The way I see it

Ever since I was little, I thought I had beautiful eyes but the issue is that I don’t actually remember ever being able to see through them with clarity. I recall a feverish desire to learn the letters which resulted in me being able to read by the age of four. The next two years until starting school in my memory seem inseparably intertwined with hundreds of fairy tales that I immersed my imagination into. By the time I started school, I already had a membership card for a library where I used to go at least weekly, and a log of books I had read. The obvious plan was to eventually read all the books in the extensive collection of my parents’ bookshelves and then the entire library.

Starting school was strange, and I am sure it added pressure to my already intensely sensitive personality. If I had to describe the mood or the feeling of it all, it would be somewhere between boredom and suppressed frustration with the nagging of the teacher in the background. I remember hating to be still or sit in a particular way, and the teacher mocking me in front of all students for sticking my leg out of the desk (girls shouldn’t sit like that!). I don’t think it was much later that I started to see what was on the blackboard with a blur.

All sorts of appointments began with kids’ ophthalmologists and more staring at blurry letters. I remember vague fear and tension about not being able to see them well. There was also a sense of guilt and being somehow inadequate. I am certain that sometimes I lied about seeing or not seeing things and would squint when the doctor would turn around, this way unknowingly adding to the tension already present in my eyes. During the summer holidays I remember intensely staring at the blades of grass because my grandparents had told me that green colour was good for the eyes. Adults around me were puzzled and unsure about where this was going and my parents did what they thought was best – agree to doctors’ suggestion to prescribe me glasses. (Now I side with those natural vision proponents who say that putting glasses on children (bar very exceptional cases) should be against the law. With various relaxation techniques and games kids can learn very quickly to release the tension and reverse bad eye-straining habits which are unfortunately maintained and made worse with glasses.)

From then on my eyesight story can just be presented as a sped-up timeline with years ticking by and my glasses prescription getting stronger while various parallel events of physical and emotional stress beautifully correlate with the increase in prescription.

So what I have now is 27 years of eye-strain and bad habits, lots of rigid beliefs about eyesight, and a mild but ever-present hum of a frustration that ‘I can’t see’. But the thing is that bodies are beautifully designed to accommodate and compensate for any shortcomings as well as to protect us from real or perceived physical, emotional or psychological trauma. Therefore, there is a choice between continuing to ignore this or doing something self-loving about it.

Last week I chose the latter and started a course to become a natural vision educator. They say that we teach best what we need to learn ourselves, and I am really excited about the journey ahead. There are so many questions that I look forward to investigating and exploring in more detail over the months to come. What did/do I not want to see in my life? How does it benefit me to continue having blurry vision (or phrased differently – what would be the disadvantages of seeing with clarity)? If short-sightedness is often associated with fear of the future and feeling unsafe – where does this stem from and how is it still true in my world today? What are the prevailing beliefs that I have about vision and are they still true and valid?

With that in mind, I set up a separate section of the blog that will only be dedicated to eyesight as we need to keep a journal for the course (http://tolovetosee.blogspot.com.es/). Please join me on this journey and let’s see what happens!

“I've found, however, that real change only comes when we let go of the struggle, when we stop trying, and that the greatest key to healing our vision is also the simplest one: expanding our awareness.”
Jacob Liberman, O.D., Ph.D.

Power to obey

There is an exception to my love and passion for all things made of paper – to the same extent that I adore handwritten paper letters and beautiful stationery, I completely detest and abhor legal and official paperwork. Let me count the ways in which I find it repugnant. It clearly is among the key reasons for deforestation of this planet – just think about the multitude of dusty bureaucratic drawers stuffed with paper all over the world! I believe that the filling out of endless forms interrupts our entire lives, including the most important events such as birth, marriage, or passing away of a loved one – in other words, the times when that is the absolutely last thing that we are interested in or need as a distraction. Don’t even get me started on the days I alone have wasted in queues waiting for some piece of paper to be signed that needs to be taken to another cubicle to be signed again – just imagine the amount of time we lose on this globally! The impression I always get is that everyone in their bureaucratic cubicle only knows about the three forms that they are responsible for and are rarely aware of the part they play in the bigger picture. This is a frustrating experience for someone on the other side of the counter looking for a solution beyond a specific form, but it is also quite scary as a concept – after all, rational bureaucratic management was what made concentration camps so effective.

For me one of greatest frustrations related to paperwork and bureaucracy is the feeling of utter hopelessness when I am faced with a complicated process that seems to get even more complicated with every step, and the information about how to navigate through it is not readily available. Equally frustrating is finding myself in a situation when for whatever reason the information is there but I am not allowed to access it – like calling a doctor’s office and being told that I cannot have a copy of my blood test results. Somewhere in the bureaucratic decision chain I am being deemed as incapable of being in charge of my own health, and therefore I need to follow their rules and orders to be told what to do next.

