Rumi’s quote “Close both eyes to see with the other eye,” is helping me realize that our two outward-looking eyes distort reality and are deceptive, unless they are connected to “the other eye,” also called “the third eye,” “the soul’s eye” or “the eye of the heart.” Our two physical eyes divide our world and ourselves into halves—good versus evil—and don’t see the whole truth about who we are.: imperfectly human and perfectly divine. They overlook that we are one collective body and that our spiritual eye, “the eye of the heart” lives in us and has the power to repair and unify what our two eyes divide.
The story of Adam and Eve and their two sons Cain and Abel illustrates well that spiritual blindness reigns when we don’t see “with the other eye.” Eve blamed “the snake” for tempting her to taste the fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” and Adam blamed her for tempting him. It seems that, instead of taking responsibility for their actions, they felt ashamed and feared punishment—lacking faith in a loving, forgiving God. For, why else did they need to reassign blame.
Whenever we blame other people or parts of self to evade uncomfortable feelings such as shame and fear, we personify our evil inclinations and divide our collective body into innocent/worthy and guilty/unworthy people and parts of self. We can then no longer see that we harm ourselves when we harm others. To avoid being seduced and dominated by eyes that divide—the eyes of the snake—we need to cultivate spiritual eyesight.
By looking inward, we discover that “the eye of the heart” transforms shame and fear and the human tendency to blame somebody else for these uncomfortable feelings, because it sees our divinity and loves and forgives our imperfect humanity. It’s the eye that restores our sense of integrity and spiritual wholeness as soon as we take responsibility for our actions and receive forgiveness. It’s the eye that helps us see that we are in the world, not of the world.
C.G. Jung said, “Who looks out dreams and who looks in awakes.” We must “close both eyes” and stop dreaming to see Nature’s invisible and indivisible soul—our divinity—in ourselves and in each other. Without spiritual eyesight, our collective shadow will destroy us. It’s our way of seeing—our spiritual blindness—that needs to be defeated, not “other people” and/or parts of self we learned to disown and reject.
Cain lacked spiritual eyesight when he killed his brother Abel. We lack spiritual eyesight when we blame Cain and forget that he was raised by spiritually blind parents.
We are collectively responsible for the collective darkness that is acted out in our world. Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel are archetypes that typify “collective feeling and thought patterns” that permeate and condition human behavior. We have continued to allow these archetypes to act through us but they are not who we are. We don’t need to repeat lines and enact roles that were written for them.
When nothing makes sense and the world seems unbearably dark and divisive, cover your weary, judgmental eyes with your hands and take however many cleansing breaths you need to silence your desire to blame when you feel shame, fear, or guilt. Invite “the soul’s eye” to open and guide you back to the light. You can help heal and unify our divided collective body by singing or reciting this Soulful Relating chant:
“Our Spirit repairs what our ignorance tears.”
.