Eyes ~ Windows of the Soul
I've been learning a lot about eyes, and it has taken me in two very different directions.
First of all, there are exercises which can improve eyesight and which can restore some or all of the function of eyes which have become near or farsighted, or even astigmatic. This is possible partly because the eye is largely composed of muscles which, like other muscles in the body, need to be exercised. Over time, bad habits may cause these muscles to weaken; they can be strengthened. Sometime I will describe the exercises, a few as I learned them, others as I actually practice them.
There is a second direction, leading into the old saying that the eye is the window of the soul. Some details behind this very simple intuition are quite interesting.
Let me begin on the intuitive side.
- 1) If you are talking about something that interests you, and if you then change topics, perhaps because someone interrupts, or perhaps because you remember another event of a different kind, you have to blink. You have to! You always blink when you change topics. There are only two minor exceptions: one is when you are staring into the distance and not actually engaged in the topic but are speaking sort of automatically; then you can maintain your hypnotic stare. The other exception is, of course, when your eyes are shut, but even then, you can feel your eyes shift focus.
- In fact, you don't even have to be talking; it is enough to be thinking and change topics: change topic; change focus.
- 2) Indeed the reason that people blink or get shifty-eyed when they lie is that they have to access their alibi in a different locus, mentally, from their access to the circumstances which actually took place, and they need to keep comparing notes to make the story work right. All this activity is reflected in a repeated change of visual focus.
- Being shifty-eyed is not always about lying. Some people are just careful and are always re-examining their memories to understand them better or to consider whether they missed a detail. So you have to ask yourself: is this guy shifty-eyed because he is untrustworthy or just because he is actually unsure of himself and being careful. But eyes do move with shifting thoughts.
- Try it. Talk about a childhood memory and then do an addition problem. Can you move from one thought to the other without blinking?
- 3) It gets more interesting.
- When you access visual information, you are likely to look up; when you access auditory information, you are likely to look to the side; when you access emotionally painful material, you are likely to look down; when you access muscular memory, such as dance steps, you are most likely to look in front of you.
Moreover...!
- 4) Memory is generally to the left, and imagination to the right. This is another clue to lying because an alibi is imagined, not remembered, unless the liar is quite thorough ahead of time so that the alibi is tight with memory.
- 5) Such generalities are interesting, but I believe it gets much more detailed. I suspect that each memory actually has a locus as specific as the leaf on a tree or the thread in a dress, and from this it would follow that especially painful memories might cause us to have blind spots, or spots from which our vision shifts very quickly. Such spots would be very small, but they could also accumulate and this could become a factor in the loss of visual range.
Thus, in sharing my thoughts about eyes, I begin with intuition. It matters. When you do visual exercises, you are asking yourself to look in every direction, up and down, right and left, near and far, systematically, to rebuild your muscles. It may happen that the place where you lose your focus or your interest in the exercises just represents a bad habit, like where the window begins from where you usually sit, or where your eyes meet the edge of your eyeglasses.
But a visual handicap may also represent an emotional locus. If you feel unhappy at the end of a vision exercise, or if you find yourself dwelling on some painful memory, you may need to talk things over with a good friend and come to better terms with your old sorrows.
It's a good idea to do so anyway, now and then, even if it doesn't involve your eyesight, and you need a really good friend who can lift you out of your blind spot, not one who broadens it. Aunt Lizzie is as apt to be helpful as Dr. Plumroe, PhD, and holiness is a very serviceable qualification, but not always enough, and generally hard to come by. Think about it; look around.
Pray, of course.
The world is full of surprises.
