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+--- Thread: What could be there? (/showthread.php?tid=2008)
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Re: What could be there? - blwegrzyn - 02-10-2012
David Wrote:blwegrzyn,
If you have to read something, that is what being interested means. It doesn't mean you find it entertaining. It just means it holds your attention for some reason and you accept that fact and you act on it by looking at it to get visual information and think about what you're seeing.
If you have equally no interest in seeing anything available to you, it just illustrates the fact that you have given up your desires to the point where you actually have no interest in seeing anything in particular, and you need to redevelop your desires by finding a way to become interested in something. Bates touched on this by describing how kids eventually become incapable of learning because the constant exposure to boring material in the classroom has destroyed their impulse towards acquiring knowledge.
If you aren't interested in seeing a letter you are working with using whatever method of shifting your attention around it, you don't want to see it clearly. You might want to see clearly in a general sense, but not that letter, and you're using that letter as a means to an end without realizing that the thing preventing you from reaching that end is fact that you have no interest in doing so.
It would be like if I tried to develop my sense of touch by rubbing my hand back and forth on this tabletop, without interest in actually feeling the tabletop but with the idea that I'm using the tabletop as a tool to improve my sense of touch so that I can touch anything else except this tabletop which I don't want to feel.
I think I did not loose my interest, but i simply categorize things in different ways:
- letters and signs on the train: I look at them and try to see more and better, but I am not completely interested how they look or their shape, I know they are not clear and what interests me the most is to make them clearer, they are the object of my exercises and my vision practice, but I know how "1" looks like and I don't think I will gain more just by being more interested
- stuff i like: i go so deep that i am always overworked from reading and learning about stuff that interests me, i spend tons of hours on reading, and sometimes I am worried that I do it too much so my extreme interest is actually making my vision worse
When you are interested in something, this is where you can be locked in strain without being aware of it. Usually after few hours you realize that you were sucked into something.
David Wrote:I don't know about astigmatism. It's all the same to me.
I asked about that cause I see many different exercises and techniques specifically for astigmatism.
I don't know if they are good or bad, but many doctors who preach Bates method use different astigmatism specific exercises.
blwegrzyn Wrote:- Why talking brakes from exercising and trying to be relaxed and not worried about vision does not fix anything
David Wrote:Why would it?
I thought that not worrying about anything could put me in relaxed state and fix the vision by accident?
Re: What could be there? - David - 02-13-2012
Maybe this will help. I believe that:
- brain functioning is a critical factor in the process of good vision
- part of the brain has been turned off to lie mostly dormant in the conditions of blurry vision
- such a condition of a dormant brain system (I'm using that phrase because not sure what the right phrase would be and because I don't know enough about the brain to try to get too specific) prevents vision from improving while it remains dormant
- the dormant brain system can be awakened by repeated appropriate stimulation
- one way of stimulating the dormant brain system is to redevelop interest in perceiving small details
blwegrzyn, I went through a time of believing that it was a good thing to not pay close attention to what I was seeing, because avoiding too much mental attention was in effect relaxing my eyes. I didn't get very consistent positive feedback from "relaxing", but I did get a lot of what I interpreted as negative feedback or "strain" from looking at things intently, so I tried to be almost totally mentally detached from what I was seeing so that I wouldn't "strain". It became a game of trying to see without being interested in seeing, in the belief that in doing so I would avoid interfering with my own process of seeing and thereby let it work perfectly without me. What this boils down to is trying to accomplish something while taking an action in conflict with it, and also trying to accomplish something by abdicating yourself by denouncing your own power as negative. That road doesn't lead anywhere.
Re: What could be there? - blwegrzyn - 02-13-2012
thx David, this makes sense and I want to practice more!!!
Re: What could be there? - Stefanie - 02-17-2012
This post was jsut amazing! It describes the correct way of looking at things with such details. It even gave me a clear flash. When I got to the interactive part (which I absolutely loved, by the way), I realised that it made me do exactly the same thing I had been doing some time ago while skiing. I could bring up my vision to 20/20 back then and maintain it for pretty much the whole day. And while shifting on this man's hat my eyes started moving the same way. So definitely stick to this way of looking, it brings results. I know how difficult it often is to do it this way, yet when I finally manage to shift on details, it seems to be the easiest task in the world
Re: What could be there? - fuoco - 02-23-2012
I agree. After some time experimenting with it, it feels like the basis behind any experience I had of clearing the vision.
I've been going around and just looking all over with interest, simply noticing what I see, what is there, what's hidden, what's more to be discovered. Surprisingly one finds out there's tons of information all around, and by just paying attention you get quite a bit of it. If you get lucky after a moment or two the vision clears up as in a clear flash - for me not 20/20 or close to that, but noticeably better.
