![]() When it was over, more disbelief and more loving awareness. We smiled as we watched them crest over each other’s eyes and down our cheeks. Again, initial discomfort and eye shifting gave way quickly to light, painless tears. I tried the technique shortly after this experience with another pair of lovely eyes, and the same even more lovely awareness behind them. The power of this wonderful tool had made itself known in our campsite. When it was over, we stared at each other with a new flavor: disbelief. This lasted for an additional ten intense, healing minutes. It was so powerful that I began to shake. They rolled down and out just as the fear did, and a profound sense of relief came over me. Halfway through, the tears came - my favorite kind of tears, to which no specific emotion can be attributed. It was a long ten minutes, in the best way minutes can be long. Neither of these things was as wonderful and intense as the main event - pouring our awareness on each other loving, being loved accepting, being accepted. Meanwhile, she was experiencing what she described as a unique warmth filling her body. My partner’s face grew in size, changed hues, and snapped in and out of focus in novel ways. I began to hallucinate, which I learned later is actually common with this technique. As we settled further, a curious thing happened. Our faces wore grins we eventually swallowed as the inevitable intensity of the experience seeped in. We sat by the fire, holding our gazes, witnessing. We set a ten-minute timer in the form of a wonderful song and began what was to become our first eye contact meditation. I suggested the idea a bit after the sun had set, as we sat singing by the campfire. I was camping on the shore of the Mediterranean sea with the owner of a lovely pair of eyes and even more lovely awareness abiding behind them. My obsession with eye contact meditation started the first time I tried it. So, leaving aside concern for yourself, become each being.” “Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness. It is these practices - eye contact and mirror meditation - that I will be discussing in detail in this article. Meditation isn’t something done only in the isolation of our own internal worlds, it is also something we can share with the people we wish to connect with the most. ![]() It’s possible to move beyond fleeting glances, and slow down, even for just a few intentional moments and give each other the full undivided attention we so deeply crave. We can be the loving awareness we may struggle to be for ourselves, for the people we love or are trying to love. Fortunately, we can do this for each other. It can be challenging, painful, and even terrifying to sit with our own thoughts, our emotions, and the constant electric flow of stimuli from our nervous systems. This is especially true of the experience of being aware.īut meditation isn’t all roses and chubby Buddha’s belly laughing the suffering away. Taking the time to experience the real thing, as opposed to our ideas about a thing, is always deeply rewarding. ![]() As this continued, the value I saw in simply witnessing, in simply being witnessed grew exponentially. My experiences, when observed from this new perspective, were changing in increasingly surprising and profound ways. An unflappable, non-judgmental, loving awareness started to compete with the neurotic and brutal voices in my head. The tyrant in my mind was no longer the only show in town. Within just a few months of daily practice, things began progressing quickly. When I was introduced to the idea that directly observing the mind could yield insights into its nature, its sheer simplicity felt like a smack in the face. But in all that time, I had never really taken the time to simply sit and study the experience of being in a disciplined, patient manner. For many years, I had been desperately trying to understand myself, the secret to happiness, and the cure to my suffering. ![]() It’s only ever a glance, a near miss, that you can only feel as it slips past you… So we’re all just exchanging glances, trying to tell each other who we are, trying to catch a glimpse of ourselves, feeling around in the darkness.” But whether the eyes are the windows of the soul or the doors of perception, it doesn’t matter: you’re still standing on the outside of the house. And for a few seconds, you can peek through into a vault, that contains everything they are. ![]() The eye is a keyhole, through which the world pours in and a world spills out. Such ambiguous intensity, both invasive and vulnerable - glittering black, bottomless and opaque. ![]()
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