re-learning
I have thought that my battle? journey? to see without my glasses that I started in December of '05 perhaps seems to ... represent a metaphor for ... other things.
A metaphor for a journey to relearn how to see... on other levels... to unlearn the distortions and bad habits to which I'd become ensnared...
Was watching 'Memoires of a Geisha' and 'v for vendetta' tonight ... the torture scene (evie) and the ... awakening from it again ... reverberating... and... the enslavement to certain lifestyles, forgetting or remembering who we are, what's really important to us... and how that can shape people...
My eye muscles 'clench;' they tense up in some peculiar way, trying? to focus harder, and in fact making my vision worse. The prescription for each eye, for 10 years or so, was different - I learned to compensate and my eyes got used to seeing through that 'lens,' as it were. Now, not wearing those 'lenses', I'm struggling to see things as before, but my habits and 'adaptive behaviour' - 'compensating techniques' - are making that more difficult; working against correctly seeing, now. In short, I'm struggling against 'conditioning'.
What I have found, as a solution that helps my eyes, is to be mindful of them, placing my attention there, and trying to relax them; to stop working so hard in the ways I automatically do, and start working more consciously to controlling elements of how I see, switching from looking from just one eye, then the other, to look around and stretch my eyes in ways they are not always used, to make them more flexible again; and to try to pay attention to the situations that may give rise to problems such as eye strain and narrow focus, poor lighting, etc, that may be factors in exacerbating the problem, ie being a little more balanced...
The less I pay attention to consciously re-learning how to 'see', the more my vision deteriorates - getting used to not seeing as well, etc. But when I do consciously focus, I find that my eyes do not seem to in fact 'lack the strength' to see properly, but instead that the balance of strength or effort may be off, and in fact the strength exists to see quite well; what is necessary is to work smarter, not harder. To use the power that is there more wisely, with more restraint, with more intelligence and skill (maybe I'm pushing the metaphor a bit...).
Anyways, there is a cycle of seeing poorly, which creates physical stress, and the physical stress/ strain decreases my vision as I try harder (in the wrong, older way) to compensate for this. Breaking the cycle, the unintentional, now 'automatic' adaption, in order to move to a new one, is key. It's almost as simple as just 'paying attention to how I'm feeling' ...
filters get created, certain valuable information gets ignored, and ... merely opening your eyes to this, the process nearly takes hold naturally, of its own accord, without further interference, it seems... going back to the way we were 'built to' function... instead of just the way we ended up 'carrying out' our function, through whatever happenstance and chance that started us on such pathes...
if there is such a thing as heppenstance and chance...
I have spent so much of my life in an infusion of confusion, illusion and delusion; breaking free seems almost unthinkingable... but at other times, it seems so close I can taste it...
Hubris and delusion may overcome at times the difficulties of feeling powerlessness, insignificance or poor self-esteem, but in the end they are dead-end roads that block off progressing further spiritually and so on. Both of these things must be overcome, in some fashion, to progress, and the degree of success in this, may also be a measure of degree in the quality and rate of this progression. The more you understand your stumbling blocks, the easier it becomes to walk around them effectively.
m_G
extra:
argument vs 'good of the many outweighs the good of the few'
If 10 guys wanted to rape a girl, as it would bring them pleasure and thus be good for them, but would psychologically and physically harm the girl, is it ok because one person is sacrificed for the good of 10? Spock's way of self-sacrifice for the good of everyone else was noble, but so, too, was, in some way, the risk the whole crew took, to save him, once they found out he lived (star trek movies reference). How does one balance when one lets personal ties or emotions and desires overrule serving the faceless many, and logical uunderstanding that many, like the ones we care about, also suffer like us and 'our' loved ones, and are of similar worth?
I don't know. Maybe someone else does. I'll try to think about it...
m_G
A metaphor for a journey to relearn how to see... on other levels... to unlearn the distortions and bad habits to which I'd become ensnared...
Was watching 'Memoires of a Geisha' and 'v for vendetta' tonight ... the torture scene (evie) and the ... awakening from it again ... reverberating... and... the enslavement to certain lifestyles, forgetting or remembering who we are, what's really important to us... and how that can shape people...
My eye muscles 'clench;' they tense up in some peculiar way, trying? to focus harder, and in fact making my vision worse. The prescription for each eye, for 10 years or so, was different - I learned to compensate and my eyes got used to seeing through that 'lens,' as it were. Now, not wearing those 'lenses', I'm struggling to see things as before, but my habits and 'adaptive behaviour' - 'compensating techniques' - are making that more difficult; working against correctly seeing, now. In short, I'm struggling against 'conditioning'.
What I have found, as a solution that helps my eyes, is to be mindful of them, placing my attention there, and trying to relax them; to stop working so hard in the ways I automatically do, and start working more consciously to controlling elements of how I see, switching from looking from just one eye, then the other, to look around and stretch my eyes in ways they are not always used, to make them more flexible again; and to try to pay attention to the situations that may give rise to problems such as eye strain and narrow focus, poor lighting, etc, that may be factors in exacerbating the problem, ie being a little more balanced...
The less I pay attention to consciously re-learning how to 'see', the more my vision deteriorates - getting used to not seeing as well, etc. But when I do consciously focus, I find that my eyes do not seem to in fact 'lack the strength' to see properly, but instead that the balance of strength or effort may be off, and in fact the strength exists to see quite well; what is necessary is to work smarter, not harder. To use the power that is there more wisely, with more restraint, with more intelligence and skill (maybe I'm pushing the metaphor a bit...).
Anyways, there is a cycle of seeing poorly, which creates physical stress, and the physical stress/ strain decreases my vision as I try harder (in the wrong, older way) to compensate for this. Breaking the cycle, the unintentional, now 'automatic' adaption, in order to move to a new one, is key. It's almost as simple as just 'paying attention to how I'm feeling' ...
filters get created, certain valuable information gets ignored, and ... merely opening your eyes to this, the process nearly takes hold naturally, of its own accord, without further interference, it seems... going back to the way we were 'built to' function... instead of just the way we ended up 'carrying out' our function, through whatever happenstance and chance that started us on such pathes...
if there is such a thing as heppenstance and chance...
I have spent so much of my life in an infusion of confusion, illusion and delusion; breaking free seems almost unthinkingable... but at other times, it seems so close I can taste it...
Hubris and delusion may overcome at times the difficulties of feeling powerlessness, insignificance or poor self-esteem, but in the end they are dead-end roads that block off progressing further spiritually and so on. Both of these things must be overcome, in some fashion, to progress, and the degree of success in this, may also be a measure of degree in the quality and rate of this progression. The more you understand your stumbling blocks, the easier it becomes to walk around them effectively.
m_G
extra:
argument vs 'good of the many outweighs the good of the few'
If 10 guys wanted to rape a girl, as it would bring them pleasure and thus be good for them, but would psychologically and physically harm the girl, is it ok because one person is sacrificed for the good of 10? Spock's way of self-sacrifice for the good of everyone else was noble, but so, too, was, in some way, the risk the whole crew took, to save him, once they found out he lived (star trek movies reference). How does one balance when one lets personal ties or emotions and desires overrule serving the faceless many, and logical uunderstanding that many, like the ones we care about, also suffer like us and 'our' loved ones, and are of similar worth?
I don't know. Maybe someone else does. I'll try to think about it...
m_G