Life and all the people in it are our mirrors, because the outer world reflects our strongest thoughts. Through learning to read people closely associated with us, those who are our most magnified mirrors, we learn to know ourselves more objectively. It's much easier to recognise in others what we cannot see in ourselves.

When life overlaps through shared synchronicities with people close to us, intense mirroring is at work, providing us with the opportunity to predict our own shape of things to come through mutual observation.

Come, look into my mirror for a while: My fifteen-year-old son, Euan, is on a plane somewhere between Australia and New Zealand while my sixteen-year-old daughter, Rowan, is still in bed, sleeping off yesterday's physics exam and dreaming of freedom. Outside the misty weather has broken and winter sunshine lifts my spirit. And with the dawning of this sunshiny day, my writing agenda reveals the chapter heading I chose eight months ago: 'Mirror, Mirror, Who Am I?'.

Euan's new zeal in life is a role as guest actor in a childrens' television drama, where he plays a cockney orphan pickpocketing his living in the goldfields of nineteenth-century Australia. One day he is befriended by a girl from the future who has reached the past by travelling through a magic mirror. Euan's character then crosses through the mirror into the twentieth century where, after several adventures, he is convinced by friends from both centuries to reunite with his long lost adoptive parents. The series is called 'Mirror, Mirror 2'. As far as Euan's role is concerned, I think my chapter heading, 'Mirror, Mirror, Who Am I?', is more appropriate. My chapter was named five months before we knew anything about the television series. Euan hadn’t acted professionally before and wasn’t even registered with a casting agent when the opportunity to audition for the job came ‘out of the blue’. My ‘Mirror, Mirror’ chapter title was a touch of precognition later acted out as a shared synchronicity.

Our shared synchronicities run deep at this time in our lives. This is Euan's third filming session in New Zealand for this series, while my own 'Mirror, Mirror' is found in Part Three of this book. I started writing The Shape of Things to Come the week Euan left home for his first month's work and by the time his filming is finished, I know my book will be too. I am writing about time, the future, precognition and discovering our identity through our greater reality. Euan is acting the same subject. I have been growing my hair for a few months to allow for a slight change in style. It feels a mess. A few weeks ago Euan's producer told him not to get his hair cut because it needed to be scruffy and waiflike. Two days ago, when I was wrestling with the last chapter, Euan came in from the backyard and told me he had just discovered the meaning of life: 'To do whatever brings happiness'. He had no idea that I was writing a chapter about the meaning of life. And so it continues.

When he auditioned for the television series, I had no idea (apart from through my dreams in retrospect!) that within a few weeks I would be hosting a television show. Euan has been on the radio and in and out of the newspapers over the years because of his award winning art, poetry and writing. Whenever he appeared in the media, I did too, with no planning.

The point is that our mirroring has got to the stage where we can predict our personal futures or milestones by watching each other. When Euan heard that 'Mirror, Mirror 2' had been sold to a number of overseas countries, we both realised the potential of my book to do the same.

Euan and I are different people with overlapping lives. If this was a dream (which, until enlightenment, it is), my son would symbolise the male or Yang side of my life: that which is still growing and developing in the outer world. It is no surprise, therefore, that our overlaps occur in fields of work, contracts and outer world profile. No doubt in Euan's world, I symbolise the nurturing Yin (female) side of his creativity and our shared synchronicities underline his fulfilment in these areas.

My daughter, in my life's dream, symbolises the female or Yin side of myself: my inner world. Just as Rowan slept off her physics exam last night, so did I sign off from my last grapple with quantum physics. Rowan has a few months to go before she finishes school. She eagerly awaits the release of pressure and the increased freedom she will gain. During these months of book writing and exams we have shared the inner pains and pleasures of disciplined study, pressure and freedom.

Mirroring reflects what you need to know about yourself: the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. There is no need to blindly follow the life of your mirrored mate. You can choose at any time to apply your new insight on 'Who Am I?' to jump off the roundabout and make changes. The choice, ultimately, is always yours.

(Post Script: On 8 December 1997 Euan had a day’s work acting in an international television commercial – his second professional acting role. He played the pitcher in a baseball game. During my third progression hypnosis in October 1996 [see Chapter 4] I referred to 8 December 1997 and reported that on that day ‘I am making a documentary film´. On 23 November 1997 I had been part of a team which pitched [the correct technical term] our documentary series idea to enthusiastic international reception. On 12 December 1997 I received confirmation of our success in this regard. So it seems that Euan mirrored the international pitching aspects of my own intentions. Although I received confirmation on 12 December, I later discovered that legal documents connected with this confirmation were officially registered by the other party on 8 December.)

'Like attracts like' yet 'opposites attract', or so the old adages tell us, referring to the friends who surround us as well as to the partners we choose in relationships or business. Paradox strikes again!

That 'like attracts like' is easy to comprehend since like thoughts resonate and materialise shared synchronicities. It is no surprise that we find ourselves in the same situations as many of those who surround us, since, as shared thoughts, we share worldly experience.

