Hello,

I was looking in the mirror briefly last night and decided to do a formal meditation practice with eyes opened looking at my image in the mirror
(my usual practice is a brief anapanasati practice and a combination of vipassana body scanning and noting practice with bouts of loving
kindness and other more specific techniques mixed in and occasional candle flame meditation.) The mirror meditation  was surprisingly
powerful. I found that having the visual feedback, particularly visual feedback from facial expressions, offered another level of insight into
sensations in the face, and the body.  I practiced a combination of a body scanning vipassana practice as well as loving kindness practice. It
seemed to be a useful “direct pointing” sort of practice as the visual image of the body and face seemingly helped clarify sensations of the perceived Self/observer in a way that I hadn’t experienced before.  Thought also seemed to be clarified, particularly Self judgment/loathing thoughts,  as there is visual feedback of subtle facial expressions etc...The loving kindness practice seemed potentiated for me while gazing at the
body/face image in the mirror and I could see the body/face change as I intended loving kindess towards the image acting as sort of a feedback loop, I suspect similar to other concentration practices/jhana practices.  My experience of this is that, for me, it is a useful practice, most
notably as a loving kindness practice but also in clarifying subtle sensations in the field of sensation.  It seems to help clarify annica, dukkha,
and annata when I attended to these aspects of sensation.

On a side note, It made me wonder about the usefulness of the daily makeup and/or grooming ritual in the mirror. It seems that for many people, the grooming and/or makeup ritual in the mirror is done so with aversive intent, or trying to change the visual image that is related to with
dissatisfaction (e.g. “I’m not so good looking today, let’s put this makeup on to fix it.”).  If such a grooming routine was replaced by loving
kindness mirror practice, I suspect that eventually, no more makeup would be needed . 

I’m wondering if anyone else has experienced mirror meditation. If you have, I would love to hear your experience with it and any insights that may have come from it?

Metta,

Drew

I have a really trippy experience doing this where I get to a point of hallucinating different visuals on my face pretty fast (such as seeing my face morph into various prototypical emotions or seeing my eyes enlarge).  I rarely ever do it and also don't see it as useful in any way (specifically what I do and not the technique you describe, which does sound productive). 

I think this effect is related to an eyes-open shakti-transfer meditation I used to do with an ayp teacher.

Hi Drew, 

I have used this method before, and examined this method a little with others, actually a few decades ago...

I would suggest having a strong level of equanimity when using your image in the mirror as an object of meditation.

What I did, was to have a well lit room, and stare at one spot of the face, like the third eye area, try not to move, or blink, or think, and simply observe phenomenon.  It is very important to not move, not blink, not think, and to just observe.  At least for this one type of method.

This method can also be done with another human, face to face staring, same method.  This also has a high success rate, and may be nothing more than a parlor game, and yet....

This method can indeed be powerful, I am unsure what phenomenon it opens up exactly, i.e. primitive face recognition brain functions, past life viewings, spiritual doors, precognition, clairvoyance, etc.

I do not want to go into it too much, so as not to script anyone, yet at the same time the results are fairly predictable.

Who is in the mirror?

Psi

Thanks for the replies you two. I've tried it a couple of times since writing this post and have become a bit disillusioned by it. I think sometimes I crave significant happening in my practice and the novelty of this practice made it seem pretty significant initially. Not so significant anymore.