Look at Details One More Time
As I said earlier, the motivation to look at details is so important. It is nice to see adults wanting to look at something trivial, something that isn’t necessary for life, like an animal walking, a beautiful garden, a sunset, or cloud formations. You can’t pay your bills with gorgeous skies, but when you look at them in a meaningful way, you’re engaging in something significant. When we were kids, we didn’t judge anything because we were not capable of earning a living then. We looked at everything out of curiosity—and, indeed, childhood vision is precious and great.
When we lose our curiosity, we lose much of our vision. Through inhibition and the requests of life, we learn to look at letters in order to gain content from them, and sometimes to see a page at a time, without looking at one single dot on that page. We observe other people only in order to understand what their expression means to us for a particular purpose or endeavor. By looking at a food shelf without paying attention to all that’s on that shelf, but just looking at the specific item that we need, we soon cut out 90 to 95 percent of the details that the world presents to us. The reason is that we know what we want way too well.
The problem is that we suppress the work of central vision and of the whole eye mechanism. The visual mechanism (the brain) does not pay attention to most details. The eye does the same thing. Many muscles get frozen: the ciliary muscles of the lens get frozen; the iris muscles of the pupils get frozen; and some of the external muscles get frozen as well, since they are not being used. Much of the retina is not working.
I will never forget a time when I saw a father and his daughter looking at some print. She was fifteen and he was in his midforties. She could see print much smaller than he could. He could see down to the fifth-print level, and she could see down to the eighth. I said to him, “At your age, you could see exactly what she sees.” After seeing hundreds of kids and how excellent their vision can be compared to the “normal” vision of adults, I could understand that childhood vision, even if it is less than normal, is much better than most adults’ vision. The father said to me, “What have I done all my life? I’ve missed out on something very important.” He had done very important things in his life: he was a surgeon, he had operated on people and saved lives, and he read books, but he did not pay attention to his own visual system; day by day, second by second, it decayed. It was clear to him and to me that if he could begin to be vigilant about his visual system and work with it, he could learn to improve his sight. Even after decreasing his visual acuity as much as he had, he was able to gain a lot of acuity that day and saw better.
In the cases of people who have lost retinal cells, renewing an interest and appreciation of details can help them gain back much of their lost vision. Your curiosity and need to look at details increases with these exercises, and you will feel more alive. You will feel that you breathe better and meditate clearer as you go along in life.
Our work, therefore, is to wake ourselves up to look at details and to revive the dormant centers in our brain. Much of the potential we possess is latent and asleep. It’s hidden from us because we adopt bad habits that we incorrectly think will work for us.
There is a continuous debate these days about vision. One side believes that simply having normal vision function is sufficient. The other side believes that paying attention to your vision function and working on it constantly is just as important as its functioning. The second group of people is still a minority, but that minority is growing. If you are reading this book and practicing the exercises, you are in the minority that believes we should always work on improving our vision. If you are in the minority, you also believe in vitalizing our vision and giving it life.
These eye exercises and those that follow can help you to see better and to feel better. Make time to do these exercises daily. The most important thing in life is to pay attention to the universe. The universe begins with you and your body. When you pay attention to your eyes, you’ll be in better contact with the whole world. You’ll also bring more circulation to your eyes, and you’ll feel better. Then you can help your own life and will find it is easier for you to help the world.
Sometimes an exercise will work perfectly fine one day, and not the same way the next day. There could be many reasons why this happens. For example, palming will work better if your shoulders are relaxed and worse if they have retained tension. Shifting will work much better if you are refreshed. Blinking (discussed in the next section) will work much better if you have a good night’s sleep and if you are relaxed at the time.
One sign that you’re doing well is if you find yourself looking at details for no special reason: observing and not ever straining to see them, but always having a sense of all the details in the object you’re looking at; you’re enjoying the object or looking at it in total neutrality. If you find yourself breathing deeper and absorbing the world with a greater joy, then all these exercises will carry themselves into your day-to-day life and become natural habits.
Step 9: Blink
In order to improve our awareness of blinking, and to receive all the benefits of blinking, we have to have individual control over each eyelid.
One great exercise is simply to open and close each lid separately. Another is to cover one eye with your palm and then concentrate on opening and closing the other eye by itself. Imagine that the eyelashes are doing all the work of opening and closing the eye.
If your eyelids feel dry or sore, you should either palm them or just close your eyes for a while. A reliable way to rest your eyes is to put a hot towel over them and relax them. This will increase the blood flow to your eyes. If you have inflammation in your eyes, putting a cold towel on them will feel nice. Through relaxation, you will discover a profound difference in your ability to blink.
As you look at details, you will find yourself gently blinking. Your eyelids should feel weightless. For a fraction of a second, the eyelids close and then open; it will happen quickly. It will massage your eyeball and trigger moist and pleasant tearing. It will also trigger the widening and contracting of the pupils as you open and close your eyelids. Blinking should be very gentle and pleasant.
When you blink and your eyes feel refreshed, looking at details becomes easy. It sounds counterintuitive to many people, as the feeling is that blinking interferes with looking. Nevertheless, the rest you receive from closing your eyes for a brief moment helps you to move from detail to detail with greater ease. In fact, without that rest, the mind would have a hard time concentrating on any one point. The rest allows you to keep functioning with greater ease. Blinking massages your eyes and brings you more vitality. The desire and willingness to look gives your whole body more life. Relax your forehead. Relax your jaw. Relax your temple. Experience the wonderful sensation of vitality in all of your face and neck and chest and upper body as you blink.
Figure 2.21. Cover the right eyelid with your fingers right underneath the eyebrows, and blink with the other eye.
If you sleep well and feel refreshed, if you exercise gently, if you feel relaxed and sense that the blood flows better in your body, you will find yourself blinking with greater ease. And if you blink with greater ease, you will find that you are relaxed and that the blood flows better throughout your whole body. Blinking influences, reflexively, the sense of relaxation and movement in the body. If the jaw drops and doesn’t crunch, then the shoulders drop and do not elevate, and the pelvis becomes loose—just from blinking gently, softly, and continuously at a rate of twenty-two to twenty-five blinks per minute. Blinking and looking at fine details is something that most children do automatically. It gives you a sense of youthful energy.