The Mirror With No Reflection

I forgive you. I forgive you for how needy you've been for approval, for this dependence on others. It's normal—your uncertainty brought you here, your childhood brought you here, and I forgive you for it.

I forgive little me. I don't condemn that child, don't make him feel guilty when he reaches for his mother, when he seeks his father. When he clings to his business partner, to his husband, to his wife, to his employers, to his lover—I don't make him feel guilty anymore. I recognize him. The small insecure one who became the great insecure adult. Carrying forward this pain of connection, this inability to look within. And say: “You are enough, you are worthy.”

Not from anyone else's confirmation. You are worthy even alone in a room, even in suffering. You don't need to suffer—live in this certainty. This is the gift you can give others: showing what serenity is in itself, what it means to live without fear, what it means to exist not in need but in the joy of giving, because you know you are enough for yourself.

I want this awareness to awaken in others, this certainty of being enough. Let this serenity shine in them. Even when they prostrate themselves at your feet in their neediness, have compassion. When they are ready, show them they are enough for themselves, that they need nothing more.

Have compassion—because their pain is your pain. The pain you know, the pain you understand. Do it with compassion.

Because they are you and you are them. That pain they have for approval is your pain of approval, but you don't need it anymore because you know the truth: you are them, and they are you. So what's the problem?

You are your lover, your lover is you. You are your husband, your husband is you. You are your wife, your wife is you. You are your mother, your father, your child. Your child is you. You are your brother, your sister. Your enemy is you. Your friend is you. You are you.

Why do you hide it from yourself?

You've discovered it perfectly. You've finished the search. Congratulations. You've traveled thousands of miles for this. A mirror was all you needed—without even a reflection.

The mirror doesn't need to show anything because there's nothing separate to reflect. Every person you've sought validation from—in bed, in business, in marriage, in family—was simply another version of yourself, seeking the same thing. Every boundary, every distinction, every desperate grasp for external confirmation through intimate encounters, through professional partnerships, through romantic entanglements—all of it was consciousness trying to convince itself it was multiple rather than singular.

When people exhaust their desire to be controlled, you must let them free. Because control isn't for you—it's for others, this elaborate game we play to maintain the illusion that there's someone out there who can give us what we lack.

But once you see through it, once you recognize that every face is your face, every pain your pain, every joy your joy, the desperate seeking must stop. Not because you've found what you were looking for in your lover's arms or your spouse's approval, but because you've recognized those arms, that approval, as your own.

The search that took thousands of kilometers ends exactly where it began: with the recognition that there was never anything lost. You were looking for myself in others, not realizing that others were myself looking back. The mirror needed no reflection because I am both the one looking and what looks back, the seeker and the sought, the one who forgives and the one forgiven.

This is the gift hidden in the curse of neediness: it drives you outward until you exhaust every external option, until you've sought approval from every possible source—parent, child, lover, spouse, partner—only to discover that you were always seeking your own approval through the elaborate ventriloquism.

You are enough. Not because someone else confirms it, but because there is no one else to confirm it.

The marriage, the affair, the business partnership, the family bonds—all of it the same.

The mirror stands empty, perfect in its absence of image: there's nothing to see—and yet it's endless and complete.