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I Can’t See Good and It Makes Me Cranky!

I Can’t See Good and It Makes Me Cranky!

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My vision started deteriorating when I turned 50 years old. Before that, I had never needed any kind of visual correction. But, almost as if a switch got flipped on my 50th birthday, and the warranty on my eyes expired, my eyesight got progressively worse as I aged into my fifties. It got to the point that I needed corrective lenses to drive safely. I also needed reading glasses to read, including reading small text like preparation instructions on food packaging. I’m sure you other oldsters are familiar with this experience.

Now I constantly juggle among three sets of glasses: a prescription pair for getting about in the space of life, and essential for both driving and watching TV; another prescription pair for the computer (with the blue light filter); and then generic reading glasses for books and sometimes the cell phone. I should probably use the computer glasses with the cell phone, but some apps have such small fonts that I need better magnification to clearly read the text. It seems the only time I’m not wearing glasses is when I’m showering, or when I’m sleeping.

The worst part of it is that I have terrible double vision at medium and long distances. My prescription actually doesn’t do much for the focus of my eyes, but it has a feature called prism which bends the light going into one eye, fixing the double vision. Without it, I see double, which is incredibly annoying, and also makes it impossible to drive a car. So I’d better not lose those glasses.

It’s so bad, and so frustrating, that I’ve started seeing a visual therapist. My diagnosis is a turned eye – technically ‘esotropia,’ meaning the eye turns inward. My therapy consists of exercises to train my eyes on convergence and divergence (turning in and turning out), and also to work on my hand-eye and foot-eye coordination. My therapist wants to build new neural paths in my eye-brain system, and believes that working on my overall physical coordination is an important part of that.

So now our house has eye charts and patterns of shapes taped to the walls, and the family gets to watch me do fun, goofy exercises, and hear me reciting letters to the beat of a metronome. So far, I have noticed only a slight improvement; I seem to be able to fix my double vision at some distances, so long as I strain my eyes. But that’s still annoying, and my eyes are tired all the time, which I know is because I spend so much time looking at a computer screen, but that’s my work and my life, so what am I supposed to do?

I wake up with tired eyes, and can’t see straight, and stumble through my morning routine. When I need to find things, I have to strain my eyes, and turn my head, in an attempt to correct my double vision. It can make me quite cranky sometimes.

I’ve thought about how my double vision might relate to chakra health. Vision is connected to Ajna, the third-eye chakra, which is the seat of the intellect (the mind’s eye, as they say).

Maybe I see double because I can’t discern the future well. Two possible realities float in my visual field, but which one is the accurate image? What does it look like when it comes together? My vision reflects my mind’s confusion and uncertainty over the state of the world, in these uncertain times.

That could just be me overthinking things. Also not good for the third-eye chakra, I’m sure.

Apologies for the whiny post, but I am here to chronicle the changing times, which includes chronicling my own deterioration with age, as I already began to do years ago.

Opening the Heart for a Healthy Life

Opening the Heart for a Healthy Life

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When Aileen and I first reunited, she gave me a book about heart disease, written by Dr. Dean Ornish. It is titled “Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease.” She had already given it once before – to her husband, Gavin, after he developed heart problems. Based in part on the advice from this book, he switched to a vegetarian diet, which helped. He also took pharmaceutical drugs, and after much medication management is now back to eating meat. It’s not like he necessarily followed Ornish’s program exactly, but reading it and heeding some of its advice was a help.

I read the book when Aileen gave it to me, and while I also have not followed the program exactly (or much), I certainly valued what I learned. Mostly the program for treating heart disease is just common sense advice: reduce stress, get exercise, absolutely do not smoke tobacco, and eat a proper diet. In fact, nearly half of this book is healthy recipes.

What I really valued about the book was its many anecdotes of individuals reversing heart disease, and the way their path to healing was tied to the bigger picture of their life. It wasn’t just about making physical changes, but also changes in attitude and in their emotional life, even in their spiritual life. It was about how beliefs and feelings affect physical well-being.

