Mid-December 2025 Newsletter

Hello, and a meaningful Mid-December to you!
Welcome, or welcome back, to my newsletter. Today's issue is about noticing vs. trying, or even struggling, to see. Enjoy!

In my early energy healing training, and also in some more body-based physical classes, the warning kept coming up about pushing too hard, when allowing and receiving would be more helpful. Yet the culture teaches us from a young age that the harder we try, the more we'll accomplish. "Burning the candle at both ends" is to be admired, while we're suspicious of someone who is having fun when they work.

It's human nature to want a shortcut, or to find the easiest path to reaching a goal we desire. When we see someone else achieve that same goal without appearing to work very hard, we wonder if they're cheating, or secretly got help which isn't available to us. What we may be missing in this comparison is that we're all different, that some folks are naturally talented at sports or music or math, while others have to work harder to progress at that skill. And we can all learn to improve.

About 20 years ago, after I had been a math teacher and was still a computer programmer, I realized how lopsided my education had been, all facts and hardly any feelings. I started studying dreams and other energy-related work. Most of the folks in my classes were naturally intuitive, creative, and artistic. Though I felt like a fish out of water, I wanted to learn all I could, since this felt like a fascinating new language. Could I learn to open up my overly left-brained analytical head to allow myself to also be more right-brained and intuitive?

My vision improvement studies brought my left brain and right brain together to work more cooperatively, though this wasn't obvious at first. True to my nature, I had started with a focus on doing the practices "right", like a newbie in the gym, without understanding the purpose of each. I wasn't fully present, my mind often wandering, with little awareness of how freeing and expansive it felt doing the Long Swing, for example, my eyes and brain just letting the scenery slide by, the images moving easily from one side to the other across the view in front of me.

The idea of a child playing, letting his gaze move in all directions, noticing without trying or straining to see, is often used to explain the mindset we want for vision improvement. Seeing well and effortlessly is meant to be enjoyable, not a chore! Observing activity in the natural world is a great way to practice this more relaxed way of using our eyes. You could do "vision practice" by watching bees buzzing around a flower, or hummingbirds at a bird feeder, where you'll see plenty of movement, depth, and color, constantly changing, like Life itself.

Julia Cameron's point about delight reminds us that the delightful is all around us, all the time, if we just let ourselves look. You've seen young ones delighted by the simplest things, until they're trained out of this receptive attitude because it's "babyish". The reason we're urged to look with the eyes of a child is just this, so as not to lose that welcoming attitude to what's in front of our vision. Just let it be how it is, and how you're seeing it, even if it's not crystal clear yet. Let your eyes and mind play. Maybe being child-like is a good thing. Give it a try and see for yourself.

To read about trying not to see, click here.

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Please send me your questions and comments
Let me know what you've wondered about concerning energy medicine or vision or dreams. I'll be glad to write a short article addressing that topic. Thank you to those who have sent me questions, or see a question you asked me in a private session written about here.  You're helping many other people! Enjoy the second half of this dreams-coming-true month of December, and of the end of this unique year. I'll write again in a few weeks. Take care!