Eyes and Vision

By Peter Moore

In “Devolution and Evolution” (Sentient Times, Dec 08/Jan 09. Ashland, OR), I outline Wilhelm Reich’s approach to working with the biophysical component of psychotherapy. He suggested from experience that we should work from the top down.

 Even though this work was developed in the first half of the twentieth century, the original teaching is remarkably fresh and current. For the ocular segment, this is more so than in Reich’s time, since we now live in a culture which is saturated with media messages, so many of which are seen on the flat screen of a computer monitor or TV. This often involves the act of staring. As anyone can readily attest, staring is very close to what the eyes do when a person “goes away”. This “spacing out” is of course useful in the right place and time, but once you start being able to recognize the spaced-out eye, you will see that many people are using their eyes as machines. Are they making contact? Any true vision or looking will always have some emotional feeling to it.

 The spaced-out eye is somewhat similar to the veiled eye where no or very little emotion is allowed out, to be seen by others or to be felt by self. One characteristic of eyes with this guarded quality is that the lids seem to be kept too low. In fact I have had several patients – and this may surprise you – who are unable to open their eyelids wide, even if their eyebrows are lifted way up. With this condition there often goes a certain deadness or dullness to the eyes. There may be some emotions which are impossible to express with the eyes. Healthy eyes can express or show all the emotions and even the more complex ones. They appear bright, mobile, shining and capable of showing feeling. A good exercise to begin to enliven your eyes is to take an emotional read of them briefly on first arising in the morning. Take a quick look into your eyes in the mirror and allow yourself to name the emotion you see there. This could be hard at first, because what you may see are eyes that have been habitually dulled from chronic contactlessness. But persist – seeing that dullness starts to make an emotional connection with your eyes. As your eyes enliven, you will be able to see the emotion there far more readily: caution, happiness, sadness, pain, suspicion, hate, love, disgust, excitement and so on.

 This brings up a point well worth summarizing. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it, that the well-oiled machinery of our culture, to the degree it is sick, depends for its functioning on the dulling down of our senses and the dehumanizing of our fellow man. At the extreme, if you want to train your soldiers to kill the enemy, it is essential to train them not to really see the humans they will kill. More moderately, a society of such unequal wealth distribution cannot operate without considerable dumbing down and indoctrination of the masses. You can gauge the extent of dullness pretty easily by going to see a recent movie. Even before the main feature you may well be deafened, visually assaulted, and emotionally adrenalized. (Licorice for the adrenals, shades for your eyes, and earplugs are recommended. Oh, and have a therapist or aura cleaner on hand for any lingering damage after the movie. Ponyo is a recent and beautiful exception.)

 Since the eyes are a direct extension – or a reaching out -- of the brain, you can tell a lot about a person by the look in their eyes. You just have to give yourself permission to look at what you’re seeing. You’ve heard the expression that the eyes are the windows to one’s soul. I like to use the analogy of the receptors on the ends of stalks which we see coming out of the heads of snails or slugs. In childhood you may have watched in fascination at a completely at ease snail shimmying along a wall or leaf. You may have naughtily but gently touched the very tip of one of these stalks. Instant retraction! And, then, if no further unpleasantnesses, the extension out again into full and beautiful contact with the environment. Well, our eyes, of course, can’t pull all the way inside our skulls like that. For one thing, the eyeball and optic nerve are far more protected than the snail’s. But our eyes do a similar thing. Plasmatically, there’s a contraction. I’ve had clients, working on this segment (where there is often a lot of fear), actually feel as though their eyes are trying to roll up inside their heads. The optic nerve will retract very slightly. The extrinsic muscles of the eye tighten. The pupil dilates. If there are repeated occurrences of threat, then these responses become a permanent shrinking. This is the functional explanation for difficulties in focusing (as in near- or far-sightedness), for which eyeglasses, contacts, or corneal surgery are prescribed. Of course these methods do not address the more human and alive aspects of the eyes, and, if these are not attended to, a crucial aspect of functioning is left untreated.

