Day 116/366 days Towards Self-Mastery
"The eyes are the windows to the soul", William Shakespeare. Some fun facts about eyes. It seems that it is actually the left eye that is the window to the soul. The right eye is the window to the personality. If you really want to know more about someone, focus on their left eye when you are speaking with them.
You won't find this very natural nor easy to do. We are conditioned into our left brain by "I think therefore I am", René Descartes. Descartes really took us down the path of glorifying our cognitive abilities and left us bereft of imagination. That's another conversation.
Our right eye is directly connected to our left hemisphere of our brain where it was thought that most of our thinking, reasoning and interpreting activity was/is located. We tend to focus our attention to the right eye and here we see the personality that the person shows the world. I wonder if it is there's or our own personality we see here.
The left eye, connected directly to the right hemisphere, shows us their true dreams, feelings, desires and longings. You will see the voice of their self-esteem, the dreams of their broken heart. If you care to take the time to train yourself to look into people's left eye, your responses to them will change as you see a side of them that they are cautious not to show the world. Or maybe it's you that you see, or even both!
Rarely do we look to examine, to enjoy, to explore, to be fascinated, to be enchanted by nature's beauty.
We glance around us in a transactional manner, enough to inform us of the direction we should head in or to observe something that had grabbed our attention.
Today, begin to look closely, more deeply at the world you have created around you.
It's not lost on me this time that we have to stay isolated in our homes. What better time to become fully acquainted with our closest surrounds.
Through our attention to the details of our life we discover life. When you clean your home, what do you actually see? What are you noticing that you brush over most of the time.
When you visit your garden look longer at the structure of the leaves, branches of trees, the texture of bark, the petals of flowers.
My grandmother lost her sight and was completely blind for the last 10 years or so. I often feel saddened for her loss and the internal struggle that she must have encountered.
When travelling I am always conflicted with taking photographs and letting my eyes take in the charm and beauty of what I am experiencing. I don't really want to experience the world through the lens of a camera, I want to drink it in is all it's beauty.
Some of my most treasured memories are of returning to familiar places; London that I had visited often, Melbourne where I lived for 6 years, Wellington NZ was my home for 12 years, with the specific intention now of capturing my experiences of those magnificent cities on camera. I had lived my initial experiences through open eyes.
As my eyesight deteriorates I am so aware of the desire to see the world more clearly.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.