Good Filter

Use The Appropriate Eye For Seeing

Photo by Braulio Espinoza Sanchez, Pixels.com.

Key Assertions That Help To Summarize This Article:

Distinctions––what is Good (morals and religion) from what is Beautiful (art) from what is True (science) are all fine and good until they go too far, until differentiation become disassociation.

Differentiation is necessary for integration (a process described earlier in our discussion of transcendence) but disassociation can lead to the kind of repression that allowed the Church to prevent Galileo from discussing what he saw through his telescope.

In both science and Modernism, moral considerations of better and worse are replaced with scientific considerations of bigger and smaller.

We have, in effect, different eyes: we use “the eye of the flesh” to see that which we can sense, hold, or feel; we use the “eye of the mind” for mental pictures (images you see only in your mind); and we use the “eye of contemplation” when we ponder significance, moral meanings, and the relative “rightness” or “wrongness” of things, thoughts, or actions.

Modernity relies almost entirely on the “eye of the flesh,” which cannot see significance very well.

Modernity differentiates what is Good (morals and religion) from what is Beautiful (art) from what is True (science). These distinctions were all fine and good until they went too far, until differentiation became disassociation. Differentiation is necessary for integration (a process described earlier in our discussion of transcendence) but disassociation can lead to the kind of repression that allowed the Church to prevent Galileo from discussing what he saw through his telescope.

Where there was once (before Modernity) considerations of quality and quantity, disassociation reduces this wholesome coupling to mere quantity. How significant a thing or action may be is replaced with how costly or big a thing may be.

In both science and Modernism, moral considerations of better and worse are replaced with scientific considerations of bigger and smaller. This replacement occurs in the ways we “see.”

For each of these ways to see we have, in effect, different eyes. We use “the eye of the flesh” to see that which we can sense, hold, or feel; we use the “eye of the mind” for mental pictures (images that you see only in your mind); and we use the “eye of contemplation” when we ponder significance, moral meanings, and the relative “rightness” or “wrongness” of things, thoughts, or actions.

Modernity relies almost entirely on the “eye of the flesh,” which cannot see significance very well. Modernity mainly focuses on magnitude. This limited way of “seeing” works well for empirical science and industrial production but not at all for matters of “rightness” and “wrongness.”

Photo by Erkan Aygordu, Pixels.com.

HumaNatureConnect Activity

If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the Heartwood Path Start-up Protocol found in the Appendix. Then return here to do the remaining portion of this activity:

Using The Appropriate Eye To See

For this activity, learn to use your triple vision. Pick something to view with your physical eyes (the eyes of the flesh). Determine what this thing is and, if possible, what it contains. Now use the eye of the mind to look within yourself to the seat of your reasoning to determine what, in your imagination, the thing you saw with your eye of the flesh could be. Witness the conversation that occurs in the mind about various options. Last, look that the thing as seen with the eye of the flesh (the thing outside, seen monologically––without a dialogue––in the Realm of Exteriority) and the thing as seen by the eye of the mind/reason (the thing inside, seen with a dialogue running in the mind, in the Realm of Interiority) and determine what this thing or mental image ought to be (in the Realm of the Spirit, taking into account More-Than-Individual, More-Than-Human, transpersonal considerations, inspired by The Absolute Spirit). In other words, determine with your eye of contemplation whether the thing and your mental image of it is ”right” or “wrong.” Try to see other objects with these three eyes.