Posts Tagged ‘eyesight’
Beholding Divinity in a Weeping Willow Tree
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.”
~ Jonathan Swift
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
“People think that they see, but they don’t.”
~ Henry Moore
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
~ Michelangelo
“True Vision is insight, not eyesight.
Eyesight is mind-sight; insight is soul-sight.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Reality’s essence is Divine luminescence.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see not more.”
~ William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
“People think that they see, but they don’t.”
~ Henry Moore
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
~ Michelangelo
“True Vision is insight, not eyesight.
Eyesight is mind-sight; insight is soul-sight.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Reality’s essence is Divine luminescence.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe’er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see not more.”
~ William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality
Beholding Divinity in a Weeping Willow Tree
Dear Friends,
In early 1980’s I experienced at Wilbur Hot Springs, an unforgettably revelatory experience of perceiving luminescent Divine light streaming in a weeping willow tree. (*See Footnote) I was attending a week-end Board and staff retreat of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), as Board Chairman.
One morning I awakened early before any scheduled meetings, and meditated on a wooded hill above the lodge level. After descending I walked with a silent mind on a nature trail near the lodge. Whereupon, I discovered and crawled into a tiny cave where I again sat in deep meditation for a while. (Later, I learned that cave had long been considered a sacred place by original indigenous people there.)
On emerging from the cave, and while unknowingly still in an ‘altered’ state of awareness, I walked to the bathhouse, removed my clothes, stepped outside, and immersed my body in a large shallow hot springs pond.
While standing alone in the stilled pond with a stilled mind, I gazed at a beautiful weeping willow tree beside the pond on the side furthest from the bath house. Instead of seeing the tree as it appeared during usual waking consciousness, I beheld it marvelously transfigured as ever streaming lines of white light, more beautiful than any imaginable Christmas tree.
Unaware of my exceptional state of consciousness, I kept gazing at the tree in awe. After a while Tara, a CIIS staff member, entered the pond. Then, innocently I addressed her: “Tara, look at the lights in that tree. Aren’t they beautiful?” Puzzled, Tara responded “What lights?”. And immediately the lights disappeared for me, as I was abruptly returned to my usual state of waking ‘un-consciousness’.
But I can never forget the flowing tree lights, nor the insight which they confirmed: That there is much more to our “reality” than meets the eye; that “Reality’s essence is Divine luminescence”.
Later that day, I recounted my experience to Dr. John Broomfield, then CIIS President, who cited me to this similar experience of author Annie Dillard:
“[O]ne day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The lights of the fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”
~ Annie Dillard, A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Like Annie Dillard’s tree vision at Tinker Creek, beholding the transfigured weeping willow at Wilbur Springs was for me an unforgettably inspiring and transformative experience for which I remain ever grateful.
May these and similar stories ever remind us that “Reality’s essence is Divine luminescence”; that we are all Divine beings of light, gradually remembering and co-creating ever more luminous and numinous Earth lives.
And so may it be,
Ron Rattner
Footnote* Other memorable experiences of Divine light, beginning with an epiphany in Yosemite, are recounted elsewhere in these memoirs.
True Vision
“If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is,
infinite.”
~ William Blake
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly.
What is essential, is invisible to the eye.”
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
~ Michelangelo
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.”
~ Jonathan Swift
“Nothing’s impossible for the Invisible.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Perception is a mirror, not a fact.
And what I look on is my state of mind,
reflected outward.”
~ A Course In Miracles
“For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections.”
~ Peace Pilgrim
“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
~ Carl Jung
True Vision
True vision is insight,
Not eyesight.
Eyesight is mind–sight.
Insight is soul-sight.
Eyesight is from mental movement.
Insight is from mental stillness.
Eyesight is then;
Insight is NOW.
Eyesight sees separation;
Insight reveals unity of Reality.
Enlightened vision is –
Eyesight with Insight.
Ron’s audio recitation of True Vision
Ron’s 2020 “True Vision” Epilogue –
Explanation, Dedication and Invocation
Dear Friends,
Ron’s Vision History.
Soon after my 1932 birth, I learned that “20/20” referred to visual acuity; that if you could discern certain eye chart symbols at a distance of twenty feet your visual acuity was deemed “normal”. Never then, nor until very recently, did I ever imagine living until now as an 87 year old octogenarian, when “20/20” also means the first year of the third decade of the 21st century, during an extraordinarily turbulent era of human history.
At age three, an ophthalmologist, testing a misaligned eye, diagnosed me with astigmatism and farsightedness and prescribed thick eyeglasses – which I’ve always needed, but never liked. Gradually, I grudgingly accepted ever stronger lens prescriptions for correction to “20/20” acuity.
But forty five years ago, on New Year’s Eve, 1974-5, at a San Francisco ‘pot luck’ New Year’s Eve party, I had an unprecedented and unforgettable out of body experience (OOB). While lying face down on a bed in a small dark room, “I” floated out of my body and up to the ceiling. And from the ceiling, with my glasses on a bedside table, I beheld my body lying face down on the pillow. For the first time in my life I experienced 20/20 vision without eyeglasses, and without even using my eyes – or maybe my brain. [See https://sillysutras.com/vision-quest-from-eyesight-to-insight-rons-memoirs/ ]
The New Year’s OOB experience soon led to a pivotal rebirth experience at age forty three, which, opened an emotional/intuitive flood-gate closed since childhood – unleashing for the first time in my adult life numerous synchronistic inner and outer experiences which radically changed my beliefs about “reality”, “self-identity” and “vision”. [See https://sillysutras.com/vision-quest-from-eyesight-to-insight-rons-memoirs/ ]
Thereafter, during a ten year post-retirement reclusive period, I continued to philosophically reflect, pray and sometimes write about my newly awakened world-views.
Today’s post and “20/20”epilogue.
Today I’ve published the above brief poem (composed then) titled: “True Vision”, and the foregoing deeply insightful quotations which encapsulate my transformative discovery of “Vision” as “insight, not eyesight”; insight revealing fundamental unity of “Reality” beyond illusory human perception of our supposed separation.
My recent “Happy New Year” message proposed that we join as a global family to envision, imagine and see our precious planet as we wish and intend it to be, rather than accept this extraordinarily turbulent era of human history merely as supposedly separate powerless perceivers of our “reality”.
Consistent with that recommendation, I’m today supplementing the True Vision poem and quotes with this “20/20” epilogue, explaining and dedicating the poem’s insights for resolving our common crises for our common good.
Invocation.
In the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:11-12), Paul observes that “now we see through a glass darkly”, but that some day we shall fully know, as we are fully Known now by the Divine. Now, we view our “reality” through the ‘mirror of the mind’, which imperfectly refracts and reflects the unseen light of Eternal Awareness onto the screen of our human consciousness.
But, we can and shall evolve and transform our mental mirror from opacity to translucency to transparency. And thereby, with ever expanding human consciousness and ever deepening insight, we shall ‘see’ more and more – we shall see what we couldn’t see before.
Thus, with ultimate insight, may we collectively realize that “Reality” is much more ‘than meets the eye’; that beyond this phenomenal world of ever passing supposedly separated appearances is one changeless Reality – One unseen Source and Essence of all appearances, all phenomena, and all ideas: Infinite Potentiality – our Eternal SELF.
And so it shall be!
Ron Rattner
