January 2021 Newsletter

Hello, and a juicy January, and never-before new year of 2021 to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue is about seeing more, and understanding more. Enjoy!

When I first started exploring natural vision improvement, about 20 years ago now, the strong connection being seeing and understanding seemed to be everywhere. "I see what you mean" was the same as "I understand you". Someone might explain a concept, then finish with "See?", as in "Did you follow what I said?". Since I had such poor vision for most of my early life, yet considered myself pretty intelligent, might there be some fundamental concepts I was not understanding?

One of the first things I discovered about my seeing habits, to my dismay, was that I wasn't really looking carefully or thoroughly at most things in front of me. I was often looking around like a bored browsing shopper, scanning without much interest. No wonder I didn't see much! I was "checked out", my visual attention not engaged. As one of my early teachers Peter Grunwald said, the attention (or intention to see) leads, then the eyes follow. If my attention wasn't connecting with the environment, how could my eyes and vision?

As Julia Cameron says in the quote to the left, paying attention more will lead you to notice more to be delighted about. I often tell vision clients "If you don't look, you won't see!". I could add "... and you won't have as much to delight you". My early life was spent reading voraciously, so most of what delighted me then was the pictures in my mind which my imagination formed from the words I read. Nowadays it's thrilling for me to also absorb myself in the visual details of a Nature scene, or of a simple house plant, or of countless other ordinary objects. Human vision is such a gift!

Have you ever met someone new, had an initial negative reaction, then spent more time listening to the person and realized how interesting they were, or how much you had in common? Eyesight is like that too. If you look for a longer time, curiously and in an exploring way, you may gain new insights about what you're seeing that you'd miss in a quick glance. I think we sometimes do ourselves a disservice by rushing to name and categorize things (usually so we ourselves will be more comfortable). If we can't identify something quickly, putting it firmly into a "I know what that is!" box, we can feel unsettled.

It feels satisfying to know, to get the right answer. And we can always know more, gain additional information, which might cause us to re-evaluate our earlier conclusions. This is how science, and human understanding overall, moves forward. Start with an educated guess based on the data you have now, then keep noticing what happens, including patterns, and keep refining your theories. You have to look to see, and you have to keep looking to understand, then to understand more.

This picture of the soaring eagle inspires me, not getting overwhelmed by the vast landscape, but instead zeroing in on smaller and smaller details until it can identify a creature like a scurrying mouse or fish just under the water which could become a tasty meal. With my own focus on books and the details of letters and numbers, I haven't been as good about opening up my visual attention to be delighted by (thinking of the Julia Cameron quote) the expansive views. This is a relatively new area of exploration for me vision-wise. I'm finding I'm less and less frightened by the big wide world, and more enchanted, as I continue to grow my understanding. Look more, see more, know more!

For an article on different aspects of vision (and understanding) beyond eye chart acuity, click here.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning energy medicine or vision or dreams. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here. You're helping many other people! Enjoy the start of this joyous month of January, and of an entire new year to create whatever you want. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!