Sufism

Everything that exists is a mirror reflecting one Real

Because nothing that exists has being of its own, Ibn Arabi treats the entire created world as a field of mirrors, each one reflecting the One Reality only in a limited, particular way.

Ibn Arabi tells the story, in the Fusus al-Hikam's opening chapter, of a Real that wanted to see its own qualities reflected back to it, the way a person wants to see their own face in a mirror. Before Adam's creation, he says, the rest of the cosmos already existed but functioned like an unpolished mirror, present yet too clouded to return a clear image. Adam's creation is the moment that mirror is finally polished, so every subsequent existing thing can be understood the same way: as a locus reflecting some limited configuration of the divine names, never the whole picture at once. No single mirror shows everything; each shows only what its own particular shape and clarity allow, which is why Ibn Arabi treats the sheer diversity of created things as necessary rather than accidental.

Fusus al-Hikam