Take Off Your Glasses and See

1. Vision is a Reflection of Your Inner Reality

I have found that our eyesight is simply a reflection of our view of reality.

Vision is mind-body. Your ability to see clearly is not merely a mechanical function of the eyes, but an integrated process involving your entire mind, body, and emotions. The eyes are best understood as extensions of the brain, acting as antennae for your cognitive network. What you see is profoundly influenced by your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, suggesting that "Believing is seeing" is often more accurate than "Seeing is believing."

Holographic perception. Modern research, particularly in quantum physics and neurobiology, supports a holographic model of the body where mind and body are inseparable, interactive fields. Every cell in your body "thinks" and "feels," simultaneously materializing messenger chemicals like neuropeptides. This means your emotional state directly impacts your physical state, including how clearly your eyes perceive the world.

Inner state matters. Vision problems often stem from falling out of harmonious relationship with yourself, triggered by emotional stress. This stress can cause your entire being, including your visual system, to contract. Healing your vision requires looking inward and addressing the underlying emotional and mental patterns, recognizing that your external sight mirrors your internal clarity.

2. Conventional Vision Care Masks Symptoms, Doesn't Heal

The conventional approach to vision care simply does not acknowledge the possibility of reversing vision problems; its attitude is summed up by M. J. Hirsch: “If nothing other than [correction] can be done, it is better to know this and to educate and reconcile children to the situation than to join them and their parents in a chase of will-of-the-wisps.”

Focus on mechanics. Traditional optometry views vision as a purely mechanical process, like a camera lens, and defines clear vision solely by the ability to read letters on an eye chart at twenty feet. This approach ignores the dynamic, adaptive nature of the human eye and its deep connection to the mind and emotions. It measures "refractive errors" as fixed physical flaws, rather than symptoms of underlying imbalance.

Symptom management. The standard practice of prescribing corrective lenses treats only the symptom (blurry vision) without addressing the root cause. This is akin to putting a brace on a tennis elbow for life instead of healing the underlying issue. This approach has contributed to an epidemic of progressive vision problems in industrialized societies, where myopia rates are significantly higher among educated populations compared to less-developed ones.

Ignoring the whole. The conventional eye exam takes place in an artificial, dark environment that inhibits natural vision functions like peripheral awareness and continuous eye movement. It relies on subjective and objective tests that fail to capture the holistic nature of how we truly see in everyday life. By focusing only on measurable, physical aspects, it overlooks crucial non-physical factors like thoughts, feelings, and intentions that profoundly impact visual acuity and overall vision.

3. Fear and Emotional Stress Contract Your Vision

I have found that vision problems often seem to be the result of a desire to avoid looking at some aspect of one’s life.

Stress triggers contraction. Vision problems frequently begin after a stressful or traumatic experience, particularly in childhood or adolescence. When faced with difficult feelings like fear, anger, or sadness, we instinctively contract our energy field and narrow our perception as a protective mechanism. This can manifest physically as tension and holding patterns, including in the eyes.

Blurring out pain. Saying "I couldn't bear to see what was going on" is often more than a metaphor; it can be a literal description of how we cope with overwhelming situations. By subconsciously choosing to "blur out" painful aspects of life, we initiate a process of visual deterioration. This becomes a habitual response, leading to chronic energetic contraction and diminished sensory clarity.

Unresolved emotions persist. The feelings triggered by early traumas often remain unresolved, even years later. While some people manifest chronic stress as other physical ailments, for many, it settles in the visual system. This unresolved emotional backlog keeps the energy field contracted, making it difficult to see clearly until these feelings are acknowledged, felt, and expressed.

4. Corrective Lenses Reinforce Visual and Emotional Contraction

By encouraging us to only look straight ahead, those glasses become a highly effective feedback tool that trains the eyes to remain in one position—they literally teach us to view reality through a single fixed point of view.

Physical and energetic constriction. Corrective lenses, especially contacts, lock the eyes into a fixed focus based on your worst-case visual need. This rigid focus inhibits the natural, continuous movement and adaptation of the eyes, which is essential for clear vision. This physical constriction immediately translates into a contraction of your energetic field and a narrowing of your awareness.

Loss of peripheral vision. Glasses are designed to provide maximum clarity only at the optical center, directly in front of the pupil. As the eyes move away from this center, the prescription distorts, discouraging peripheral vision. This trains the eyes to stay fixed, limiting your ability to perceive the world as a whole and reducing access to the exploratory, anticipatory aspect of your sight.

