# Introspection There is a moment in every life when a person stops and looks back at the path they've walked. Not in haste, not in flight from something, but with the slow, deliberate turning of one who finally needs to see where they've been. It comes unexpectedly—on an ordinary evening, perhaps, when the light falls a certain way through the window. Or during a conversation that circles back to an old wound. Sometimes it arrives as a whisper in sleep, and you wake to find it sitting at the foot of your bed, patient and immovable. This introspection is not always welcome. We spend so much of our lives running forward, clutching at the next moment, the next achievement, the next small happiness, that to stop and turn is almost violent. It tears at the fabric of our carefully constructed days. It demands we look at decisions we've buried, words we've swallowed, chances we've let slip like water through our fingers. Yet there is something necessary in it—something that cannot be postponed indefinitely without cost. In the mirror of memory, we see ourselves differently than we imagined. The person we thought we were and the person we actually became are often strangers. We find pockets of kindness we forgot we possessed. We discover cruelties we never meant to commit. We recognize the small surrenders that became the shape of our lives. And slowly, if we are brave enough to remain in that gaze, we understand that nothing was wasted. Not the failures, not the missed turns, not the years spent learning what we already should have known. They were all part of the only life we have ever had—flawed, unfinished, achingly real. The introspection ends not with answers but with acceptance. We turn back to face forward again, but we are changed. We carry the weight of knowing ourselves, and it makes us heavier, perhaps, but also more genuine. More rooted. More alive.

The pure and pious would introspect regularly and at last find themselves and in turn God would lead them to the path of righteousness and eternity. This is a constant Rumi theme and I think there is an alternative meaning to " Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are." that he intended that still escapes me.

Perhaps it means one is a universe unto oneself and whatever one wants for oneself is within oneself and one has the power to co-create it i.e., whatever you want you already have within yourself. We are also part of a greater universe of creation that is complete unto itself, you mirror of your universe and the universe mirrors back your reflection to you.

You know those moments when you are unexpectedly awestruck, even rendered speechless, by the beauty of another human being? It is as if you are suddenly given eyes to see his or her foundational goodness that has always been there, but somehow surfaces in your presence, even if for a fleeting second. What a privilege!

When these magical moments manifest, all you can do is just hold them. They are not of your making to begin with. You simply give them a safe space to arise. 

I seem to have these experiences of 'catching goodness' that falls upon my heart on a regular basis, yet they never cease to catch me off-guard and come in the ways I least expect. I notice them in strangers, friends, family, and intimate partners alike. And when my heart is truly open, even in those I am struggling to see anything worth loving at all! 

They remind me that in the midst of our differences, we share unique reflections of our divine inheritance woven into the fabric of our humanity. 

When I used to volunteer as a counsellor to the pastoral care associate at a large urban hospital, this noticing, this beholding, was a favourite "practice" of my vocation. I could never force it, but it would just happen on occasion when I opened my heart and mind in a manner of trust. Presence was its breeding ground; grace was its nature; mystery was its manifestation. 

Like the woman dying of pancreatic cancer, diagnosed only months before. I watched her bitterness at the life being stolen from her transform into gratitude for the life she had been blessed to live. 

Or the man in the cardiac ward, suspended in waiting—hoping someone somewhere would die so his blood type could live on in a new heart. I saw his carefully maintained composure crack into tears of helplessness, and heard his deepest truth spill out: "Will I wake up alive? I don't know..." 

To rest in uncertainty alongside another is to touch a solidity far more real than all the certainties we crave. 

To be present in such moments is nothing less than a miracle—and for me, the deepest gift of being alive. It is like that instant when you crest the ridge above the trees and the vast mountain sprawls before you, and you stop, wordless, held by something beyond yourself. 

The sacred breaks through in nature too—in fact, that is where it all begins, and never truly ends. Years ago, walking to church on a beautiful Easter morning, I stopped short. A brilliant crocus had pushed its brave bloom through muddy earth beside a pile of melting snow, and as I breathed the fresh spring air, something shifted. 

I never made it to church that day. I had already arrived. I had already witnessed the Resurrection with my own eyes. That small flower sang "Hallelujah!" more truly than any hymn or sermon ever could. 

These moments of recognition carry a double blessing. They glow with such radiance precisely because they speak not only to the goodness in that thing, that person—but to the goodness here, alive in the one who sees. They reveal not only the sacred object, but the sacred within the witness: within me, within you, within us all. 

The holiness of other people and things awakens what is already stirring—or struggling to be born—within us. We cannot recognize Goodness in another unless we have already known it somehow within ourselves. 

Such is the very nature of the word "Namaste:" the Light in me sees the Light in you; the God in me sees the God in you... No wonder Jesus spoke so much about having eyes to see!

I was recently blessed to glimpse my own divine spark reflected in a friend's gracious words. As I gazed upon her tender face and eyes that seemed to hold the whole world within them, I recognized the beauty before me.

Her reply: "I'm just a mirror..."

This glorious call and response held me suspended in a space of blessed communion beyond time, beyond measure.

My breath stilled, as if asking, "Wait... What? Me?" Words abandoned me, yet my open heart swelled boundless with abundance. I was cradled in the goodness I had witnessed in another—goodness that was somehow, impossibly, also my own.

What greater gift can we share than witnessing each other's belovedness?

We are all mirrors, if only we choose to be. Let us pay attention. Let us awaken. Notice the goodness around you. Then have the courage to let it touch the seed within that first allowed you to recognize it in another.

In the words of the Sufi poet Hafiz: "I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing light of your own being." May we be bold enough to affirm the goodness in others. And then let what overflows from our own hearts pour forth naturally.

Whatever we desire, we can achieve it—if we reach toward our deepest goal with steadiness. There is an immense power within us: determination and unwavering resolve, holding us, pushing us forward toward the present and the future we long for. When we believe in our own capacity, determination will surely carry us toward what we seek. Our Lord stands beside us at every step.

It is a beautiful truth for all of us: human beings are fragments of God. God created all that exists in this world, and within the human body—hidden in the human heart—dwells the soul, the essence of the divine.

The soul is God's precious gift, bestowed upon human beings alone—a mirror of the divine.

We cannot see or discover all that exists because our souls—these mirrors—lie dulled beneath layers of dust and corruption, obscured by evil and darkness. God is pure, untainted, and when our souls are cleansed of these coverings, purity returns. Then the world opens in our palm; we see what we truly wish to see.

Rumi teaches that self-inquiry and self-discovery lead to virtue and the eternal. He reminds us that everything we desire already dwells within us, and we possess the power to bring it forth into being. We are threads woven into a greater cosmos, a universe whole and complete in itself. Sometimes we stand transfixed by beauty in another person, and it awakens us—reminds us that we all carry unique facets of our divine heritage, shining through the mirror of our humanity. These moments of sacred recognition arrive both in nature and in the presence of others, a doubled grace: they illuminate not only the goodness there, beyond us, but also the goodness that has always lived here, within. We cannot recognize beauty in the world or in a soul unless we have already discovered it, somehow, somewhere, within our own depths.