04-03-2011, 10:45 PM
People have talked at times about the passive nature of vision, learning to receive light without trying to force anything to happen, quoting Bates saying that anything you "do" to improve vision is wrong, etc. Often they go overboard with that concept and avoid doing really anything at all to improve their vision, trusting that somehow their complete passivity will see them through. It has to be applied in the right context. Here's where I believe it applies best:
In your act of seeing, when you look at an object and look at its various parts, various points of detail, you might make the mistake of trying to force a point to exist as a consequence of your act of looking at it. Consider that what you have to do in order to see clearly has nothing to do with the point of detail. Your forcing and struggling does not affect it. It already exists the way it is. When your vision is blurry, it gives the illusion that you have to "clear" the image, and while if you think about it you know rationally that the image is already clear "out there", subconsciously you may still be thinking of it as something you have to do to the point to make it fit for your consumption, ie: you have to make it clear in order that you can perceive it. But you have that backwards. You problem is only about you. It has nothing to do with the point, which is fine the way it is. You have to perceive it, as it is, in order to see it clearly. It's one direction, from it to you. You don't tell it what to be. Specifically, to apply this concept, shift your attention among points and think of it as receiving the expression of each point, as if it literally is expressing itself. Then move to the next. The thing to keep in mind here is your movement of attention and your reception of the expression of each point are two separate things. You're responsible for your movement of attention to each small point, and with the second part you're doing nothing at all, because it's simply the point expressing itself.
This procedure described above may sound like an abstract and unimportant thing, but the changes you have to make in your way of seeing are subtle and are far easier than you think. So examine how this is applicable to you in the way you try to change what you see in order to make it clear or make it what you think it is.
In your act of seeing, when you look at an object and look at its various parts, various points of detail, you might make the mistake of trying to force a point to exist as a consequence of your act of looking at it. Consider that what you have to do in order to see clearly has nothing to do with the point of detail. Your forcing and struggling does not affect it. It already exists the way it is. When your vision is blurry, it gives the illusion that you have to "clear" the image, and while if you think about it you know rationally that the image is already clear "out there", subconsciously you may still be thinking of it as something you have to do to the point to make it fit for your consumption, ie: you have to make it clear in order that you can perceive it. But you have that backwards. You problem is only about you. It has nothing to do with the point, which is fine the way it is. You have to perceive it, as it is, in order to see it clearly. It's one direction, from it to you. You don't tell it what to be. Specifically, to apply this concept, shift your attention among points and think of it as receiving the expression of each point, as if it literally is expressing itself. Then move to the next. The thing to keep in mind here is your movement of attention and your reception of the expression of each point are two separate things. You're responsible for your movement of attention to each small point, and with the second part you're doing nothing at all, because it's simply the point expressing itself.
This procedure described above may sound like an abstract and unimportant thing, but the changes you have to make in your way of seeing are subtle and are far easier than you think. So examine how this is applicable to you in the way you try to change what you see in order to make it clear or make it what you think it is.
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"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith