Discalimer

The articles here represent my own belief, thoughts and ideas. Do not copy or publish any of my articles without my permission.

Tuesday, July 19, 2022

Clearly

 I have always had perfect vision. In 2013 I remember, I really wanted glasses so I have convinced myself that I was basically blind. I was squinting all the time and every time people were handing me something to read or look closely at I kept on telling them, 'I can't see, sorry'. I made an appointment to see an eye doctor and she said, 'your vision is perfect, you don't need glasses.' But because I was so insistent she relented and ordered me a pair of screen protecting glasses, you know, so I wouldn't be blind. This year I did the same. Still perfect vision.

I want to see well. I think in images. I hypothesize, dream, translate concepts in images. I am a very visual person. I take hundreds of images precisely because I want to take in as much as possible. I've had people that have seen said pictures asking me why they are so vivid (colorful). I always answer the same, 'that's how they looked to me.' My point is, I love being able to see. Having said that, I don't trust my eyes. Why? Because they betray me all the time. A few times my blood sugar dropped enough that my vision became blurry and my visual field would tilt enough to communicate to my brain, 'it's unsafe, drop down!' The world doesn't really tilt. My eyes are betraying me and they misinform my brain about the reality. Sometimes when it's not completely dark outside and I try to interpret figures I see, some trees seem giant monsters, planes seem alien ships, smoke passing through the tiniest ray of light translates like ghosts. If water gets into my eyes I see everything blurry. My vision is not infallible. The accuracy of my vision is altered depending on the circumstances I am in.

It's the same for my spiritual sight. It's not infallible either.

Jacques Lusseyran was a Frenchman that fought in the WW2 for the Resistance. When he was 8, he was blinded in an accident caused by another schoolmate. He nonetheless finished his schooling because he was determined to be a part of the world around him. In 1941, when he was just 17 that world in which he wanted to participate got occupied by the Nazis. Lusseyran formed a resistance group with fifty-two boys and used his heightened senses to recruit the best. Eventually, Lusseyran was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp in a transport of two thousand resistance fighters. He was one of only thirty from the transport to survive. His gripping story is one of the most powerful and insightful descriptions of living and thriving with blindness.

“Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us…I could light myself…that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting… God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive.”
Jacques Lusseyran, And there was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran


I love Jacques' story precisely because his lack of physical sight didn't extinguish his inner light. He used THAT light to create his inner world in more exact terms than a person with the ability to see is able to express in any coherent concepts. But more than anything I love the fact that in that inner world, the way he trained his 'eyes' to see God was not in religious terms, or intellectual, or sentimental, simply alive. That's a goal for me. I confess I am not there yet. I see God sometimes angry because I am angry at a situation and I project my anger on Him. Sometimes I see God all philosophical principles and ideas because that's my mood. Sometimes I feel like a toddler that wants to be picked up by her Father and everything is just feelings, and that's God for me. I haven't matured enough to let God simply be. The I AM. Most of the time He's crammed up in whatever role I need Him to play at that exact moment. And I experience real growing pains in my very psyche every time He tries to stretch a bit, to grow a bit. I want to create inside myself a place where He would love to dwell, where He can simply be. But in order to do that I need to train my spiritual eyes first. To accept as a matter of fact that if my physical conditions change that alters my vision, so is my spiritual vision obstructed by feelings, biases, resentment, anger, wishful thinking. But if I see right, then maybe He won't need to disguise Himself into whatever I want Him to be that moment. If I see right maybe, just maybe, Him simply being will be enough.

by Cristina Pop



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"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain..."