Open Things— Eyes
Open things are the most beautiful—open flowers, open eyes, open hearts, open minds.
In the previous article I discussed how beautiful a life can be when, like a flower, it has blossomed, providing its contribution for the benefit of all. When I find the purpose of my life and learn how I can best make an impact on the world I can truly find joy. But I can only find that purpose with vision. And vision requires open eyes. When this type of vision occurs the soul experiences an awakening. And the eyes behind this vision are truly beautiful, indeed.
If you have ever been in love, that person’s eyes were likely one of the biggest reasons you were attracted to them.
The Power of Our Eyes
Eyes communicate. You can tell volumes about what a person is thinking by what their eyes reveal. That person you fell in love with probably told you they loved you with their eyes long before they ever said it with their words.
Eyes connect people. When you gaze into someone’s eyes you are really having one of the most intimate moments that you can with a person. They say eyes are the windows to the soul and it doesn’t get much more intimate than peering into another person’s soul.
Eyes also connect us to the beauty of the world around us. We get to share in the magnificence of creation because of these miracles of vision.
And, miracles they are. According to discoveryeye.org, a human eye has more than 2 million working parts and have more than a million nerve fibers connecting each to the brain. And, somehow, something “out there” gets captured, processed through all of that, and sent to our brain so we can experience it.
And, beyond all of that, eyes are just plain beautiful.
The colors and patterns of the iris are amazing and breathtaking. When you examine them real close it’s like staring into a pair of twin galaxies. There is such delicate beauty and individuality—each person’s eyes are as unique as snowflakes.
But, eyes just don’t have the same grandeur when they’re closed.
The communication, the connection, the beauty, it’s all lost. It seems vision and beauty go hand-in-hand.
I Once Was Blind…
Interestingly, even with eyes open, not every person truly sees.
Some people can even have perfect vision and miss perceiving the most important things in life. To truly understand the universe and our place in it, we need to have a different kind of vision.
While my physical eyesight has become progressively worse, this kind of eyesight seems to get better as I age. It was only in my recent past, I was nearly blind. I could tell there was so much going on around me, so much more to life, but I just couldn’t perceive it.
I couldn’t communicate with the universe—I couldn’t connect with it. There was nothing more than a blank stare coming out of me. Really, my eyes weren’t even open at all.
I felt like I had a strong spiritual vision in the sense that I knew God very well. I could clearly see Him at work. I could see God through the work of His creation. But I didn’t know what my work was supposed to be. I didn’t know that He had a calling for me. I couldn’t see that there was a spiritual universe He created just like the physical that He wanted me to enjoy and have dominion over.
I couldn’t, at all, see the majesty of this universe around me and my part in it. I was lost— really, really lost. And what do you think the universe thought of me? I can tell you it wasn’t, “That Aaron Force…look at those beautiful eyes.”
Instead of order and beauty, there was doubt and confusion. There were hurt and pain. There was a desperate selfishness. These are what the universe saw when it stared into my eyes.
Seeing With New Eyes
Of course, there is a metaphor here, that we have two types of vision—physical and spiritual. But the parallels are quite strong.
According to babycenter.com, newborn babies can only detect light and motion. As the baby approaches the one-year mark he begins to see with reasonable clarity. But his vision won’t be fully developed until somewhere between ages 3 and 5.
For most of us, spiritually speaking, we stay in that hazy fog of the newborn. We can sense there is something out there but we can’t pin it down or have a strong comprehension of it. We can perceive a universe around us but can’t make sense of it.
That’s exactly where I was. Although I already had nearly 20/20 vision when it came to knowing the things of God I was purely oblivious to a spiritual universe that other, successful people apparently knew about.
And what follows is my favorite analogy of that event that changed my life.
The Apostle Paul recounted how when on his way to capturing Christians near Damascus so he could return them to Jerusalem for trial and eventual imprisonment, he was confronted by Christ himself. The story goes that Saul’s (he wasn’t called Paul until after his conversion) eyes scabbed over with something like scales and he couldn’t see for three days. But after the encounter had fully sunk in, the scales fell off and Paul symbolically had new vision, a vision of God and his plan for him.
Remarkably, I experienced a moment of calling myself prior to my journey into becoming a writer. I already had encountered Christ decades earlier. But I never could see a specific calling for my life until this day of revelation. It was a calling, yes, but it was also an awakening. It was as if the scales fell from my eyes.
In the months that followed, I could see unseen things even clearer.
God had opened a new set of eyes in me to see that He had a specific plan for me. And these eyes could also see that there was not just a heaven somewhere else, off in the distance, but another dimension right here, mirroring many of the qualities of the physical universe that my aging eyes were having more and more difficulty seeing.
He helped me to see that there is a causal dimension that, as I pour energy and intention into it, gives me results back out.
Eyes Wide Open
I truly believe that I experienced what many people call an awakening. Where I could never see it before I was beginning to see how all things are connected and how I connect to it all as well.
Things I had never contemplated before were starting to make sense. It was all so beautiful to me. For the first time in a long time, I was in deep wonder. I strained to take it all in and never wanted to blink my eyes.
Not only did my vision now encompass the unseen in stronger ways than ever before, I was looking at physical creation with renewed awe.
I always saw a divine design in everything but never with such clarity. On a summer day, I can be outside for hours staring at stupid trees in my backyard because I am so mesmerized by them. The mountains, the sky—it all shouts God’s glory to me now.
My favorite author, Dr. Wayne Dyer, sums it perfectly for me:
“Recapture the childlike feelings of wide-eyed excitement, spontaneous appreciation, cutting loose, and being full of awe and wonder at this magnificent universe.”
And in all this awe, with eyes wide open, I can’t help but see God smiling.
Yes, of course, God smiles. How do I know? Because he made man in His image. I know because, as a father, when I see my children in awe of the universe around them it brings a smile to me too.
It’s a moment of pure love when you share that kind of bliss—that complete adoration of the awe-inspiring. It brings complete love to a person’s heart. It’s a beautiful thing, these eyes wide open.
Take Away
To take in the beauty of the universe around us and to likewise be beautiful to it we need to experience life with eyes wide open. This refers to not just our physical vision but our spiritual. When we do we can communicate, we can have connection, and we can be beautiful.
As you have your eyes open to the universe you will become more and more aware. As you do you will find stronger meaning through the connection. You will notice things, how they relate, and how you relate to them. Life will take on a new level of purpose and urgency and you will feel yourself becoming more alive all because your eyes are open.
And how beautiful those eyes are.
This is the second entry of a four-part series, “Open Things Are The Most Beautiful.”
Aaron Force is a blogger from Seattle, Washington. He writes to educate others about the nature of an expanded consciousness to evolve humanity. Aaron unexpectedly experienced his own profound awakening and ego transcendence in 2015 and soon understood that the qualities of his own experience (a greater expansion and evolution in his life) could be applied to mankind collectively.