Black Mirror, Green Mirror

“and he withdrew to lonely places and prayed."

Mirrors are very strange things. I remember a friend’s bathroom growing up. All the walls were mirrors. You could look into infinity, see reflections of yourself, smaller and smaller and smaller, into an endless tunnel of light. In Snow White, the evil queen gazes into her magic mirror to contact guidance from a mysterious source. It is said that Nostradamus polished a brass pot until it was a clear mirror, and it was into this reflection that he gazed to see the future and compose his quatrains… Of course, there is also Lady Galadriel from Lothlórien, who pours clear water into a bowl to create her own mirror of water, and into this Frodo gazes and sees many things which may, or may not, come to pass.

What looks back at us when we gaze into a mirror? What sorts of mirrors do we have around us today? These are a mixture of strange tales from prophets, tellers of tales, and masters of mythology and lore.

About ten years ago, a show was released on Netflix, Black Mirror. It’s a dark show, not for everyone. It explores the trendlines of technology—where we might find ourselves in five years, ten years, twenty years. It was this show that first forecast the presence of robotic dogs used for security, surveillance, and defense, technology that is now in use in militaries and police departments worldwide. A show that explored the potential for social media and social credit scores to control the population and enforce totalitarian controls—something already in use in China and being explored by Western governments as well.

They never quite say what the “Black Mirror” is, but one day I was watching a show on magic and the magician revealed a simple trick. When doing card tricks, he would place his iPhone on the bench below the cards with the glass side up. The person looking down could only see the top of the cards, but the magician, looking down, could see the face of the cards reflected in the black mirror of his phone. Take out your phone and look at the dark screen until you see the reflection there. Isn’t that interesting? So the phone is literally a mirror, but if we go deeper into the nature of algorithms, we know that the information our phones give us is also a mirror of our consciousness at any given time. The phone gives us more of what we engage with. If we engage with division, we get more division. If we engage with ancient wisdom, we get more ancient wisdom. The Black Mirror is a product of human beings. We made it. And what we will find in it will always be a reflection of the things we have made. Anything we find there is filtered through our imperfect technology.

The technology it takes to make a smartphone requires the entire world. How many people would it take to make a smartphone if you needed to make one from scratch? Where would you get the critical minerals, the microprocessors, the components? The phone is the product of a planet-wide network of information and resource sharing that is incredibly fragile. This is a mirror that has become the center of most people’s lives. It is the strangest, most compelling, most addicting, and powerful magic human beings have ever held in their hands. I often think about the scene with Bilbo gazing at and stroking his magic ring in The Lord of the Rings. Gandalf is trying to help him part with the ring, but the thought of losing it causes him to lose his composure and his temper. Or Gollum, when he cannot find the ring years earlier and flies into a rage. Can’t we all identify, even a little bit, with that feeling of being completely dependent on this gadget that only fifteen years ago we somehow managed to live without?

The average American spends eleven hours a day on a screen, or a black mirror. We see it all around us. We see ourselves. I can’t help but sense that there is some malevolence in this technology. Something here feels deeply unwholesome. Is the world really as dark as our black mirrors make it to be? When we interact with actual people, when we go to and fro, do we see the vitriol and the division that our mirrors reflect? Or are we perhaps under some sort of spell? This is not to deny the suffering, the injustice, the darkness that is a part of life and this world, but is it possible that our perception is being manipulated? And on all sides of every issue?

The work I have been called to do in this life is the work of leading myself and others into what I have come to refer to as “The Green Mirror,” or Creation. It seems that in this time, the counter-call of the black mirror is the call of the “more-than-human world”: nature. Trees, clouds, wind, fire, earth, sky, water. I believe that these are the Angels of the Earthly Mother, who soothe our doom-weary souls in times like these. The green mirror does not reflect the hand of man. Whose hand does it reflect? When we sit with nature, whose handiwork do we observe? Certainly not our own. Perhaps this is why the wisest among us have sought out these lonely places in nature for solitude and prayer, for wisdom and contemplation. When the works of man, as presented by the black mirror, seem to keep spiraling into endless loops of misery and self-destruction, guidance and comfort can be found in the book of life as we still find it—pure and majestic—in the wild places on earth and in the heavens. From the fire escape bird feeders of Brooklyn, to the backyards of every suburb, the Berkshire Hills, and the beaches of California, the green mirror waits to receive us, and it offers a reflection that never fails to feed our weary souls.