Do you remember that phrase “Look me in the eyes when I’m talking to you”? Or “When you talk to someone, look them in the eyes”? Did your parents say something similar to you when you were a kid? I remember these phrases because I only heard them when I didn’t want to participate in the conversation. Naturally, looking someone in the eyes is the ‘right’ thing to do.
It seems that there is something magical about that act and it stirs an emotional (and sometimes physical) response when eye contact is made with another person. Have you ever played the game of gazing into someone else’s eyes while intentionally trying to open your heart? The response can be immediate and overwhelming to most people.
The challenge I hold for you is to give that gift to as many people as you can. That’s right, when you have a conversation with someone, look them in the eyes and let the energy of venerability out. But don’t just do this with anyone you meet. Make a conscious effort to perform this act with people – you want to bond with!
You see, from my experiences, when you actively eye gaze, the energy that’s exchanged creates a bond between the two people. If you’re not careful, you may end up creating a bond with someone that you don’t necessarily want to be with.
Poking around the web a little, I’ve come to learn that there are now – speed dating eye gazing type parties. As a matter of fact, it’s been featured on TV. The Eye Gazing Parties website makes out the experience like this:
What are Eye Gazing Parties? The eyes are the windows to the soul, so it’s a lot easier to have a mesmerizing conversation with someone after you’ve spent two minutes looking into his or her eyes. That is the simple idea behind Eye Gazing Parties. Banal chit-chat about employment status, the location of your apartment, or where you’re from is not a great way to spark a captivating connection with an alluring new person. Eye contact is.
The problem, as I see it, is that when you line up with a bunch of strangers you end up ‘bonding’ with a bunch of people before you determine who the person is based upon their actions. You see, a person is a reflection of their actions. If you observe for a little while, you’ll get a good picture of the character of the person before you ever make eye contact. You can observe the word choices, the why they present themselves, or even the people that they choose to be around. It’s pretty easy to ‘weed out’ those which you know you will not be harmonious with before you attempt any more at bonding.
And it really is bonding. The best example that I can give is the bond that a mother makes with her baby. There’s time during those first months where eye gazing naturally occurs. In my opinion, it’s critical that both the mother and father spend time eye gazing with the child while it’s still an infant. When that eye contact is made, a lifelong bond is developed that nothing can get in the way of.
Because the eyes are the window to the soul, if eye gazing time is spent between the parent and infant, the parent to intuitively know what the child wants and needs when it ‘speaks out’.
Here is a personal report from an Eye Grazing Meditation that hints towards the energy exchange that occurs. It’s from the Integration Training website:
Relaxing the eyes can have a profound effect on how we see the world and conversely when we are stressed our vision narrows. When people’s eyes meet something special happens and I spent some time exploring this last night with a group in Hove that practice eye gazing meditation. People from a range of spiritual traditions have practiced eye gazing meditation from Rumi to tantric yogis, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. I thought that 2.5 hours looking into people’s eyes would be boring but far form it. The first time I did it I was surprised with how difficult gazing into people’s eyes was, and it took some will power to counter my social conditioning. I felt various weird waves of energy in my body and strong emotions surfacing. This apparently is common and the meditation can be used as a form of emotional catharsis and cleansing. Aside from the therapeutic aspect the main other benefit seems to be connection with your partner. At times you are not sure who is having a particular emotion and there is a sense of joining with or “dissolving” into the other…try it, it’s one of those experiential things.
If you haven’t shared this type of experience with someone, it might be time to give it a try.
The Ezine Articles website sums up the process like this:
This eye gazing can result in a profoundly moving experience of emotional, energetic and spiritual connection between the lovers, especially if you are already at a peak of sexual arousal during lovemaking when you do it. However, don’t save this practice only as an accompaniment to lovemaking.
Take 2 minutes to send and receive love in this way every day you are together for the rest of your lives.
Some couples go weeks or months at a time without making this simple, yet profound connection. Making this connection every day cumulatively can transform your relationship and sustain you on a secure platform of love through any of life’s trials and tribulations.