Emotional barrier. Wearing glasses can become an unconscious way to maintain emotional distance and avoid facing uncomfortable feelings. They act as a "protective blur," reinforcing the habit of suppressing emotions that were too difficult to deal with when the vision problem first began. Removing glasses can feel vulnerable because it removes this long-standing barrier, allowing suppressed feelings to surface for healing.

5. Expanding Awareness (Open Focus) is Key to Clear Vision

The most powerful kind of mental shift for changing your vision is a shift of awareness.

Effortless seeing. Clear vision is not achieved through straining or trying hard to see, but through a state of relaxed, effortless awareness. This state, called Open Focus, involves softening your gaze and allowing your visual field to expand to encompass everything without fixing on any single point. In Open Focus, your eyes move spontaneously, drawn to whatever is most important in the moment.

Beyond the physical eyes. Open Focus allows you to experience vision as emanating from beyond your physical eyes, accessing a broader perceptive field. This is similar to meditative states where awareness expands beyond the body. Practicing Open Focus helps dissolve the habitual distinction between observer and observed, allowing you to feel more connected to the world around you.

Present moment awareness. Open Focus is a powerful tool for cultivating present moment awareness. When your attention is fully in the present, your energy field is open and flexible. Straying into thoughts about the past or future causes the field to contract, often resulting in visual blur. Regular practice helps you notice when you've left the present and gently return, expanding your vision and awareness.

6. Practical Techniques Support Vision and Emotional Release

The state of mind in which you do them is actually more important than any of the physical movements.

Tools for transformation. While awareness is the primary driver of vision improvement, specific practices can support the process of releasing tension and expanding your perceptive field. These techniques are not just "eye exercises" but "vision meditations" that integrate physical movement with mindful awareness. Consistency in practice is more important than striving for immediate results.

Key vision meditations:

• Breath Awareness: Consciously breathing deeply and effortlessly expands the energy field and releases tension.
• Blinking: Frequent, soft blinking prevents staring and keeps eyes relaxed and mobile.
• Tracing: Consciously outlining objects with your eyes encourages continuous eye movement and sharpens perception.
• Swinging: Gentle body rotation with soft gaze promotes rhythmic eye movement and overall relaxation.
• Palming: Covering closed eyes with cupped hands provides rest and allows the energy field to expand in darkness.
• Sunning: Exposing closed eyes to sunlight helps eyes adapt to light and resynchronizes biological rhythms.

Integrating into daily life. These practices can be incorporated throughout your day, even for a few minutes at a time. Removing glasses whenever possible, especially for near-point tasks, is crucial. Using weaker "training lenses" can help wean off strong prescriptions. Mindful reading habits and reducing reliance on sunglasses also support visual health.

7. Expressing Feelings Clears Internal and External Blur

To get and keep a significant vision improvement, you need to develop a new way of relating to those feelings.

Unlocking suppressed emotions. Removing corrective lenses often brings suppressed childhood feelings to the surface. These unresolved emotions create energetic blockages that contribute to visual blur and limit your perceptive field. To achieve lasting vision improvement, you must address and release these feelings.

Communication is key. Learning to express your feelings directly and honestly is vital for clearing emotional clutter and expanding your energy field. This involves sharing how you feel with those involved, rather than hiding or projecting your emotions. This practice of "staying current" prevents the accumulation of emotional backlog.

Tools for emotional release:

• Vision Journaling: Writing about your feelings, memories, and experiences triggered by removing glasses helps process and release suppressed emotions. Studies show spontaneous writing about difficult feelings improves physical and psychological health.
• Love Letters: A structured writing process to express pent-up emotions (anger, sadness, fear, guilt, love) towards others or yourself. This technique helps clear unresolved relationship issues by allowing feelings to flow.

Relational healing. Healing is often a relational process. By expressing your feelings and listening to others, you clear the air and deepen connections. This openness in relationships mirrors and reinforces the openness in your visual and energetic fields, leading to greater clarity in all aspects of life.

8. Vision and Learning Are Deeply Interconnected

It is as natural for the eye to see as it is for the mind to acquire knowledge, and any effort in either case not only is useless but defeats the end in view.

Vision skills for learning. Clear eyesight (acuity) is only one of many visual skills necessary for effective reading and learning. Other crucial skills include eye tracking, focusing, coordination, visual discrimination, and integrating visual information with other senses. Deficiencies in these areas, often undetected by standard eye exams, are strongly linked to learning difficulties.