My concern is that it's still a mental activity which is very much hard to control. Just telling myself to look with interest works some of the time, but not always. For some reason it works for me way better when outdoors, and when looking very far away. When indoors not so much...
I've tried to incorporate it into the chart work, and at first it was good, but just like always after a day or two, it becomes straining again to look at the chart, and doesn't feel helpful. In short it feels difficult to get interested in the chart. It's too black and white, too little unknown detail to discover. I already know what's on there so I can't get interested enough...In fact it's a general thing with reading, also from a book or from the computer. The question would be how to integrate looking with interest and reading? It apparently isn't directly related to being interested in the content being read, right?
Re: What could be there? - Pikachu - 02-23-2012
Maybe it's so much about how interesting what you are looking at is, but how interested you are in the act of looking at whatever it is you're looking at. It might be worth trying to come up with some questions that you can ask yourself even when what you are looking at is uninteresting or unmysterious. What helps me sometimes is to ask if there is something there that I'm missing. "Is that letter really all black or are there specks of white or red or green that I didn't notice?" I don't know if I'm on the right track with that idea, but it seems to me that the key here is to get your mind engaged with what you are looking at. One of my biggest problems is that I will often look at one thing and start thinking about another thing. If you can nudge your mind a little towards what you're looking at, it might help - I think.
Re: What could be there? - sean - 02-27-2012
@ arocarty
Andrew, thanks first of all for your detailed reply on an earlier thread which was most useful. (Thanks to others too who responded.) Your description of good sight (echoed by Clarknight) where there is absolutely no effort also caught my attention and reminds me of going on my first 'sun' holiday 8 or 9 years ago where I actually saw people lying out all day quite motionless. I knew they did this, but I'd never witnessed it.
In your earlier post on this thread you refer to looking with too much 'intensity' (using fuoco's term). This is something I have come up against too, perhaps the biggest thing (I'm not at all sure), that is, that there is a tendency to put too much into looking and so you not only have the right ingredients in there somewhere but other stuff (probably exertion) that's messing it up. I don't experience this as tunnel vision or concern about the periphery, just that I am putting too much into it somehow.
A form of words sprang to mind: You can look but you can't touch!
@ Nancy
This is, to my mind, closely related to the above. You talk about the idea of 'allowing' yourself to see. This is something that has occurred (or keeps on occurring, rather) to me too.
One idea which came to me recently was that if I am still seeing in the way I used to then I shouldn't expect to see any improvement. Remember David referring to his experiences in the past where he would practise on the chart and only when he had finished and turned to go did his vision clear. It sounds a bit like perservering with a way of seeing that hasn't worked before and now expecting positive results. So the idea now is:how is my seeing (in front of the chart) different from before, or is it different at all? And if not, why not?
When I recently got excited over David's shifting in triangles post the overwhelming feeling when seeing clearly was exactly that of being allowed to do this. I didn't have to do all the stuff I had to do before. (I can't think of anything I actually had to do, but I obviously felt somewhere in side that it was expected of me.) This ties in in with the idea that I am not trying to get (overall) clarity, but rather noticing how what at first glance looks like one (big) detail actually contains further, smaller details. And when I see that way, like yourself I have to laugh.
So the approach I am investigating now for chart practice is, rather than steeling myself for another half hour session to get through, to look at it this way instead: I now have a full half hour at my disposal where I don't have to look or see in the old way at all, where I am excused from all that. This sounds to me like what you are talking about too.
Of course, none of these ideas is new on this board, and have been touched on often. But I am just looking to put them into a framework that makes practical sense to me.
Re: What could be there? - sean - 02-27-2012
... actually, I'm not sure they are all familiar ideas on this forum. And indeed that they necessarily valuable or not misleading.
And, while I am at it, for 'practical sense' substitute 'coherent sense'.
Say what I mean.
Re: What could be there? - clarknight - 03-05-2012
I like this part! Practicing true natural vision without knowing your doing it, without trying;
Do you see the grey button on the man's hat? Look carefully, without leaning closer.
If you didn't, that's because there isn't one. But what did you see? You suddenly noticed the shades of darker colors on his hat as you searched for a spot of grey. You just improved your vision, because you saw something you didn't notice at first. Don't think of your quality of vision as just how blurry or sharp it is. Better vision is being able to see things you didn't notice before. So every time you notice something new, because you're looking directly at a new spot with curiosity of what else is there, you have improved your vision, and you should consider it another success. And your brain will respond, and your eyes will start to focus in response to your directing of your attention to smaller details.