We have found this simple practice to be the quickest surest and easiest way to open our hearts to feel love. Most of the times we look at each other in this way, when our hearts crack open, tears come to our eyes as the intense emotional feelings cause us to cry with happiness. Make no mistake, you don’t get your heart open once and for all and keep it that way. Your heart will close repeatedly, thus it must be re-opened over and over and over again. This simple practice will open your heart almost instantly.
How to Look
Gazing into each other’s eyes is not a staring contest. You will look in a particular way.
Have you ever been in a place with an absence of light? Near where we live there are some caves. Once inside these caves, there is a complete absence of light. Without light you can’t see anything. Just closing your eyelids can give you some sense of this experience, especially if you are in a dark room during the evening.
Close your eyes now. Now open your eyes, and notice how the light comes in. You don’t have to do anything for the light to come in. This is important to notice. Next, notice how you look at things, usually including your lover. You grab things with your eyes. Grabbing things means you isolate each thing and visually separate each thing from all other things. This is how you identify what something is. You must isolate it from everything else, and then you can name it, and when you name it you know it. You have grabbed it.
Looking with your eyes in this way is useful and necessary, but it is not the only way to look. Looking in this way actually sustains the perception (really an illusion) that everything is separate from everything else. This is dualistic consciousness. Dualism simply means separating one thing from another thing.
The most import thing to take away from the above description is that the process is not just looking into someone’s eyes. It requires that you actually drop the emotional barriers that you use to protect yourself from intimately experiencing life. Because the experience is so emotional, most people intentionally withhold their energy from others so as to not build the emotional bond with just anyone.
I don’t really blame them, but wonder what it would be like if more people consciously gave into sharing energy through eye contact.
Here is a quote that I found on the Healing Through Eye Gazing website:
“When eye contact between two people is initiated and maintained, an invisible energetic circuit is established between the two participants, dissolving the barriers that ordinarily separate them from each other, drawing them ever closer into a shared awareness of union.” Will Johnson*
I love this quote of a quote. I’ve already put Will Johnson’s book on my Amazon wishlist:
That same site goes on to mention:
In the face of the safe and loving contact that eye gazing facilitates emotional pain held within the energy field and physical body will at some point surface for healing. As it does the experiencer has the choice to really feel and release the pain and in doing so clear and unblock chakras allowing more life force to flow. Since the movement of energy is often pleasurable when we surrender to it the healing process can be very enjoyable.
It’s interesting that this site references the chakras for the book that I’ve been reading, Hands of Light, goes into some pretty intense details with regards to the chakras and the associated energy. I found it particularly interesting where Barbara Ann Brennan states:
… Light enters both through the third eye and through the physical eyes and flows along the optic nerves as shown in Figure 18-6. [A diagram that shows the path light travels from the eyes to Pineal gland. It also has a path for light to travel from the ‘third eye’ location to the pineal gland.] This light is of higher vibration than visible light and can pass through skin. The light passes through the optic chiasm and goes round the pituitary, which sits right behind the optic chiasm. The light then takes two paths. One path goes to the occipitual lobes for normal vision, and the other into the thalamus for oculomotor control. It has been my observation that by certain meditative and breathing techniques, one can cause the pituitary to start vibrating and radiating gold auric light (or rose light if the person is in love).
One has to wonder that if the eyes can take in light, might they also be able to expose light? In other words, work in reverse?
It would seem that empirical evidence shows that this may be the case. At least, to those that practice eye gazing for there is an energy that seems to be exchanged between people when you look into their eyes and they willingly ‘open’ themselves to the experience.
Or, might it be that when two people look into each other’s eyes, the act harmonizes, or ‘starts vibrating’ the pineal glands in the two people so as for them to experience it’s affects?
It’s a fascinating process that I wish I had more time to write about. I think I’d rather simply spend my time actually eye gazing. I encourage you to put more effort into it and then observe how it makes you feel. If there is some intuitive information that you acquire in the process, feel free to let me know.
The world is full of a bunch of amazing little things. This is one that’s so powerful and free!
