The world “goes dark” for a fraction of a second approximately 15 times per minute. That’s 21,600 times per day. Blithely, we call it “blinking.” Curious, is it not, how dogmatically we overlook the symbolic shutter built into our face?
Time to turn “eyelid denial” into eyelid dharma.
Subliminal Crying
We see through a thin layer of water– ruled by the sign of Cancer. Our mechanism of perception must be bathed in “subliminal crying” lest it shrivel from Darwinian dryness (lower octave Capricorn). Too many Cancer tears, on the other hand, and we see through the blur of personal attachment and reactivity (lower octave Cancer).
Clearly, we are here to achieve a “wet eye/dry eye” balance as symbolized by the Cancer/Capricorn polarity. Vulnerable, open-eyed attending to others must be balanced with closed-eyed individuation and attention to the more impersonal duties of love.
No blink, no life
But enough of this empathy and individuation. The eye is a war zone.
Allergens are constantly bombarding, clouding and irritating our vision and these invisible intruders must be relentlessly cleared away, lest we develop an infection which, minus blinking, would quickly turn into blindness and eventual death.
That’s right: no blink, no life.
Without regular doses of world-eclipsing, the entire spectacle of separation turns into blinding specks that irritate our spiritual eye. Mind settles into a “normalized flinch” as we barricade our hearts and lose all sense of spiritual community and belonging.
Canceled Netflix subscription
Blinking, then, isn’t just for our eyes. Brainwave analysis tells us that blinking provides short mental “naps from the world” that allow the mind to relax and refocus its attention, without which we would become psychologically fragmented and overwhelmed.
The world’s evidence of separation, it seems, must flicker (perceptually die and and be reborn) in order to rinse the stories from our eyes so that we can refocus on the here and now from the perspective of a more naked and storyless awareness.
Said another way: each blink is a canceled Netflix subscription; a drama subconsciously released so awareness can sit more peacefully in its cranial “chair.”
Conscious blinking: a meditative micro-practice
What happens when we unsubscribe consciously? Answer: meditation.
Conscious blinking is a soundbite version of sitting practice. Not everyone has time to sit down and formally meditate, but everyone has time to eclipse the world, slowly and lucidly, for a few seconds (accompanied, perhaps, by a few breaths and a prayer.)
Now we can see why “eyelid dharma” is so willfully dismissed and unexamined. Every day, our face is riddled with thousands of unconsciously aborted meditations. Our numbly inhabited body has turned us into a time-tethered automaton. It’s humiliating.
Conscious blinking is a meditative micro-practice that gives death and rebirth a front row seat in our work-a-day life. The question is, are we ego-forgiving enough to get started?
Hunter Reynolds, Oct 2024
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