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| photo via www.thisiscolossal.com |
Life will not, it will never, make sense to your mind.
The secret is to see life from the soul's perspective;
to add to the mind's experience the soul's
wisdom, awareness, and total knowing.
--Neale Donald Walsch
I imagine they came to me like magnets, some
mysterious part of them hearing my call, the magnet within me, the voice in my
heart, drawing them near. And yet, I didn’t know then what it was all about. I
just knew that what I was doing felt right, that it was something I needed to
do.
Inmate generated line-ups weren’t generally permitted in
prison. But still, most were used to breaking rules and doing something that
was supposed to help rehabilitate them seemed like a good excuse. So the men dared
to coagulate by my door, swearing and laughing and talking about things nearly every
other man talks about—their families, their work, their sports teams, their
hopes and yes, sometimes even their dreams. And even so, each one came to me
with something very different from the others. Each one wore his own unique
configuration of color -- his aura.
Most staff would read up on an inmate before they met with
him, preparing themselves as best they could to address the pertinent issues.
Me, on the other hand, I challenged myself to break my own rules, to know nothing
about the inmate I was meeting other than his name. I wanted to let each
of them unfold before me at their own pace, to be seen with fresh eyes, to be
heard, just this once, by someone who had not pre-judged them. And it worked. I saw them and for a brief moment in time I’d like to think they also saw, themselves.
After introducing myself and calling him by name, I cocked
my head to the side and with a soft smile invited him to tell me about himself. Who are you, my heart whispered, what secrets does your soul ache to share?
I stared at his face, my eyes rimming the hard lines of his jaw, the gentle
sweep of his mouth, the darkness under his eyes, the brush of hair on his head.
And as I stared, as my eyes found that blurry space between seeing and fogging
away, his colors began to emerge.
A golden hue, much like the edge of a warm light bulb in the
darkness of night, transformed into blues and greens. Other silhouettes glowed with
tufts of red or swashes of yellow. And still others had a few different colors,
all at the same time. As each man in front of me told me about himself, I was
utterly mesmerized, hushed by their beauty … the beauty of each criminal
sitting before me.
* * *
If you ask someone to look, they turn their head to let
their eyes see. But how many of us take the time to really see, to look beyond
the surface? How many of us even know how to? Do you see the garden but miss the flower? Or look at the
person but miss the depth behind their eyes, the voice of their heart, the colors of their aura? And if so, how do you break that habit? How do you see, truly see, with deeper eyes, with the eyes of your soul?
1. Slow your pace. Find your breath and release it. Relax
into that quiet space inside that feels like the hidden you, that place that
houses your secret, most vulnerable Self. Feel the air upon your face and the
ground beneath your feet. Let your heart rate turn away from adrenaline and
into peace, into the love that you are at your core.
2. Soften your eyes. Stare at something, preferably a blank white wall, (with or without a person in front of it), again, losing yourself inward,
but this time bringing your consciousness fully into your eyes. Imagine you are
about to fall asleep and that all of you has migrated up into your eyes—every bit
of you, beginning behind your eyes.
3. Love.
Seeing an aura isn’t woo-woo, it’s natural. It’s what
happens when you slow yourself down enough, when you soften your eyes enough,
to really see what is before you. And what is before you? Inmate or life mate,
it can only ever be one thing---a soul much like your own, making its way home. Home to Love.
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