Yet it is also true that opposites attract. The giver and the receiver live or work in mutual dependency, as do the controller and the submissive, the aggressor and the victim, the shy and the extrovert, and the thinker and the doer. Each 'opposite' combination is really a polarity of likeness. The giver is at one pole, or one extreme of the flow of exchange spectrum, while the receiver is the extreme at the opposite pole. Ideally the giving and the receiving for one person should be in balance.

The ancient Buddhists promoted the virtues of walking the Middle Way between extremes, a belief which the Chinese Taoists embrace through the circular Yin-Yang symbol. Yin and Yang, looking rather like two plump tadpoles, nestle together, each containing at its tail end a dot of the opposite's colour. Yin and Yang are opposites, and as we grow towards extreme Yang we find it peters out into a thin tail and gives way to Yin. As we grow towards the Yin extreme, we return to Yang. The dot in each tail symbolises the growing seed of Yin in the extreme Yang, and visa versa. In other words, the Taoists believe that as we approach the extreme in any issue, life ultimately serves the opposite lesson. The strong have often developed their strength to cover their weakness, but it is frequently that very weakness which eventually topples them and reveals their vulnerability. The weak hide from their own strength until they are finally forced by another's overbearing strength to retaliate. It is best, advise the Taoists, to find balance by walking that middle road between extremes. This is not achieved by taking a blinkered view or by shutting out emotion, but by actively resolving inner conflict.

Since our strongest thoughts manifest themselves, our hidden unresolved extreme thoughts, those in opposition to our outer world personality, materialise in the shape of partners and friends of the opposite extreme. In denial of our true selves we abhor their strength, their weakness, their aggression, their victimised attitude, their shyness, their loudness; yet in truth we manifest our opposites because they are a true reflection of our selves.

In terms of meaning, opposites attract to help us resolve our conflicts between extremes, to find balance, while like attracts like so that we can acknowledge ourselves more objectively. There is always meaning in the mirror. With practice, that reflection tells us all we need to know about who we are and the shape of things to come. All we need to do then is to take action according to what we see. In this way, we can be our own clairvoyants.

Life as a Mirrored Cliche

There is something magical about cliches. Much as we are taught to avoid them and to search for more creative linguistic expression instead, they often embody centuries of observation and conditioning. We still relate to 'carrying the weight of the world on one's shoulders' which perhaps evolved from the days when nomadic people did just that. Seldom do we carry real weights that way today, yet tense shoulder pain is one of the first physical manifestations of stress (carrying too heavy a load).

Cliches are repeated ready-made images which frequently register as conditioned thoughts, colouring our view of the world. If these thoughts are sufficiently strong, they manifest as outer world form, literally or symbolically. If you step back from your life with a sense of humour, you will notice how often you live out cliches or act out the alternative meanings of words, much as I did following some of the hypnosis experiments.

I like to exercise (workout: I like to work things out?) so I generally go to the gym several times a week. When my gym membership expired recently, I decided to change my routine temporarily to fit in with my writing. So three times a week, at the end of my working day, I went running in the dark. It worked well. I wasn't tied to a gym timetable so it suited my working style, and it also reminded me of the weeks when I was writing my first book when we lived in a more isolated place and I ended each day by running. Writing my first book was rather daunting, and I found the run a useful time to drum in the old cliche 'one step at a time'. I envisioned that as easily as I could run a distance by approaching it one step at a time, so could I write my book by approaching it one chapter at a time. So it was that each run put the day's writing to bed and refreshed my mind for the next.

This time running was a different proposition. We live in a hilly innercity area, and since I didn't really want to make my run that hard, I found a little stretch of flattish back alleys and did enough laps to make up the mileage. Towards the middle of the book when I was dealing with some of the tough stuff, it dawned on me that I was 'running around the block'. Since my outer world mirrors my strongest inner thoughts, I realised that I must have been blocked in my understanding and that I was going round and round the issue instead of overcoming it. The issue that I hadn't fully come to terms with was the last hypnosis session involving the Wright Brothers documentary. I was also running 'in the dark': lacking clarity. Several nights later as I prepared for my run, no one was at home so I went running clutching my door key. I hadn't done this before. It was only on the home straight that I caught onto the symbolism and laughed: I finally 'had the key'! A few days later I found my solution and finished Part Two. On the same day a long expected cheque arrived in the mail and I decided to celebrate by buying a membership to a new fitness centre. So I never did 'run around the block' any more, because the block was no longer there. I had moved on to new territory.

Now this may seem a silly story, but is a simple illustration of how the outer world mirrors inner thoughts instantaneously. I didn't consciously go running because I had a block, just as I didn't know I had the key to understanding when I ran with the key. In each case, it was waking up to the cliche that alerted me to my corresponding inner thoughts. The 'block' realisation helped me to acknowledge that I had a block and to identify it, and the 'key' symbol gave me the confidence to let my unconscious solution write itself onto the computer, which it did.

It is not only the people in your life who are your mirrors. It is every aspect of your outer world. Your outer world is you. Look into the mirror when you need that extra insight and apply a little detective work. The answer may be there in cliche, or in the personalities of other people in your life, or in symbolism, but it will certainly be there. Clearly you will see the shape of things as they are and which actions, if any, you need to take to change the reflection in the mirror into the shape of things you would prefer.