Theme: I See
Acknowledging the visible and invisible world
Chapter 3: Lucidity & Looking Deeper
Lucidity comes from the Latin lucidus meaning “light, bright, or clear.” As a personal quality, being lucid means to be completely and easily understandable. Being transparent with nothing hidden in your words, actions, or appearance. As an action, using your lucid eye or lucid sight means looking beyond the physical or material forms in front of you, and seeing quality.
What do you see when you look at a person? Do we look at people we know differently than strangers? Just walking around out in public I probably spend less than a second each gauging how near or far away people are so that I don’t bump into them, and vaguely how threatening vs. in distress they might be to determine if I need to react or not, and then move on with my day. I can’t say I spend much time assessing how stylish or fit, cheerful, tall, short, old, or classically attractive anyone is ever, whether I know them or not. Those qualities in other people don’t really affect me, so I suppose I’ve never learned to pay them much attention. I’m sure everyone’s got different levels of what they pay attention to though, this is just my experience through the filter of what’s been important in my life.
A cousin and I once noticed over a few glasses of sangria one night that we remember the people we know or friends we like as actually more attractive than people we don’t know or people that have treated us poorly. As if the actual mental image memories of them are altered to remind us later who we liked or didn’t. An inner qualities filter or watermark for future reference.
I was watching a movie last night and there was this couple, maybe in their mid 50’s lying in bed talking about their lives, and it made me think, what would a couple like that see when they look at each other? I imagine they still spend about a second gauging how threatening vs. in distress the other person is on a basic level. And they’d vaguely be aware of what the other person is wearing, or how fit or cheerful they seem at that moment in time. But there’s a whole other pile of filters happening on top of that image beyond the basic like/don’t like. Filters of how many times they’ve looked at each other, and their memories of this same face changing over time. Different places they’ve been or lived together. Summer tans and freckles and scars and hair styles. How life experiences have shaped them, and the feelings that all of those moments left behind. They’d overlay this current image with millions of similar ones from months or years back until the picture itself becomes less of looking at a person and more of a feeling. Of safety. Of struggles. Jealousy. Lust. Comfort. Determination. Perseverance. Pride. Sorrow. Loss. Camaraderie.
So now, what do you see when you look at a person? How many filters of time, and memories, and safety and distress can you see? How lucid or transparent are they? And what about yourself?
The exercises this week are for your eyes. Notice as you do each as you look around, all the work and information your eyes constantly provide.
Jet Tries 