Ornish calls his program “opening the heart.” He specifically discusses opening to one’s feelings, to the needs of others, and to a higher purpose. What I got out of it is that heart disease, whatever its physical manifestations, is a result of closing oneself off. It is a disease of isolation.

The idea that the key to reversing heart disease is “opening” the heart ties to the concept of chakras, which are the centers where vital energy flows in alignment with physical organs. Charkras can be open or closed (“blocked” is also used), and when closed or blocked, disease will result in the corresponding organ(s).

The chakra aligned with the heart is the seat of emotions and love; that is why you have that feeling of your heart expanding when you experience intense love. This can even happen when you vicariously experience love while watching a mushy romantic movie. You are experiencing your heart chakra opening, blossoming even (think of how chakras are often depicted to look like flowers). Watching mushy movies is good for your heart!

But walling off your emotions, being unwilling or afraid to care about yourself or others, will close down your heart chakra. The vital energy aligned with your heart will be blocked, and the organ itself will begin to show signs of disease. Emotional isolation – loneliness, or anger and fear directed at others – leads to an ailing heart.

As the name of Ornish’s program implies, opening the heart (chakra) is the key to maintaining heart health. He does not specifically mention chakras, either because he discounts them or because he does not want his book to seem like it supports alternative medicine. But I think that the similarities between his medical program and the concepts of chakra medicine are no coincidence. A deeper truth about the nature of human life is being revealed.

How can it be that there is some kind of vital energy, and how could it possibly interact with our physical bodies? There is no measurable quantity of physical energy associated with our feelings of vitality, feelings like what I described above, when your heart expands with joy and love. But those feelings are real – our experience of them is direct evidence of this vital energy.

The best explanation of how our vitality – our aliveness – is connected to our physical forms lies in the the primacy of consciousness model of reality. I have brought this model up before, in a post on “mind over matter.” There, I described how my mental experience manifested in parallel with events in the physical world, mediated by unitive consciousness.

A similar phenomenon occurs in vital experience, which manifests in parallel with our physical bodies. The correspondence of the chakras of our vital bodies (there are seven chakras total) to specific parts of our physical bodies is mediated by unitive consciousness, which is the agency which keeps us alive. Our experience of our vital bodies is internal and private; it is our feeling of being alive, not accessible to others, who can only see our physical bodies. Other people will notice when consciousness ceases to correlate our physical bodies with a correpsonding vital body, of course – that is when our physical bodies become lifeless; that is, when we die.

That, anyway, is the theory of life based on the primacy of consciousness model of reality, a model on which I have expounded here in several posts. How this model can be applied to the life sciences, and to medicine and health, is covered in an excellent book by Amit Goswami called “The Quantum Doctor.” I’m currently rereading it, but I’m sure at least some of what it says lines up with what Dean Ornish wrote in his book on heart health. Per Goswami, our beliefs and feeling affect our physical bodily health because they are all connected through the agency of consciouness. Ornish might not have said so quite as explicitly, but he was on to the same thing.

The science is clear on the matter – health can be influenced from above, by intention and emotion, as much as from below, by chemicals (drugs) and surgeries. Keep all of that in mind to live a full, healthy life.

Love at the Center

Love at the Center

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I discovered the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore by listening to the music CD A Gift of Love II. This is the second of a pair of albums by New Age author Deepak Chopra which put to music love poetry read by an ensemble of notable guest speakers (the first album uses the poetry of Rumi and is just as good). Tagore is considered to be a national treasure by the people of India, and from the great wisdom of his very quotable sayings it is easy to see why.

When I contemplate his many teachings, I find that I truly believe what the master says about love – that it is the ultimate meaning of life. For when the unity of consciousness, which is the ground of all being, separates into the duality of subjective observer and experienced world, it creates a yearning for reunion. This desire propels the Universal Will as it seeks higher and higher forms of expression within consciousness. Thus, love is the very reason for existence.

