal. Mikala was not just to record what happened but also to analyze it for what she felt, what she did well, what she did poorly, and what she could do better. The experience had taught Mikala the value of journaling as a reflective practice to improve workplace performance. Years later, though, Mikala began to journal in the same way, not about the workplace, though, but about herself. Mikala wanted to learn how she was experiencing herself and how she might deepen and strengthen that experience.
Reflection
Your psyche, soul, and spirit have a lot to do with what you think and how you think. Your inner dialogue reveals and amplifies your internal makeup. It also gives you a means for influencing your internal makeup, while directing your thoughts and actions through your exercise of intention and will. You need not study and consciously direct your thoughts. Yet if you do, in a concerted and deliberate reflective practice, then you may discover things about yourself that you can incorporate and address for a better whole. You can reflect on experiences, to teach yourself how to operate better in the world. But you can also reflect on your soul, spirit, and psyche, to do better emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. You may even find an interior world far richer and more resonant than you had imagined possible, every bit as fascinating and influential as the outward world. The mind’s eye is a powerful thing, made much more powerful when you direct it inward. To help yourself, develop a stronger and wiser reflective practice about your psychological and spiritual state.
Solitude
Solitude is a key to a committed reflective practice. One doesn’t generally reflect well when surrounded with people who are engaging you. Reflection is introspective, an interior look rather than an exterior orientation. You may be able to reflect when anonymous in a crowd, but generally you must remove yourself from social interaction, at least on occasion, for productive reflection. You may have already discovered that your periodic solitude feels essential to your psychological and spiritual health if not also to your survival. Rich reflection, where frank and earnest conversation with oneself happens, can help one come alive. Dialoguing with oneself over the deepest internal subjects can feel profound and essential. Solitude need not be anti-social. Solitude can instead be pre-social, preparing you again to engage others in a balanced, aware, and sensitive manner. Reflection in solitude restores and preserves your inner consciousness and deeper self, against the temptation to merge the self with the external and submit to the unconscious projection of others. Seek periodic solitude for self-restoration and preservation.
Inner
Don’t underestimate the power and purpose of your inward orientation. We are not shallow, surface creatures, responding only instinctually to external stimuli. We instead have an incredibly deep reflective capacity, so deep that our inner lives distinguish us as both human and divine. The inner self is what connects most with the higher realm from which we draw consciousness, meaning, and purpose, and from which we act out of sacrificial love rather than narcissistic selfishness. In that respect of giving the internal self a higher priority than our external temptations, we undergo an inversion of consciousness, with our inner self becoming more real, immediate, and invigorating than our outward self. The inner life offers opportunities to adventure, explore, and discover just as rich as the external life, while more immediate, personal, accessible, and lasting. A rich inner life is continually available, not episodic. A rich inner life also energizes outward activity and expression.
Connection
Deep reflection can also connect the individual and collective consciousness. When you reflect inwardly, you can connect not just with your inner self but also with the external consciousness. You can focus your inner reflection not just on the contours of your own psyche and spirit but also on the archetypal forms and universal constructs that are influencing your soul and spirit. You can challenge, question, welcome, or reject the spirits of the age that whisper or roar to you inside. Indeed, your inner reflection may be more significant to you in helping you connect with and curate the influence of the outward consciousness than in discovering your inward terrain. To identify your enemies and allies among the many outward forms, powers, principalities, and patterns that speak to you inwardly is to arm yourself for a prevailing inward struggle. Your inward talk isn’t solely with yourself but also with the whole panoply of angels who bless and demons who haunt the inner realm. To begin to separate the light from the darkness, to illuminate the light on the darkness, is to begin to heal.
Orientation
Reflective practice also initiates an essential process of identifying, embracing, and expressing the authentic self that the transcendent creator gave you, while turning somewhat away from the manufactured relational self that you project to others. You will always project a relational self toward others. But the greater the extent that you integrate your authentic self into your projections, the more you will express yourself with stability, purpose, power, presence, and integrity. Your best orientation when interacting with others remains toward your genuine self. If you turn entirely away from yourself to project a relational self that you have constructed to engage the other, you will have no foundation from which to regulate the projected self. Your projection will inevitably manipulate the relationship because that is a projection’s purpose, to control the interaction. You need to base your interaction not on the projected self’s control but instead on your grounded transcendent self, out of which come genuine interest, insight, and compassion. To engage others authentically, you need to retain an orientation toward your authentic self, which is a self that your inner reflection has grounded in the light of the collective consciousness.
Conversation
The discerning practice of reflection involves a deliberate form of inner conversation. Reflection isn’t an inner monologue. A monologue is a one-track mind, running on rails toward a fixed destination. Your reflection needs instead to be a dialogue, a back and forth between two selves that removes your thoughts from the fixed rails and thereby opens other possible destinations. In a dialectical conversation, two opposing views lead the mind to a new destination. Who are these two dialectical selves? You have within you a controlling ego, an outward-oriented voice that constantly plans and dictates next destinations. You also have within you a deeper inner self that isn’t so concerned with immediate plans and actions but instead with the unique person filled with potential whom your transcendent creator made you. Make your reflection a conversation between your controlling ego and inner self.
Communion
You don’t have to argue with yourself in this inner reflective conversation between your controlling ego and your deeper genuine self. You can instead make the conversation between these two inner entities an inner communion, where each shares with the other the substance and life of the transcendent creator’s consciousness. You don’t want your core conflicted, riven by opposing views of who you are and what you should think and do. You instead want your interior self whole and integrated, while open to possibilities and able to adapt and grow. For productive reflection, you need to be able to hold uncertainties and possibilities inside in a secure and stable mind that has the capacity to examine, explore, discover, and transform. Dialogue of your ego and deeper self, while communing in the transcendent bread and life, enables fruitful opposition that bears insights and promotes growth, integration, healing, and maturation. The creator’s Spirit brings peace and depth, while revealing new interior paths, possibilities, and adventures. As you grow in your capacity to reflect, root your reflection in commitments to the transcendent path.