 Why isn’t correction of refraction errors enough? As I mentioned above, true contact always has some emotional quality to it. Anyone who is in contact with their own life energy and the environment will recognize this immediately. The buoyancy which an alive person feels is seen as the same as the phenomenon which causes a tree or a plant to grow upward. (Yes, the life force has anti-gravity effects; this is why being in a state of love feels so uplifting.) The attraction to the world is perceived as the same as the attraction between two people, indeed, the same as the force which propels the earth, spinning, in its orbit around the sun.

 When eyes are alive and healthy in this sense, the act of seeing has an energizing force. Being an extension of the brain, it is the brain’s way of making contact (along with the other senses which exchange energy directly between brain and environment, such as hearing, smelling, tasting). If you see something life enhancing, you move towards it in some way. For example, you open up to a beautiful sunset, or drive to catch it in time. Or you slow down near a particularly beautiful patch of jasmine, or near the sweet smell of a bakery. Or you see more and more clearly, both inwardly and outwardly, what your passion is, and you work strenuously to create a life in which that passion is expressed: cooking, gardening, child-rearing, teaching, scientific research, artistic pursuits, community building, and so on.

 On the other hand, life-inimical events are also seen clearly and provide the impetus for suitable action. Instead of the common idealization of a mate at the start of a relationship (romance is Greek for rosy prophecy), your vision appraises the person realistically. Passion will be deeper and more grounded in reality. You will love the real person, not the fantasy or part-person. Remember, to perceive in a functionally healthy way is to have some emotional response. Negative emotional reactions will therefore have an objective reality: your healthy ability to see another’s evasiveness, dishonesty, stinginess, for example, form a rational basis for feelings of dislike. In more extreme forms, these are the feelings of disgust or hate. Seeing another person’s behavior as, in reality, completely unacceptable, gives rise to a real basis for closing off completely to that person, whether temporarily or not. The objectively based emotion in this situation is hate. The anger, if it needs to be expressed, will be immediately conveyed in the eyes and the lowered eyebrows, as well as in the tone of voice. Effectively being firm with someone’s dysfunctional behavior is dependent more on these emotionally contactful components than on the words used to convey your message. This can take a lot of courageous practice and the undoing, sometimes, of a lifetime’s practice of being superficially nice. (One obvious example, quite common, is the attempt to convey a limit or boundary, but the eyebrows are frozen in an upward position, signifying fear. Often the fear itself is wholly unconscious.)

 For obvious reasons, the inability to see reality clearly leads, in relationships and in all spheres of life, to many repetitions of the same disastrous behaviors. It is surprising

to many people, until they have experienced it, to hear that direct work on the eye segment can have profound effects on one’s life. It is, after all, affecting the functioning of the brain. If the eyes are chronically used in an unhealthy manner, it is more than likely that the brain itself is not pulsating as it should. The brain is responsible for so much organization and regulation of the body’s processes, that any change here affects almost everything else. One eye exercise I ask people to do is raise and lower their eyebrows while mobilizing their eyes in as wide and complete a circle as they can (while breathing deeply and audibly sighing). One surprising finding is that quite a few people are unable to look up with their eyes open while their eyebrows are down. Some can’t bring their eyebrows down without making their eyes into narrow slits. Clearly, anger or anger at authority (eyes up) is difficult for these people. Others can’t look down with eyebrows up.

 Think of the ocular/brain segment not as comprised of different organs, bone, blood vessels, and so on. Rather, think of it from an energetic point of view. If the brain is stiff, the forehead will be stiff, and vice versa, and the thinking will be inflexible. Note, as mentioned above, that there will usually be in these cases considerable tension in the occipital region and the muscles which “keep the head on straight”. The angelic smooth brow, when seen more realistically, may in fact be hiding a rigid defense against all feelings. Simple repeated movement will reveal the molasses-like nature of this area.

 In conclusion, I hope you enjoy freeing up your eyes. Deep breathing is essential. Perhaps you will retrieve one of the true joys of some childhoods: the sense of sheer wonder and rapture which interacting with this world provides us.

Peter Moore continues to be busy with his growing family, but takes time away from them for his therapy practice in Eureka, California. He specializes in character and orgonomic work, and has been licensed for over twenty years (MFC23507). He can be reached at (707) 442 7228.

Part Two of this article can be found in the Dec ‘09/Jan ‘10 issue of the Sentient Times