Invisible Eyes

"It has taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything."

Rene Coty

It's always amusing to read some of the comments elicited from young children when they are being surveyed on various subjects. I remember one choice Mother's Day when the preschool sent home the children's answers to such burning questions as "How old is your Mother?" (My son replied that I was 90—so glad we got that cleared up.) One of my favorite responses came from a child who was asked what one thing he would change about his Mom. Apparently, this particular child already had good reason to reply, "Get rid of those invisible eyes on the back of her head."

Ah, those invisible eyes. All it takes is one or two occasions when a Mother's back is turned on her innocents and she still somehow knows things aren't going as they should, to cement the power of this talent for years to come. In fact, I think some lingering suspicion over whether Mom's really do have that extra set patrolling the landscape, served me well into my children's teenage years. You can be sure I never did anything that would suggest they weren't there. I think a bit of floating anxiety over their existence is good for moral development. One of my favorite lines was culled from the old 50's tune: "Remember, the night has a 1000 eyes" to which I added " and I know most of them."

The age of science and reason brought great advancements to civilization, but one of the casualties was to relegate the age of the heart and soul to the fringes of acceptability. Knowledge became finite. Sources of knowing that could not be touched or logically proved were assailed as being unworthy of consideration. Subtle forms of awareness that included intuition, hunches, discernment and insight fell out of use. In recent times, our deepening scientific knowledge of the brain has returned our gaze to some of these mysterious functions as we come to understand there are levels of awareness that exist outside of brain matter. In some ways it seems to me to be a long awaited balancing of the physical world with the spiritual.

Recently my oldest friend's daughter found a mole on her little girl. It wasn't suspicious looking, it was simply in a place that kept getting aggravated, so she made an appointment to have it taken off. The pediatrician didn't think it was anything, but the Mom had a funny feeling about it and insisted that it be removed. Long story short, the mole was biopsied and discovered to have the potential for a highly invasive and aggressive form of cancer. This little girl went back for more surgery to establish a clear margin around the site. The 'what if's' will be the stuff of family legend.

How did she know? Invisible eyes.

Life is mysterious and unexplainable. An outlook which honors and respects that truth provides an intimacy with grace. While we may know why the wind blows or how to make rockets and gummy bears, we still do not have any idea what stirs something within us that informs the choices we make or the paths we take in life. Knowing cannot be predetermined. It is its own process, a highly individual perceptive ability that requires attendance to our inner lives. Women have long been credited, sometimes dubiously, for being born hardwired for this landscape, but the simple truth is that everyone has a map to get there. To me, access is mostly dependent on the act of believing it exists. The rest takes care of itself. Trusting our inner barometers seems to be the main requirement. The pathway lies through giving up a belief life needs to be understood only with our minds and opening ourselves to trusting we can also be shown or led towards what we need to know through our hearts and souls. Releasing ourselves to the experience ignites our forgotten human capacity for astonishment and wonder.

Not every act of intuition is so dramatic, but every attempt we make to listen to this way of knowing is worthy. Practice hones our ability to listen and interpret the nuances of our inner voice. We begin to accept it is there to help us and when we open ourselves to it, our lives move closer to our full potential. We enter what is sacred and holy about our humanity. We encounter what the ancients refer to so elegantly as 'the possible', that place that creates love, truth and beauty. Sounds pretty wonderful, doesn't it?

You come and go. The doors swing closed

ever more gently, almost without a shudder.

Of all who move through the quiet houses,

you are the quietest.

We become so accustomed to you,

we no longer look up

when your shadow falls over the book we are reading

and makes it glow. For all things

sing you: at times

we just hear them more clearly.

Often when I imagine you

your wholeness cascades into many shapes.

You run like a herd of luminous deer

and I am dark, I am forest.

You are a wheel at which I stand,

whose dark spokes sometimes catch me up,

revolve me nearer to the center.

Then all the work I put my hand to

widens from turn to turn.

"Du kommst und gehst. Die Turen fallen" Rilke