Writer Dylan Morrison

Sight

This week I’d a bit of a wee shock as I began to ‘see’ a large fly swarming around me. After trying to swap it unsuccessfully my dear wife Zan reassured me that there was nothing there. However, I remained unconvinced as the pesky blighter refused to leave my sight!

Anyway to cut a long story short, my optometrist, after a hastily arranged and panic driven appointment, informed me that a large piece of the vitreous gel in my eyeball had unexpectedly broken off and was merrily swimming around my eyeball. A bit of a shock but also a reassurance that my retina was still attached and no urgent operation required!

My newly adopted floater ‘fly’ friend has now morphed into a cobweb of sorts that hangs around my left-eye vision, also inviting in the daily flashes of lightning to my peripheral sight. So now I’m looking to the trickery of my interpretive brain to help me adjust and get on with my lockdown routine without my tendency to jump into the gripping arms of hypochondria.

This little incident and its aftermath have got me thinking about sight! The eye is a most amazing piece of body kit, one that some argue cannot evolve over vast periods of time. However, I guess that’s a whole other discussion for another day.

The eye transmits sensations from our outer space-time world and fires them into the brain for translation that will form a narrative as to what we are apparently seeing. However, as we all know, the mind, or more accurately the brain, can play tricks in presenting its visual conclusions. In fact, it would appear that all of its interpretations are just that, interpretations! Is the sky really blue or does the brain merely interpret the particular wavelength of light reflected into our eye’s retina sensors as blue?

Every one of us has come across the ambiguous sketch whereby some of us see a beautiful young woman why others an old ‘witch-like’ hag! Perception is a gift of the brain and not the eyes! In other words, what we understand as sight is actually the final verdict of the brain’s jury.

As in the joint spheres of biology and neurology, so also in the realm of spiritual perception. Most of us perceive a God hole or a whole God. Some even remain in the agnostic camp, not getting a clear focus of what they see in the swirling mists of unknowing. A number of New Age and Esoteric teachers often refer to the ‘Third Eye” – an inner analogy as to how we can perceive the Divine. To be honest, that doesn’t really do much for me – such a purported inner reality may only be a thing of myth, one used to explain our sudden and unexpected awakening to psychological and spiritual realities that have been there all along.

Often, such moments of enlightenment occur when we have just suffered a devastating transpersonal crisis, a trauma related to our social or personal identification. When we finally ‘see the Light’ it’s usually when we’re at the end of our rope, on the brink of falling into the blackest of abysses, the undoing of all our life props, or at least the highly significant ones.

To see Ultimate Reality doesn’t come naturally through the often-cracked lens of the human psyche. Paradoxically it takes an in breaking of sorts from the One beyond perception, the One from the realm where all is both fully seen and known. Such an unexpected overload of our sensory field changes our brain’s reality settings for good. That’s why many mystics of the past and present have experienced powerful sensations of heat pulsing through their bodies. Others have been enveloped in a great Light, while some claim to have audibly heard the Voice of God. It would appear that Divine Transcendence has a way of overwhelming our normal perceptions when required, a spiritual whirlwind that blows away the cobwebs of ego control and takes up residence within the sensory world of our central nervous system.

A liberation of these sensory faculties of clay, a transformation of them into expressions of a greater Reality that remains with us until we die, albeit in a more regulated and less dramatic form. No longer will our eyes wander around the Vanity Fair of human indulgences; instead it will be singly focused on a more encompassing and authentic reality – the Light upon which no human soul can gaze without being consumed by its insatiable Fire of Love.

May the Light both shine in and through us as we continue to walk the dark recessed paths of Shadow Valley in these troubling but ultimately empowering times.

Dylan’s Author Page ~ https://goo.gl/7BJ8JR