Like many people, I’ve been on endless video calls over the last year. A few of these were facilitated sessions where, for one reason or another, the facilitator invited attendees to close their eyes and turn inward. I noticed that sometimes after closing my eyes, I would have the imprint of an image for the first few seconds. The first time I really noticed was because I saw the outline of someone sitting in meditation, like the buddha. For a very brief moment I genuinely thought that I had connected to a deeper, more anchored, part of me and that’s why I was seeing this calm outline. Then I opened my eyes to realize there was a massive buddha statue behind the teacher in an otherwise sparse background. I found the source of my imprint and it made sense. “Of course!!”, I thought and then moved on to forgot all about it.
Then a few months later, in another facilitated session, I saw the outline of a person with a large square next to them and a little square inside the large square. It was as if someone had painted these clear details in shades of charcoal. I kept on going with the assigned exercise and when I opened my eyes, I saw that my partner for this exercise was sitting next to a window with a small square box fan on the window sill. In this exercise, we were invited to offer deep presence to the person in front of us. All my attention was on my partner and I had not even noticed the window, let alone the box fan. Yet, all that information was imprinted behind my eyelids somehow. I didn’t make this happen consciously and even now that I’m more aware, this doesn’t always happen. It seems that for these impression to appear, a few conditions need to be present: the canvas of a quiet and empty mind, accompanied by a prolonged gaze, followed by closing the eyes to let the impressions appear. When my mind is hyperactive or when I look briefly, I don’t absorb all the details. When I gaze and don’t close my eyes, clearly I don’t see the imprint.
This makes me think if there are intellectual parallels to this and whether this holds true for our minds in general. What needs to be true for us to absorb information; when does the information make an imprint and when does it dissipate; and most concerning perhaps…what impressions might we be absorbing without even realizing?
It’s worthwhile to observe our unseen impressions. What are we making space for on our mental canvas, what do we spend our uninterrupted presence on, what do we think about when we turn inwards?
“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