Stress inhibits learning. Just as stress causes visual contraction, it also inhibits learning. The traditional educational emphasis on "paying attention" through intense concentration often leads to hard thinking, which constricts the energy field and limits the ability to absorb new information. Children, in particular, learn best when their whole self is engaged and the process is effortless and joyful.

Effortless learning. True learning, like seeing, is meant to be effortless. It occurs spontaneously when the perceptive field is open and relaxed. This involves integrating information through feeling and experience, not just linear thought. When learning is a struggle, it often indicates underlying stress or a disconnect from the natural, holistic way the mind/body is designed to acquire knowledge.

9. You Can Perceive Beyond the Visible Spectrum

It is the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.

Limited physical sight. Our physical eyes perceive only a tiny fraction of the vast electromagnetic spectrum. We assume that energies like ultraviolet, infrared, or radio waves are invisible to humans, but this may be a limitation of our conditioned perception, not our inherent capacity. As awareness expands, the perceptive field may draw in a wider range of frequencies.

Seeing the invisible. Many accounts, from ancient mystics to modern psychics and individuals with near-death experiences, describe perceiving energies and information beyond the normal five senses. This "extrasensory perception" may simply be the ability to sense aspects of reality that are normally filtered out by our contracted awareness. Children, before being fully socialized, sometimes exhibit this broader perception, like seeing auras.

The human energy field. The aura, or human energy field, is an example of an "invisible" energy that many people can learn to perceive, often as a subtle glow or swirling patterns around the body. This field is a dynamic reflection of our inner state and health. Learning to see and work with this energy involves cultivating Open Focus and trusting subtle perceptions that are normally dismissed.

10. Effortless Learning Integrates Mind, Body, and Vision

Unless we translate a new insight into body knowledge, it cannot be fully integrated into our awareness.

Movement anchors change. Effortless Learning is a process that uses movement, often on a trampoline or rebounder, to integrate cognitive tasks with physical action. This approach bypasses the limitations of the linear mind and accesses the body's innate intelligence. By translating new insights into "body knowledge," changes become deeply embedded in your awareness.

Paradoxical tasks. The process involves increasingly complex, often paradoxical, tasks that cannot be solved through hard thinking or mental rehearsal. Examples include:

• Moving hands opposite to arrow direction while calling out direction.
• Calling out opposite direction while moving hands in arrow direction.
• Alternating these instructions on consecutive arrows.
• Performing calculations or spelling sentences while jumping and adding substitutions.

Bypassing mental blocks. When faced with these tasks, the analytical mind becomes overloaded and must surrender control. This allows the spontaneous, effortless intelligence of the whole being to take over. Successfully completing tasks that seemed impossible demonstrates your potential beyond perceived mental limitations.

11. Trust Your Spontaneous, Non-Linear Intelligence

There is no way to know before experiencing.

Beyond linear thought. Our culture overvalues linear, analytical thinking, which is limited and often fueled by fear and worry. This "hard thinking" constricts awareness and inhibits the flow of spontaneous intelligence. There is another mode of knowing – effortless, intuitive, holistic – that accesses the wisdom of the entire being and the universal holographic field.

Spontaneous knowing. In states of open awareness, insights, ideas, and even complex information arise spontaneously, without conscious effort or calculation. This is the source of creativity, genius, and the ability to perform complex tasks effortlessly, like an "idiot savant" who can perform complex calculations without thinking.

Experience is the teacher. Effortless Learning teaches you to trust this spontaneous intelligence by repeatedly demonstrating that you can accomplish tasks that your linear mind deems impossible. Each successful attempt, achieved by letting go of mental control and staying present, builds confidence in your innate capacity for effortless knowing and action.

12. Open Living is the Goal: Effortless Presence

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Flowing with life. The ultimate aim is not just clear vision or effortless learning, but Open Living – a state of being fully present, spontaneous, and effortless in all aspects of life. This involves flowing with life's natural rhythms of expansion and contraction, learning from every experience without getting stuck in fear or resistance.

Embracing vulnerability. Removing the "blinders" of contracted vision and suppressed emotions allows you to experience life with greater sensitivity and vulnerability. While initially uncomfortable, this openness is the source of genuine connection, joy, and effortless flow. It requires trusting yourself and the process of life.

Continuous unfolding. Opening awareness is an ongoing journey, not a destination. Each breakthrough reveals new possibilities for growth and expansion. By integrating practices like Open Focus, emotional expression, and Effortless Learning, you continuously recalibrate your being for greater clarity, spontaneity, and effortless presence in the world.

Last updated: June 27, 2025