I remember the days of my first internship as a student that I spent photocopying and filing folders upon folders of legal paperwork in a mortgage company. This was during the economic boom time when everyone who applied was granted a mortgage, and my job was to photocopy their files so that the loans could be sold off to bigger lenders. Little did I know at the time about the financial crisis that this global-scale photocopying would cause some 5 years later, but it disgusted me nonetheless. I remember sitting in a tiny windowless room full of paper mountains and thinking that there was no more horrible way to be slowly tortured to death – just having to constantly file overstuffed folders and getting paper cuts till the miserable end of a miserable life. 

To sum up my contempt for legal paperwork, if I could redesign this Universe from scratch, it would be in the top three things that would not be allowed to exist for the simple reason that it embodies immense lack of trust among us as a species. Having said all of the above, it is quite obvious that having to deal with legal paperwork is usually a huge trigger for me. On the days when I have to do it, I usually swing through the entire range of emotions from mild tension, to extreme irritation, and at times even reach what I can only call fury.

This year we moved to Spain and got married, which was a fulfillment of two amazing desires but it has also brought its share of relevant paperwork. Last week it became apparent that I somehow had managed to slip into a loophole between the British and Spanish employment laws which resulted in yet another round of visits to various authorities. These visits, which by now are becoming quite routine, have made me aware of an interesting correlation. Just when the time comes for some official deadline or an appointment with some authority is near, I begin to experience problems with one of my teeth which normally causes no issues despite any other stresses that might prevail in my life. This discomfort seems to be specifically reserved for the times when I have to deal with some official paperwork. Perhaps the simplest thing would be to discount it as a random coincidence and head to the dentist’s office. Well, I don’t believe that there is such thing as a random coincidence and instead of heading to any doctor’s office to remove the symptoms I prefer taking time to understand what my body is drawing my attention to in the first place.

I use a process that can only be described as sinking into the feeling and just being present with it – physically, emotionally, mentally. When the time feels right, I like to present ‘it’ with questions like – why am I having this experience? what do I have to learn from this? when was the first/last time I felt this way? The key to this practice is patience to hear the answers. It is not about forcing the memories or answers to come but waiting for them to gently rise up and present themselves. One of my favourite teachers, Teal Swan, guides through a similar process of healing the emotional body and provides more detail here.

So, during one such conversation with my “rebellious” tooth I was amazed to feel a rush of memories of all my life’s toothaches – from the first scary visit to the dentist, to my first filling (and the joy when the evil dentist broke her arm), then my first root canal and crown. Interestingly enough, a common factor among all these memories was that each time I was experiencing the physical discomfort, I was also struggling with some authority. From the earliest externally imposed rule of ‘you must brush your teeth or else’, to particularly stressful conflicts with a controlling host family when I lived in the U.S. and finally during the more recent times when I had to comply with some authorities demanding paperwork.

Louise Hay whose work I respect immensely talks about teeth problems as being related to inability to make decisions and the tendency to give up easily. I find it fascinating because that is exactly how I feel when faced with authorities. As a fellow Piscean, I hate rules and authoritative control, but I also cannot stand injustice or things being unfair. Therefore, in situations where I am being forced to comply with rules or regulations, I feel absolutely stuck between my craving to break through the control and also my desire for a fair world where everyone complies and behaves in a manner that is beneficial to all. The end result never feels like a proper decision on my part but rather me rolling my eyes, giving up and signing on the dotted line that will guarantee me peace (at least until the next form comes about).

As part of my distilling of this situation and my associated feelings last week, I had a look at the etymology of the words ‘authority’ and ‘obeying’. Apparently, the word ‘authority’ comes from autorite “book or quotation that settles an argument”. In late 14^th century the meaning changed to “power to enforce obedience”. Word ‘obey’ comes from Latin obedire which literally means “to listen, give ear, pay attention”. And there was my answer – to settle this internal argument about the authorities I just needed to listen and pay attention to what I was feeling. Returning back and becoming aware of those memories that were hidden triggers behind my reactions meant that it stopped being simply an unconscious response. Once you become aware of reasons behind a behavior pattern, it is no longer possible to blame it on a habit – it becomes a choice that you are responsible for. I am not saying that this excuses any of the horribleness of bureaucracies nor that my feelings of frustration are not valid, but seeing it this way simply shifts the power over my wellbeing back to my control. As a consequence, getting (rightfully) frustrated becomes a choice rather than an automatic reaction. In other words, even all the world's authorities combined they still do not have a power over how I feel or what thoughts I choose – that is completely and entirely in my control.

To love what is doesn’t mean some gooey fake glossing over and pretending you have (or insisting you should have) happy faerie-covered feelings about something that is frustrating the heck out of you (to me there is nothing particularly lovable about bureaucracies, for example). It means to be fierce enough and brave enough to sink into whatever you are faced with in the present moment with one promise only – that you will never ever abandon yourself no matter what you feel: happiness, disgust or downright ugliness. And it is precisely when you bring this conscious non-judgmental light of awareness without any expectation that the real shifts of power happen.