Literature

The mirror is considered to be a portal to a different dimension.  When I was staring at myself in the mirror for an hour or more I had the most remarkable experience of my life.  At first it felt really stupid to be staring at myself, but then something strange happened in the first fifteen minutes of the experiment.  I felt like everything around me was melting.  Other things reflected in the mirror aside from my face began to turn into a blur and all I could focus on was I.  Initially, I felt a strange sensation of calmness and peace.  As the other images in the mirror blurred, so did my other thoughts.  I found myself thinking about the face on the mirror that began to feel like it was not my own.  What at first was a superficial observation of the lines on my face, the folds around my eyes, the indentations and the surface markings on my face, and the unsightly elements like dried up zits and zit scars, blackheads on my nose, and white heads around it became and observation that went beyond just the superficial.  It felt like I was peeling away my face in my mind, layer by layer, from the skin, to the muscles, then to the internal workings of my eyes, and soon, my mind.  It was a most profound experience because at later points, I felt like I was the only one in the world.  It seemed like I had all the time in the world to think about my self and what was going on in my head at that very moment that I was staring at the mirror.

No sooner had I enjoyed the sense of calmness and peace that washed over me when thoughts began to pervade my mind.  I began to recall images of how the face I was staring at looked like as child, how it had grown to look when I was in my early teens, and how the face in the mirror evolved from one to the other.  All throughout these thoughts I felt that despite the physical changes I was still the same person I was years ago.  At certain points during the experiment, I would have short bursts of intense fear, dread, and sadness, as if I all the feelings that I had experienced before came bursting back.  At certain times during the full hour I had sensations of being tired and being weary  not physically though, but mentally and emotionally.  It felt like the mirror was reflecting all my pent up emotions back at me.  I also felt a strong sense of identity and ownership of the face in the mirror despite the initial strange feeling that I was not looking at myself.  Gradually, I felt a deep feeling of acceptance envelope me, as if I was isolated from the rest of the world and I did not care what happened around me and that I only cared about what I was looking at in the mirror.

I would also experience feelings of sleepiness, like I my eyes wanted to close, but I did not want them to.  Looking at me in the mirror felt pleasurable, at the same time a bit tiresome.  There was a tingling sensation of warmth that welled up in my stomach, and the feeling seemed to expand to my limbs, to the tips of my fingers and to my face.  I got the impression that the face I was looking at in the mirror was visually brighter than everything else around it also reflected in the mirror.

All throughout the experience, there were some things that did not happen to me though.  I wasnt able to think about anything else except my self, it was as if I was totally absorbed in myself and preoccupied in gazing at my reflection.  I also did not feel any form of anxiety like I was so sure of what I was gazing at and I did not want to concern myself about anything else.

This whole experience was an enlightening experience on my part because I felt emotions that I did not expect to feel and it seemed to me that the experience gave me a clearer and more vivid picture of myself and what went on in my mind and my heart.