Wisdom
Reflective practice can benefit from a goal or standard toward which to aim. Self-knowledge is only a surface goal or standard. To know oneself is only the beginning of a deeper wisdom that we seek. Wisdom entails applying that knowledge in a discerning and fruitful manner. Wisdom aligns one’s thoughts with the contours, patterns, and principles constituting the transcendent life. Wisdom helps us discover the images, desires, affinities, and terrain within us that reflect and resonate with an aware, integrated, whole, and authentic self and loving, engaged, balanced, and creative life. Wisdom is not just an attribute or construct but also an entity and life, a gifted image, person, or dimension of the transcendent creator. Reflection in the creator’s Spirit welcomes wisdom as the words, reason, rationality, and principle of life. The conversation between your ego and deeper self listens for wisdom to appear and speak, and then remembers, repeats, and follows what it hears.
Practices
Certain practices can encourage and sustain your fruitful reflection. As the brief story at this chapter’s beginning illustrates, journaling is one of those practices. Sustaining a mental dialogue can take imagination and practice. Writing down your thoughts fixes that dialogue and makes it apparent. Maintaining a journal with dated entries enables you to return to your old thoughts to see the terrain that you’ve covered since then. A journal also enables you to pick up the conversation again after an interruption of a day or several days or even weeks and months. When you do return to an earlier conversation, you’ll notice how your thoughts have grown and changed. Meditation is another practice, referring to clearing your mind and focusing your inner attention on a single subject or inner awareness, while maintaining a relaxed and attentive posture. Focusing your inner attention on a specific scripture, exploring its meaning, and letting it work itself into your inner dialogue is another technique. Don’t underestimate the power of a little discipline for making your reflections more fruitful.
Approach
You may also find it fruitful to follow a specific approach to your reflections. As the brief story at the beginning of this chapter mentions, a traditional approach to journaling involves choosing something that happened, describing it, and then analyzing what you felt, what you did well, what you did poorly, and what you could do better. This after-action assessment can apply well to studying your outward performance. But it may not lead you forward along your inner terrain in the way that you’d like. Try instead to have your deeper self question your ego or train of thought. Ask why you are thinking about certain subjects and making certain plans, not to justify, rationalize, or improve those plans but instead to discern the unconscious influences, urges, and shadows beneath them. Expect your ego to ask what would you have me do instead? But don’t answer with other thoughts and plans. Instead, ask what the influences and urges you are discerning are telling you about yourself. Ask why you are what you are and who you are, until your deeper self and the transcendent consciousness with which it connects can reveal more of your inner terrain. Explore that inner terrain until you see more of the light of the creator’s consciousness.
Prayer
Prayer, in frank conversation with the creator, is a most-fruitful form of reflection in which many regularly and devotedly engage. You’ve seen above how reflection necessarily leads toward the transcendent. Reflection isn’t mindless thought but mindful and directed thought. Directed thought needs a direction. For that thought to be fruitful, the direction needs to be up, toward that which transcends the immediate and circumstantial. To move deliberately up in one’s thoughts is essentially to speak with the transcendent creator. You may thus find it fruitful to turn toward deliberate prayer as you reflect. Begin by turning the steady inner monologue of your ego into a productive dialectic between your ego and deeper self. Then, turn the conversation between ego and deeper self toward the transcendent creator who breathes awareness into your inner conversation. Recognize and venerate the creator, while acknowledging full dependence on the creator’s consciousness and life. Express gratitude for your consciousness and life. Then appeal to the creator to show you the inner security, stability, adventure, and riches the creator offers you.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how reflective of a person do you feel you are? Do you frequently reflect to good effect on how you are doing psychologically and spiritually, including whether you are generally sound and stable, and whether you are learning, growing, and maturing? Are you finding enough solitude, frequently enough, to reflect fruitfully, or do you need to take some steps to ensure regular solitude? How well do you know yourself? Do you draw frequently from your self-knowledge to modify and improve your thinking and stabilize your emotions? Are you, in your reflections, aware of the transcendent consciousness toward which your better reflections reach? Do you, for instance, dwell on scriptures or similar patterns, principles, and ideals? Conversely, are you aware in your reflections of the darker unconsciousness or shadows influencing your thinking? Are you able regularly to separate dark thoughts from enlightened thoughts, and to discipline your mind toward enlightenment? Can you distinguish your controlling-ego mind from your deeper reflective and authentic self? Do you periodically rein in your ego in a conversation with your deeper self? Do you rely on the scriptures or have another source for tested wisdom? In what reflective practices do you regularly engage? Should you be journaling or meditating more regularly? Do you have an active prayer life?
Key Points
Reflective practice is essential to integrating your soul and psyche.
Periodic solitude is generally necessary for productive reflection.
Discovering your inner self can lend balance, power, and purpose.
Deep reflection can connect individual and collective consciousness.
Orienting yourself toward an inner presence can aid outward relations.
Conversing intentionally and thoughtfully with yourself can help.
Make your inner conversation a communion of ego and inner self.
Wisdom typically arises through thoughtful reflection.
Specific practices like journaling and meditation can aid reflection.
Develop a thoughtful approach to give structure to your reflection.
Prayer can be an especially deep and profound form of reflection.