"> The eureka effect

The eureka effect

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Here are a couple things that happened years ago.

  • When lying down and resting my eyes, I opened them to find that they were straight. I had exotropia at times, where my eyes wouldn’t point the same direction, and it resulted in a lot of confusion until I forced my eyes straight. In this moment I realized that there was another way.
  • I was looking close up at a bright light bulb, and I could feel the discomfort of continuing to look at it. I stopped looking at it, but my eyes were still pointed at it. I realized I was still looking at the bulb, but I was doing it in a way that didn’t result in the feeling of tension. I was looking at it in a softer, more mentally directed way instead of trying to force my eyes to look at it. I found that as soon as I stopped forcing my eyes to look at it, it was instantly easier to look at.

There were innumerable others, but those were two of the most extreme moments.

What are some of your “eureka” or “aha!” moments?

A moment of insight is far more significant than trusting what someone else has said and telling yourself that it’s true because it makes sense. There’s no substitute for experiencing the truth for yourself. There’s no arguing with it.

When you have a moment of clearer vision it’s difficult to understand or analyze what just happened. You were using your brain in a different way, and you can’t totally understand that other way of using your brain from the perspective of the way you’re using your brain currently. You have to understand how you got there mentally and return there to find out what it’s all about. If you find that during a moment of clearer vision (a “clear flash”), your muscles relax and you feel a sense of calm before you return to your blurry vision, you will probably try to reproduce that feeling of relaxation and calmness and whatever else you feel like you were doing differently. But in doing so you’re most likely trying to reproduce the effects you briefly experienced without regard for what really led to them, and that’s why it tends to fail. So sudden temporarily clearer vision isn’t necessarily a eureka moment.

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David

Author: David

I founded iblindness.org in 2002 as I began reading books on the Bates Method and became interested in vision improvement. I believe that everyone who is motivated can identify the roots of their vision problems and apply behavioral changes to solve them.

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