From Blindness to Real Eyes

I've worn corrective lenses since I was 10 years old."Inherited myopia," the eye doctor decreed.  I remember the day I discovered my short sightedness.  Actually I didn't discover it. It was brought to my attention by my family. Driving home with the family one night, Mom exclaimed, "Look at the rabbit!" The open fields surrounding our new suburb provided a haven of cover and food for an abundant rabbit population, and sightings were commonplace. Except for me.  I said, "What rabbit?"   Didn't see it. Didn't see the next sighting or the next one either.  The conclusion?  I needed corrective lenses. Eye glasses followed, and just like that my vision was restored.  Soon after I had the newly acquired privilege to be the first in family to say, "Look at the rabbit" before anyone else spotted it!

Not all vision problems are so easily remedied and not all vision deficiency is a physical limitation.  Humanity's universal vision problem is metaphysical sight impairment. We struggle to behold the sacred in everyday encounters, fail to recognize the divine in the mundane landscapes of our lives, and to our peril we judge life merely by outer appearances.  Every great spiritual master or wise sage was a great seer, endowed with extraordinary capacity to penetrate the veil of surface understanding that obscures a deeper spiritual reality.

All the great spiritual awakenings refer to a new way of seeing. Jacob of the Hebrew Scriptures cried out with the realization, "The Lord was in this place and I did not know!"  Jesus referred to inner vision, referring to the eye that is "the lamp of the body," and "if the eye be single then the whole body shall be filled with light." In the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu scripture) it says, "Because you cannot see me with your natural eye, I will give you a celestial eye." 

We can get tripped up in our spiritual work when we focus exclusively on visualizing a better exterior life and neglect the essential practice of developing spiritual vision.  It of course is tempting to use our creative ability to solely improve the outer conditions because we are spared the need for developing spiritual vision.  Yet as we mature spiritually, we find our ability to recognize the presence of good, despite appearances to the contrary, is what truly blesses us through all the ups and downs of life.

In the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 113) Jesus' disciples ask him, 'When will the Kingdom come?' He replies, 'It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it.' This is the good news in this myopic dilemma. What we are seeking is not missing, we just can't see it clearly yet. 

So our spiritual practice is to improve our vision.  And we have the spiritual technology to do it.  The simple prayer "Show me," show me what is here that I am not seeing.," can open our eyes to what is real.  I believe that just as Jesus restored sight to the blind, our spiritual vision is restored by the grace of God coupled with our willingness to see differently in every moment.

We can all be spiritual visionaries. I have great hope for a new world view, in which you and I can demonstrate corrected vision, and be the first to exclaim, "Look I see a greater Truth in this situation! " The power of spiritual vision is such that it does more than benefit one seer, it can become a revelation for a multitude.