Mid-November 2023 Newsletter

Hello, and a memorable notable Mid-November to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue is about your story, whether you want to keep it asis or update it. Enjoy!

A key part of my self-image is that I'm a good student, enjoying learning new things and being exposed to new ideas. As a child I read voraciously, losing myself in the stories between the pages. When my mother chased me outside, I'd take a book with me, climb a tree, and read up there. Many years later, I still spend a lot of time reading about topics which interest me like health or fitness or vision improvement or human behavior. You could say I'm doing independent study, nearly every day.

Seeing myself as eager to learn, and good at it, is a view of myself I want to keep. However, another big part of my identity has long revolved around my limited eyesight, or the thick eyeglasses or hard contacts I wore for many years. I saw this trait as a major defect, and felt less than other people because of it. Also, my temperament was anything but calm. On the contrary, I was nervous and anxious and worried about everything.

In my studies of vision improvement, reading about the "nearsighted personality" who gravitates to fear and worry made me feel like I'm a classic case. Did my myopia cause the anxiety, or vice versa? Did my thick glasses push down the nervousness so I could pretend I was normal? Myopia and anxiety must be connected, since when I met anyone else with thick glasses, that person seemed fearful too. This is part of my character I definitely wanted to put behind me, though I had no idea how to do that.

Without intentionally focusing on eyesight, I started to explore ways to reduce my mental and physical tension. I began meditating every morning right after I woke up, to center myself for the day ahead. I made sure I got outside for a walk around my neighborhood a few times a day, looking in a welcoming way at the trees and shrubs and hills in the distance. Vision practice can be done with whatever you're seeing, by curiously and gently scanning over the details.

As I gradually lowered the tension in my body and mind, while continuing to do regular vision practices like palming or sunning or viewing the eye chart, I was pleased to see the strain in my visual system begin to decrease as well. Like all my vision efforts, this wasn't a linear steady improvement, seeing a bit more clearly every day or every week -- I wish! I had plenty of setbacks and times of being discouraged, but I persisted. All I had to lose was my strain and worry, which I was glad to release.

Although my studies of vision improvement had convinced me that mental strain is behind visual strain, and that relaxation and letting go of tension were the key to improving, I knew this intellectually more than I experienced it. Only when I started to feel how being physically or mentally or emotionally tense affected my vision was I able to change my habits. Creating what one of my clients calls "mental space", free from distraction and worry, gave me more space to expand my visual field too. Maybe just for now, for a few minutes, I can let all that angst go while I take a walk and let my vision roam over the landscape. I can pick up the responsibilities again when I get back home. What do you need to let go of to be freer?

To read a dream about a person's eyes telling their story, 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 remainder of this not-to-be-repeated month of November. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!