When I was 21, I had my first professional job. I was an analytical chemist in an R&D lab for a Japanese company which mainly came up with new flavors of lip balm. I had a car, an apartment, a 401k, and free time. I lived in a quiet Philadelphia suburb behind a Burger King and took long walks in a graveyard. After the chaos of four years of college partying in Los Angeles, my mind was clear and I was ready for some deeper challenges than chromatography.
So I embarked on an experiment to see if I could improve my eyesight. I had worn glasses since I was 13, and couldn’t function without them. But I’d seen enough behind the curtain to suspect that this world is a lot more malleable than we are led to believe, and I wanted to see what I could do.
To accomplish this goal, I did the relevant research. Aldous Huxley’s The Art of Seeing, from 1942. Other resources on the Bates method. Take off your glasses and see by Jacob Liberman. I did all the exercises. I hung eye charts on my walls, and kept logs. I devoted huge parts of my day to trying to sense and relax tiny muscles around my eyes.
But I also used my power of belief and the setting of intention. I told everyone I knew at the beginning of the experiment that I was going to be improving my vision and to mark my words.
I kept my glasses off as much as possible, putting them on only to drive. I tried to relax into that blurry world.
At first I saw small encouraging improvements. Anyone can verify this: keep your glasses off for an hour, relax, especially in good light, and your vision becomes measurably better right away. But it was just small effects like that at first.
Then one day after a few months of this project, I walked into the lab at work and suddenly I could see. I reached for my face to check if I had my glasses on. I did not. I could read all the labels on the lab drawers. Nothing was blurry, everything was clear. I began to sweat heavily in excitement. I had done it. What did it mean? It was a miracle. And if we could do that, what else could we do? People needed to know!
But in this ecstasy a deep loneliness hit me. I realized that there was no one at work who I could tell. My fellow scientists would have dismissed this, even though the improvement was easily measurable. And their dismissal would have felt worse than keeping my secret to myself. So I held my secret. Later I shared it with friends, and some were excited for me.
Next I shared my miracle with my mother. She didn’t believe me. So I showed her that I could read an eye chart to nearly 20/20. She was not impressed. She said that since it is impossible to change your eyes, that what I had done was simply to improve my ‘blur interpretation’ in my mind, and that was why I could now read small things. I looked at her in disbelief. What difference did it make whether I had changed my eyeballs, my face, my brain, or my spirit? Whatever I had done the result was that I could now see clearly, and that felt like a pretty remarkable success no matter where on the stack it had happened. But she was done engaging with that topic.
After a few months of nearly perfect vision, I took a new job as a high school math teacher in a rough neighborhood. The first day of school was pure terror for me. The kids were out of control, starting fights, trying to steal my belongings. There were 30 of them at a time, and I needed to quickly learn all their names and gain verbal control of the situation. In my stress, my vision blurred, and I wanted a buffer between me and the world. I reached for my glasses. I’ve never taken them off since.
I don’t wear my glasses because I no longer believe we can improve our vision on our own. I think it’s likely we can greatly influence many aspects of our physical body, and the physical world as well, if we use all our available powers such as belief, intent, attention, study, practice and self-reflection. I experienced that truth, and I’ll never forget it. But there are many projects in this life, and limited time. I’m a busy person now, and I like the glasses. I can see behind the curtain with or without them.