When you love, you are extending your conception of what you are, what belongs to you, outward into the world. You are expanding your ego-identity. Love is seated in the 4th chakra – anahata – which manages emotions, the confluence of your mental and vital natures. In other words, the meaning of your life. Anahata is the central chakra, and so love is central to your being. It radiates out from you in every worshipful act.

Keep that in mind, and love.

Keeping an open heart

Keeping an open heart

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Last weekend I went to Manhattan to catch up with my BFF, who was already there for a conference. It’s the greatest city in the world, and I love to go there and feel the energy of the teeming masses and all the things there are to see and do. But mainly the plan was to see a show. You know what I mean: a Broadway show.

We saw two, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. What we do is go to Times Square where there is a booth to get discount tickets. You won’t get to see a show that is selling out this way, but there are enough options to find something you are interested in, and the tickets will be about 50% off. I got to pick the shows this time, because my BFF was so busy.

Saturday’s show was Waitress, a reliably fun and romantic romp through the life of a working girl whose dreams are grander than her circumstances. These productions know how to tug on your heart strings, and take you on an emotional ride – up and down like a roller coaster. TV and movies can do the same thing, but live theater is much more powerful. The experience leaves me enervated, but during the show I feel my whole being expanding with joy, from the center.

What I’m feeling is my heart chakra blossoming open. That’s the central of the seven chakras – there are three below it and three above. Theater, done right, connects you to the emotional core of your being. It makes you care. Yes, about something fictional, but in doing so it has healing power. Mushy romance to stir up your heart is vital to living a long and healthy life. I highly recommend it.

My BFF meets the King

Sunday’s show was King Kong. Which we absolutely love, and in fact we were seeing it for the second time. It is not as emotional a show as Waitress, but it is wondrous because of the skillful puppetry. It also has a standout performance from the lead, whose acting brings the great beast to life. I believe you have about a week to go see it before it closes.

But even if you miss it, at least get out there somewhere and see something romantic. Or even just watch it on TV. Your heart and soul will be grateful. Namaste.

Seeing Clearly

Seeing Clearly

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My vision has been steadily and slowly deteriorating over the years, hence the need for the updated prescription lenses for nearsightedness that I am wearing in my recent profile picture. As my field of vision shrinks, it feels like a bubble is enclosing me, collapsing on me, isolating me and rendering me irrelevant. It’s like there is a timer in my eyes ticking down to a point when they will no longer be useful; when I will no longer be useful. Planned obsolescence – not an unfitting analogy for the limited lifespan of biological organisms, who must always make way for the next generations.

Vision is governed by the third-eye chakra, where life energy is involved with the intellect and with intuition – the higher functions of the human soul, as it were. Since I am very brain-oriented, as our species tends to be, spending most of my time mentally processing symbols at work or at play, I wonder if I am overworking it. After all, my favorite hobby – board gaming – is heavily intellectual. All this analysis in the mind – and how much of it is really fruitful?

Even in this reflection I am surely overthinking things. I’m probably not overstimulating my ajna chakra to a point where I am so caught up in the whirl of internal thought processes that my portal to the external world is closing down. My eyeballs are simply warping over time, entropy taking its inevitable toll as it does on all things physical. But if I am overintellectualizing or overinternalizing, that would fit with patterns in my past. So I’m hoping a little meditating might help. I need to clear my mind, to open up my soul.

Feet Firmly On The Ground

Feet Firmly On The Ground

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I haven’t mentioned this online yet, but I had a minor foot injury which has plagued me for the past couple of weeks. It has finally healed to the point where I can walk without pain, and what a relief! I feel like a new man – you know that feeling when you have recovered from a health condition and you are energized like you have tasted from the fountain of youth.

The foot is a part of the body governed by the root chakra, where life energy is involved with survival and physical security. When I was limping from my pain I thought to myself, well if the zombie apocalypse starts now I am f*****d. The rest of you might as well let them get me if it will buy you a minute or two. I didn’t want to stand even, only to sit as much as I could.

It makes a lot more sense to me now that the lower limbs are associated with the root chakra – they are essential for “fight or flight” to even be an option. It sure feels good to walk freely and to appreciate the power of Mother Earth at my feet!