Lens/Focus

Yes, the picture to the right is supposed to be blurry. :) Although it was not originally taken for that purpose, but it serves a purpose here.

Last Wednesday I picked up a new pair of eyeglasses. It has been more than a couple of years since I’ve had a new prescription. Now you might already think you *see* where I’m going with this, but read on…

Within an hour of *trying* to adjust, *trying* to see I had a pressure headache, my eyes hurt, and I became physically fatigued. So off came the new glasses and on went the old way of seeing – which interestingly was MUCH clearer. :) There are multiple metaphors here I know… But let’s just focus here a little bit…

The rest of the day my head and eyes hurt and I had trouble focusing. I felt like my brain had been scrambled. Well it is anyway, but it felt like someone had put it in a blender and hit the liquefy button - the thinking function went mush. I had no idea that blurred vision could cause blurred thinking. My poor eyes didn’t know where to focus, and neither did my brain evidently. I was just going to lay down, close my eyes and rest and hope it would pass, but on the way to the couch I got distracted at my desk doing some paper work. And it seemed that in the *focus* my symptoms started to clear up. By actually focusing my eyes on one thing at a time, instead of being over stimulated with trying to take everything in all at once, the eyes evidently refocused themselves and my headache lifted… The act of focusing actually helped. However, as soon as I left the act of simply seeing and went into a wider aperture, allowing in more stimulation, the eyes lost focus again. Hmmm. I know there must be another metaphor here as well… :)

And maybe the simple noticing here is that when I’m feeling bombarded with too much input, I need to come back into the place of present moment awareness and focus. If I try to make too many decisions, or think about all the things I need to do, or have so much information coming in at me at one time, the system gets overloaded, things get out of focus, and I get fatigued with the distortion of it all. Sitting in a quiet, low-lit space and quietly focusing, minimizing the external distractions that blurred my vision, brought back perspective to an overly distorted view of things. This reminded me of my need to spend more time in quiet stillness, something I don’t always remember to do. It is helpful for me to withdraw myself from all the “eye strain” of trying to see too much, and just focus on what I need to see in the moment.

I was able to get an appointment with the eye doctor for a re-check the next morning. She gave me a thorough exam, made adjustments and gave me a new Rx.

During the exam the doctor nicely explained that when you change the lens it focuses the light on a different place in the back of the eye, changing how your eye focuses, and thus how you *see.* The eyes try to get the light to focus back on the old focus point, causing muscle strain in the eye. Interesting. So even physically we try to *resist* seeing something new, or seeing in a new way…

And of course there’s the old familiar metaphor here too. :) It seems the lens we use can create clarity or distortion, because it’s the lens that causes the eye to focus, or not, to bring the light to the point where we are able to *see.* It seems the clarity with which we see life depends on the lens we are seeing *through* - the lens of our perceptions. My perception of the way things are is the lens through which I’m seeing life, which creates distortions of how things really are. My usual lenses are fear, worry, stress and anxiety. But I’m going to need different ‘eyeglasses” to clear those up. I’ll need a monocle for that – the One Eye of present moment awareness – focusing moment by moment from the place of Stillness.

How clear is your focus lately? What lens of perception are you seeing through?

Heart Smiles – MeANderi
www.ASerenitySanctuary.com