Did you ever notice how things and even people can sometimes appear differently when you are viewing them just off center, out of the corners of your eyes: that is, when your eyes are not directly focused on them?
At first, it may seem simply that: blurred, unfocused eyes, which distort reality.
Or does it somehow grant us another way of viewing things?
For instance, there are electrical lights. Often, when staring, and not making an effort to squint, or narrow the pupils, we can see an aureole of luminosity, a “halo,” or streaming lights around and from them. It’s as if by looking at it a different way we can view an added dimension.
Many are those who find meaning in photographs that in essence do the same: capture a reflection, orb of light, halo, or radiation, sometimes due to droplets of moisture on the lens, sometimes by the simple angle.
When that occurs at a certain poignant moment (of prayer, thought, or reflection), can it be an insight into the way an unseen world works with us?
Might the halo or streams from a light show us how far the electromagnetism actually reaches — offer us a perspective we don’t normal register, confining light, as we do, most of the time, to only the bulb or LED or fluorescent tube itself? [Picture at top, from the Detroit Free Press, “Mysteries or Miracles?“] Many lights, this time of year! Candles are especially prone to interpretations.
The point: when we look askew, in a new way, we often see new things. Perception is perception. Take for instance night: while we can’t see in the dark, many animals can perceive perfectly well. They have a totally different perspective. Just because we can’t see something at night doesn’t mean it isn’t there!
So too the world of spirits.
And so it is that we should not allow ourselves to be “programmed” by the world of surficial physical effects.
A priest once made the point that it’s not always bad to be eccentric — when the definition of “eccentric” is nonconformity (as opposed to wackiness); something just off center.
See around. See beyond. See with the eyes of prayer.
There you have it: prayer: the ultimate tool of perception.
[picture above from Pictorem; below from Reddit]
