What distinguishes a person who thinks from a plant, an individual from a stone, a person from dust? What allows you to rise above the routine of being and, looking back, analyze the situation, your own mistakes and overcome uncertainty? It is reflection - the ability of human thinking to critical introspection.
Translated from Latin reflexio - referring back. A reflective person is able not only to critically look at the world around him, but also to analyze his actions, thoughts and results of his life in the framework of his life experience. This is not a trivial memory, a stir of “affairs of bygone days”, nostalgia. This is a thought process that can change for the better the future of the individual, his life attitudes, his self-determination.
Reflecting in a psychological interpretation means consciously and soberly perceiving the contents of one’s consciousness, one’s life experience.
A bit of history. Reflection and Spirituality
Reflection was given attention even in ancient Greek philosophy: Socrates highlighted the process of self-knowledge of a person, the subject of which was spiritual activity and its cognitive functions. A person who rejects knowledge and refuses self-knowledge is not capable of becoming a spiritual and moral person, is not capable of development. Reflecting means developing, growing spiritually.
At Plato and Aristotle, reflection and thinking were attributes inherent in the demiurge, the divine mind. Only the supermind, in their understanding, was capable of the unity of the conceivable and thought. This concept passed into neoplatonism, arguing that reflection is nothing but the peacemaking activity of a deity. This theory is not without meaning and is found in modern interpretations. The fact is that reflexion can be performed from two positions. The first position is when comprehension occurs by the individual: self-reflection. Who knows me better than myself and can analyze my thoughts and aspirations? Only I myself.
The second position is non-self reflection. But who besides me can penetrate my consciousness? Only God possessing personality traits.
Thus, a believer is not only reflecting and experiencing his actions, he is scanning his experiences, thinking about how God relates to his actions. Is his life righteous, is he sinful.
The result of such reflection is doubled, and the effect of such introspection is certainly stronger.
Reflective person
Within the framework of many philosophical concepts, reflection is considered as one of the more essential properties of consciousness. In accordance with this statement, only those beings who are aware of the state of their psyche can be considered conscious and thinking. Simply put, a person who is not able to analyze his state of mind cannot be called thinking. Emotional, creative, but not thinking.
The reflection of the newborn is equal to zero - he perceives the world around him as a given, parents - as an unconditional component of this world. In the process of growing up and increasing autonomy from parental care, a growing individual begins to see and comprehend the contradictions. This causes him to accept or reject parental authority, to critically interpret the actions of loved ones. The reflection mechanism is launched, and from now on, a person is only able to improve and grow spiritually and morally.
Reflection in individual people cannot be the same. Its level varies depending on the age of the person. Reflection has the greatest activity and amplitude at the very beginning of the development of the human personality - at the stage of childhood and adolescence, youth. By the middle of the life path, reflection noticeably reduces the rhythm, and by the end of life it completely freezes.
Is it possible to develop my reflection?
As it has already become clear, to reflect for any person means to grow on oneself spiritually. Is it possible to work on this process, to stimulate one’s spiritual and moral development?
What does it mean to reflect? To put it simply, to reflect is to react to external stimuli. Conflict, problems, confrontation, dialogue, choice, doubt - all this happens to a person every day. The more a person has such experiences, the richer his reflecting amplitude.
A reflexive person is a kind of psychoanalyst of his own, able to pose a problem and find a solution in his own experience, in his experiences.
The peculiarity of a living mind is that it needs only a little to see and hear, so that it can then reflect for a long time. You can try the method of thoughtfully rethinking a work of art as applied to any person. How many hours do you think of a book you just read, a movie you watched, a movie you saw? Hour, day, week? Do you project events from the book onto yourself, are you trying to analyze your actions in the context of an art plot?
This is your reflexive training. A kind of reflection training, you can recommend writing on the sheet of the most significant and important issues that concern you throughout your life. Having gathered them in one place, try to mark the questions with markers of different colors and find out what most of your questions are about. About the meaning of life? About your activity? About relationships with others? About the material component? About future?
Having analyzed your aspirations in this way, you can continue reflection in the most problematic direction, becoming more perfect and continuing your own spiritual development.
Gender approach
There is a theory of gender approach to the process of reflection. According to this stereotype, it is assumed that women are more prone to reflection than men, and this is allegedly associated with a finer mental regulation of the weaker sex. This controversial statement has no scientific evidence.
There are a number of observations of psychologists, in which there is a different manifestation of reflection in representatives of different sexes.
So, it was found that women with a low level of reflection are more likely to defend their own interests to the detriment of the interests of another. Simply put, low-intellectual, non-reflective female personalities are more scandalous and more embarrassing. Whereas female reflexes prefer to compromise and get away from scandal than to be involved in the conflict.
The reflecting man, on the contrary, acts as a fighter in a conflict situation, defending his interests. Men with a minimum indicator of reflection will demonstrate adaptive, adaptive behavior in a conflict situation.
So, summing up the above, it is safe to say that to reflect is to be a person who thinks, feels, analyzes. This property of human nature distinguishes us from other representatives of the living world, and it is this property that can bring the human person to a new, qualitatively different level of development.