The biggest secret to profound soul transformation lies in the people around us. They are our teachers, our friends, our neighbors, our family, our lovers. They are the ones who trigger us, who open doors to parts of ourselves we ignore, react to, or are blind to. Most of the time, these parts are hidden from us — not hidden like a treasure waiting to be found, but more like dormant because we focus on other aspects of our lives during our daily routine. We sleep, have meetings, eat, work, cook, walk, dance, sing, travel, and post on Instagram, TikTok and co. Additionally, we receive millions of stimuli from our devices and social media apps throughout the day that gradually deplete our brain’s capacity to process more profound ideas, feelings, and emotions. They even reduce the capacity of our brain to be empathetic. As a prominent Spanish psychiatrist says:
We have become addicted to irrelevance, to sensationalism, and we struggle with the profound; we struggle with the complex. The prefrontal cortex does not have an infinite capacity; it gets depleted throughout the day. When the brain is tired, it doesn’t ask for the profound, it asks for the superficial. When you are addicted to irrelevance, when you are addicted to trends, your brain gets dazed. We think we are digital natives, but cognitive degradation is occurring; it’s becoming increasingly difficult to read, increasingly difficult to think. It is a crisis.
Marian Rojas Estapé (I paraphrase/translate from Spanish)
As most of our mundane activities remain rooted in the superficial dimension of existence, in that ordinary level that brings us constant distractions and stimuli, we avoid or lack the capacity to notice the small details that reveal something deeper about ourselves. We are too depleted to meditate on our actions and words. Our brains are too tired to sit down and talk to those who trigger us. We just enter into avoidance and escapism. We are in continuous transit from one place to another, one Instagram post to another, one trip to the next, and so on. We never take the time to just sit down and observe the details that make life happen. I wish we could live in a slower world again. Some people don’t even appreciate the time of their lives. It’s so short, it slips away so quickly.
This is how people live double lives. They appear happy, successful, well-traveled, and seem to have cool lives. But at some point, depression, illness, alcoholism or addictions kick in, and the duality becomes painful. People live with black holes inside them that literally eat all their happiness. They don’t know why they do things, and even after months, they can’t explain why they made certain decisions. They simply ignore the deepest parts of their soul. And they ignore their dark side.
It doesn’t matter how much spiritual work you do, how many seminars you attend, or how many hours you invest in meditation and therapy. The truth is, we can only recognize ourselves through others or our interactions with them and by assessing our thoughts and behavior. And as a wise friend told me: “Andres, not everyone is ready to see their B side, you have been looking at yourself in the mirror for years.” Not everyone wants to see their B side making fun of other people, crossing boundaries, spreading rumors, using others, cheating, or lying for weeks. Not everyone can see themselves waiting (without taking action) for things that will never happen in their relationships, at work, or in their own lives. After all, we all have a B side, and as another wise person said: “We cannot change the wind, but we can set the sails differently” (Dolly Parton). We can indeed take another course of action. We can and we must, I would say. This is how we evolve. But then again, many keep escaping and avoiding their B side.
Those last paragraphs may have left a bitter taste in your mouth. I know, right? They left me with a sandy and bitter taste too, as if there was no future to dream of. Well, there is a future and a way to recognize your B side. I find the mirroring approach to be a most useful perspective on things. Some people call it “the law of attraction” or just “the universe” giving you signs. It is very simple, and the secret lies in listening attentively to yourself and others. Any person of significance that comes into your life can teach you lessons. They are like mirrors; they trigger you, they show you what you don’t want to see about yourself. You can think of yourself as pure energy vibrating at a specific frequency. People that come into your life will have a similar frequency. In other words, similar issues and trauma to deal with. Once you or both of you have resolved these issues, there are two options. You keep walking together at a different frequency, or you walk apart and keep doing your lives separately because the “new” frequencies are incompatible.
Furthermore, if you don’t learn your lesson, the universe will keep pushing “the wind” against your face. The universe will keep sending you new people, in other shapes, colors, and clothes, but with the same task — to reflect what is hidden and wants to come out to the light, to enlighten what you ignore and needs internal processing. There is a future, but it lies in your hands, in your courage to look at yourself in the mirror, work with the people in your life and heal.
“A lot of the reasons why relationships are so difficult is because relationships are intended to cause you to heal parts of you that you can’t heal on your own. There is something about having a partner that mirrors back to you all of your deep dark sh*t, basically, that you are afraid to deal with.”
Danny Morel
