Sometimes I want to close my eyes
To the hurt and pain
To the disrespect
And the distraction
Sometimes I want to look through other’s eyes
And see the world from their perspective
Finding newness and joy
As they explore
Sometimes I want to close out the beauty
To the colors and light
To the joy and brevity
To the good
Especially when my pain
inside is louder than
the beauty outside
all I can see is the darkness
Sometimes filters of fear
cover the windows of my soul
and I’m unable to see truth
blinding my clarity
Sometimes when I am in public
I avoid others’ eyes for the
windows to their souls
hold the stories of their heart
Sometimes I close my eyes
And explore my inside world
Feeling relief and restoration
As I see my soul
Our eyes are truly the windows to our soul
No matter the images seen
For our fears create the opportunities
and our hearts create the learning
Sometimes I breathe my eyes into softness
And see the auras shining around everything
Feeling the wonder of the world
And the brilliance of auric light
I’ve learned to see without seeing
And as I open my heart, clarity comes
It takes courage to see truth
It takes patience to listen.
Our eyes hold vision inside and out
Our eyelids hold our choice to engage
All guided by love or fear
All present for discerning and learning
We follow our heart and trust our gut
We can do the same with our eyes
To truly see the full picture
Using our inside and outside vision
We learn to perceive the truth we see
By using our hearts as a guide
Blinking in and out of love and fear
Eyelids are the choice points
EYELIDS
By Shirley Riga
Flaps of skin
Window covers
Closes so we don’t see
Closes so we deny truth
Closes to rejuvenate
Closes windows to our soul
Open light
Opens courage to see
Opens our windows to the world
Bears our soul
Respite with slow blink
Temptation to close
Determination to open
Eyelids protect our soul
Controls our vulnerability
Rejuvenates our hope
Tired, rest, sleep, closed eyes,
Opens heart
Participants’ Reflections:
Our eyes, and our eyesight – having been diagnosed with macular degeneration, I really have become so grateful for seeing. I’ve lost central vision in my right eye. It’s a little scary. My left eye I can see clearly with it, but I never know from one day to the next whether I’ll lose central vision in that eye. I so appreciate the vision I do have in both eyes. The way our eyes are made with our eyelids is miraculous. I call upon all of us to be grateful for our vision. Sometimes we have to have dis-ease in our bodies to really be thankful for the function of that particular part of our body.
Through living, our inner vision becomes clearer and clearer as we sort out the lessons we learn from our outer vision.
I think I wrote this poem during the drama I was living through with my daughter’s terminal illness. I found respite in closing my eyes. It moved me enough to write this poem because it demonstrated to me my ability to control the input of energy coming in through my eyes.
Several images came to me during the meditation. One being how culturally we use our eyes to communicate, and cultures differ. In this culture, if we look away from someone, we’re seen as shifty. In other cultures, to look directly at someone is considered rude and bold. I also was thinking about my dog that has this wonderful ability to look right into my eyes and we share this time seeing each other. I can feel the energy back and forth. In art class, we use our eyes to interpret what we see.
There’s the camera eye. How nice it is to see other people in a group like this. Many of us are Zoomed out, and I enjoy coming to sessions like this gazing at others dedicated to this practice. Then I can control my experience when we go into meditation by turning off the camera eye and creating privacy. I bring the lens eye down as I also closed my own eyes.
When I feel vulnerable and have to be in public, I choose not to engage with people by not looking in their eyes. I saw a mentor of mine years ago in the grocery store. She was shopping and not engaging in eye contact with anyone. It is a way of creating a boundary in the outside world. We take in so much information through our eyes.
This past year I worked from home without using video. It was interesting to me how my experience not using my eyes sharpened my hearing. To this day, I feel a lot more perceptive than I did before.
I began the meditation with a curiosity looking through another person’s eyes as a way of experiencing their emotional and intellectual response. Golda Meir was someone who I connected to years ago, and when I would feel vulnerable in a situation, I would imagine looking at my situation through her eyes and feeling how she would deal with it. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to take in someone’s view that isn’t emotionally tied up in my situation? The whole concept of seeing with my heart is so valuable. I know more what it means not to see with my heart. It means how I evaluate something and I’m not softened to the person or the experience and how it impacts me. During the meditation, I was practicing seeing with my heart.
This reminds me of a quote from The Little Prince. It was one of my mom’s favorite quotes. I don’t know how much she lived by this quote. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
When you don’t know how much your mother lived by this quote, there’s her humanness and her soul, and this quote represents her soul speaking.
It’s interesting, since she died last year, I have connected so much more to her soul. The little bits that I saw when she was alive, I am experiencing it more now.
What a wonderful message – we mourn for the loss of people, and if we allow ourselves, we actually do grow closer to them after they pass.
When we understand, we say, ‘I see that.’ I was just thinking how we don’t say ‘I hear that’. I think this group is the best about hearing each other. If we say to people, ‘I see you and I hear you’, it’s a whole different experience.
During the meditation, I was reflecting on the bark on trees, the differences. I feel the bark with my eyes, and it is so beautiful. I feel the differences.
Trees are not just trees but another type of sentient being. Humans have their differences and so do trees. Sentient beings include all living things and they hold differences just like humans do. Our awareness heightens as we grow deeper in our hearts and we’re able to appreciate the energies around us. Trees also are sentient beings, along with plants and insects.
Thank you for joining me in this community of awareness as we use our ears to hear and our eyes to see, our skin to feel, all part of this experience that we share individually together. I hope you all have a gentle day. As we talk about eyesight and vision, these senses are more enhanced. In gratitude we experience it.
Photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@andremouton