08-30-2018, 12:00 AM
So, last week I had severe dry eye which resulted in scratches to the cornea of both eyes, although much moreso my left. This created a situation where for about 3 days I basically had to keep my eyes shut almost all the time. I was able to use my right eye enough to handle walking from room to room and short tasks, but light was too painful for anything beyond that.
Knowing that I had to keep my eyes shut to let them heal, I wondered what I would do during that time. As it turns out, most of my doings involve the use of sight, (whoda thunk?!). One thing that came to mind right away was listening to audio books. I've done that a lot in the past, and enjoy that so I thought why not? I found a playlist full of dramatized audio versions of the Goosebumps series, (scary stories for children), and having enjoyed those stories in the past decided to have a listen. I decided to try to visualize the story as I was listening to it. This turned out to be surprisingly difficult. I think the main problem was that instead of just holding onto ideas from the story with empty placeholders I was actively trying to constantly visualize things. This screwed up the timing between what I was imagining and the pace I was hearing the story whenever it would say stuff that has nothing to do with the visual idea of the story like 'I knew I couldn't leave him there, but I didn't know how to get him out.' There's a lot of this kind of thing in stories. I did better with stories I knew well, as I would slowly link what I was imagination with what I knew was coming next.
Aside from the audio books, I also indulged in sleep. It seemed to make sense at the time. I had to keep my eyes closed anyway and when you're healing sleep is supposed to be a good thing, or so I've always heard. I now realize that it was actually an indulgence to take several couple hour naps per day, plus a full nights sleep, and the reason I was doing it was just to give myself something "to do". The audio plays were somewhat of an indulgence too, even though listening to them with eyes closed turned out to be less familiar than I expected. Still, somehow between the excess sleep and some hours of radio stories I managed to get a lot of not-doing in there.
So what was this not-doing like? The best I can compare it to is waiting for something to happen. Waiting in a way as if you were about to leave a party and you've already said goodbye to everyone, but then your driver said hang on and had to rush back inside. You're still standing in the entryway. You don't want to start up anything new because you know you won't have time for it, so you just stand there "not doing" for a brief period until your ride comes back. Sure if it takes a while you'll decide to go back in a bit and maybe mingle some more or inquire what's keeping your driver, but until you decide to do that, (or to do something else to "occupy your time" while waiting), you're not-doing.
I was not-doing for some hours at a time. Just sort of "waiting" for my eyes to heal as I laid in bed with them closed, not knowing how long it would take and not feeling like I had anything else to do. During this period, I saw a lot of images, similar to how I see them before sleeping. Just a rampant, chaotic series of things changing form really. One thing dissolved into the next, and then into the next. The only theme that seemed to recur a lot was that of elephants, and I don't know why that is.
The main change I was getting from this though was that I felt I was becoming more "sober". To a degree that goes a bit beyond my normal use of that term. What I was becoming more sober towards was the difference between an authentic desire to do something, and an inauthentic, mind-created urge to doing something just to fill a need to "be doing something", or to do something because of the time, (eg, it's 12:00, time for lunch), or to meet some expectation, or whatever else the mind says is the reason why I "should" do whatever it suggests to do, which is never an authentic desire.
In addition to the concept of the difference, the energy is different too. The mind has to build up the energy to do something, often using the imagination, while authentic desires pop in ready to be acted on. If you ever just jump up and burst into song, or something else so quickly you're half-surprised by your own action it was probably authentic. If you're sitting here imagining what that is like and trying to figure out how to do that it isn't. Just wait and don't feel a need to do anything, or think about doing anything. You might not have an authentic desire to do anything for a while. Eventually, an authentic desire will arise. At least, that's my working theory. :/
Converting from spending nearly all of my time doing mind-generated actions to spending it doing only actions which stem from authentic desire seems like it might take a while and pose some challenges, (the first one I notice is that I need to continually reassure myself that I won't act in suicidally stupid ways by doing so).
