Reality is Your Mirror (some thoughts)

When you look up to the heavens you're looking at yourself, but you likely don't see yourself due to the beliefs you hold. This is Zen, this is Tao. It also holds true when you look in the mirror. Most likely you see your beliefs about yourself, a distorted projection, just like that upon the heavens. Thus we have a bearded man in the sky of our own creation judging us, just as we judge ourselves in the mirror. All of our experience is filtered in this way, never realizing we're chained in Plato's cave, weighed down by "chains of karma". Enlightenment, liberation, salvation, awakening - all terms meaning the state of seeing things how they really are. Not as we want them to be, not as we believe they are, but simply as they are in themselves. This is the core insight of all the spiritual traditions. And upon seeing this, when you look up to the heavens you'll simply see yourself smiling back at you.