Knowing that I had to keep my eyes shut to let them heal, I wondered what I would do during that time. As it turns out, most of my doings involve the use of sight, (whoda thunk?!). One thing that came to mind right away was listening to audio books. I've done that a lot in the past, and enjoy that so I thought why not? I found a playlist full of dramatized audio versions of the Goosebumps series, (scary stories for children), and having enjoyed those stories in the past decided to have a listen. I decided to try to visualize the story as I was listening to it. This turned out to be surprisingly difficult. I think the main problem was that instead of just holding onto ideas from the story with empty placeholders I was actively trying to constantly visualize things. This screwed up the timing between what I was imagining and the pace I was hearing the story whenever it would say stuff that has nothing to do with the visual idea of the story like 'I knew I couldn't leave him there, but I didn't know how to get him out.' There's a lot of this kind of thing in stories. I did better with stories I knew well, as I would slowly link what I was imagination with what I knew was coming next.
Aside from the audio books, I also indulged in sleep. It seemed to make sense at the time. I had to keep my eyes closed anyway and when you're healing sleep is supposed to be a good thing, or so I've always heard. I now realize that it was actually an indulgence to take several couple hour naps per day, plus a full nights sleep, and the reason I was doing it was just to give myself something "to do". The audio plays were somewhat of an indulgence too, even though listening to them with eyes closed turned out to be less familiar than I expected. Still, somehow between the excess sleep and some hours of radio stories I managed to get a lot of not-doing in there.
So what was this not-doing like? The best I can compare it to is waiting for something to happen. Waiting in a way as if you were about to leave a party and you've already said goodbye to everyone, but then your driver said hang on and had to rush back inside. You're still standing in the entryway. You don't want to start up anything new because you know you won't have time for it, so you just stand there "not doing" for a brief period until your ride comes back. Sure if it takes a while you'll decide to go back in a bit and maybe mingle some more or inquire what's keeping your driver, but until you decide to do that, (or to do something else to "occupy your time" while waiting), you're not-doing.
I was not-doing for some hours at a time. Just sort of "waiting" for my eyes to heal as I laid in bed with them closed, not knowing how long it would take and not feeling like I had anything else to do. During this period, I saw a lot of images, similar to how I see them before sleeping. Just a rampant, chaotic series of things changing form really. One thing dissolved into the next, and then into the next. The only theme that seemed to recur a lot was that of elephants, and I don't know why that is.
The main change I was getting from this though was that I felt I was becoming more "sober". To a degree that goes a bit beyond my normal use of that term. What I was becoming more sober towards was the difference between an authentic desire to do something, and an inauthentic, mind-created urge to doing something just to fill a need to "be doing something", or to do something because of the time, (eg, it's 12:00, time for lunch), or to meet some expectation, or whatever else the mind says is the reason why I "should" do whatever it suggests to do, which is never an authentic desire.
In addition to the concept of the difference, the energy is different too. The mind has to build up the energy to do something, often using the imagination, while authentic desires pop in ready to be acted on. If you ever just jump up and burst into song, or something else so quickly you're half-surprised by your own action it was probably authentic. If you're sitting here imagining what that is like and trying to figure out how to do that it isn't. Just wait and don't feel a need to do anything, or think about doing anything. You might not have an authentic desire to do anything for a while. Eventually, an authentic desire will arise. At least, that's my working theory. :/
Converting from spending nearly all of my time doing mind-generated actions to spending it doing only actions which stem from authentic desire seems like it might take a while and pose some challenges, (the first one I notice is that I need to continually reassure myself that I won't act in suicidally stupid ways by doing so).
I might get a seeing eye dog. But then I'd need someone to clean up after it. For work, I might get involved with producing audio stories, which is something I'd like to do anyway. I might miss vision on occasion, when I would struggle to do things I take for granted now, but I wouldn't feel like my life was ruined or anything like that.