Happy New Year, my Love Posse! Welcome to the Miracle 20’s!

The mantra I’m rocking this year is “2020 is Perfect Vision”, so if you’re ready to stop stumbling around in the dark of your life, falling over all of the obstacles you’ve put into your own path, and allowing fear to keep you stuck in one place because you can’t see where you’re going – join me in ripping off those blinders and getting your head out of where the light don’t shine.

20/20 vision is defined by the optometrical world as a measurement of visual clarity and acuity, rather then straight-up perfect vision – meaning there is actually better vision than 20/20. But let’s not pick the ant sh*t out of the pepper and let eye math get in the way of a good metaphor. 20/20 is the standard to which vision is corrected in the world of form, by glasses or contact lenses or surgery. So, for the purpose of our discussion, 2020 is Perfect Vision in the sense that we are opening to having our vision corrected by Spirit in order to see what is truly there with absolute clarity, and not have our sight obscured in any way.

After having my own vision issues in the body off and on for my entire life in this world, and considering that it is 2020, I decided that this is the year for me to really – ahem –  look at the symbolism of it. It is a way of choosing to use what I experience with the body’s eyes to help myself in fact NOT see with the body’s eyes. As it says in lesson 27 of the Workbook of A Course in Miracles: “Above all else I want to see.”

So, in brief, my story is that I have had vision issues with the body’s eyes since childhood. I had a “wandering eye”,  and surgeries when I was 7 and 9 years old. I was prescribed glasses in first grade, and I hated wearing them so I often just couldn’t really see clearly throughout a lot of my pre-adolescent life. I was also self-conscious about the fact that because of my eye condition, when I would look at someone, it appeared to them that I was looking beyond them – it was hard to maintain eye contact.

When I was 15 I got contact lenses, and my life changed. I had freedom to see differently than I ever had.

That feeling expanded again 20 years later when I had laser surgery. The first time I woke up in the morning and could actually see felt like the biggest miracle ever.

In recent years, though, my sight in one eye has significantly deteriorated, and I also got to the point where I needed reading glasses to see almost anything close-up. It was a very insecure feeling not to be able to read if I didn’t have them. God forbid I accidentally use hair remover as styling cream or mistake superglue for lip gloss.

God knows how long I would have just stayed in that situation. Fortunately, Spirit staged an intervention for me. When I moved to Maine I had to get a new driver’s license, and I was pretty sureI would not pass the vision test. So I finally went to an eye doctor for the first time in 7 years.

Wow. Obviously on a mission straight from the angels, this beautiful, amazing, enthusiastic, sparkling ball of blazing light Optometrist came beaming into the examining room and announced,  “There is absolutely nothing to worry about, everything is wonderful, and we are going to help you see!”

Word, Bro – can I get an Amen?

This Dr. prescribed a single “reader” contact for just one eye. Just like that. It was so easy. In and out in 1 hour and BOOM! It is f*cking awesome, and I can now see to drive, to read labels, study my Course, avoid poisoning myself (same thing) and  everything in between.

I know it is no accident that this all happened just before the year 2020 began. So I wanted to explore what it all meant from a spiritual perspective.

I see my vision problems as a projection onto the body – as A Course in Miracles teaches us that all illness and disorder is – even as the body itself and the world are projections. It’s like a person in a movie having a dream that they are dreaming. Like illusion twice removed. Or dreaming to the 3rd power. Or as the dude says in The Princess Bride, “A dweem wifin a dweem.”

So I have become willing to look with Spirit at this projection as symbolic of my fear of seeing. And looking with Spirit is the key, because looking with the ego is not actually going to allow us to really see anything except guilt.

I have been focusing on the ways in which this resistance sabotages me – the two most significant being procrastination – always wanting to do everything later, and denial – somehow thinking that things will just go away if I don’t deal with them.

Anybody? Ok, I just saw a bunch of hands go up.

If we go with the underlying belief that we are all harboring unconscious guilt because we believe that we have separated from God, then we can see that our chronic self-sabotaging behaviors are a means of punishing ourselves – which is what the ego advises us to do to avoid God’s retaliation for rejecting Him. Which of course, we never did and could never do even if we wanted to. You can’t separate from the stuff you are made of. But the ego is banking on us not knowing that, and feeling guilty, and listening to it’s admonishment – which is something along the line of, “You are a guilty bastard. You separated from God, you rejected Him, you actually pretty much tried to kill Him. And boy, is He pissed off, and He’s going to retaliate – and it’s going to be worse than death. Maybe if you punish yourself in as many ways as possible He will go easier on you. But I doubt it.”

Or something like that.

If you think about how many ways we get ourselves into situations that we experience as painful, they seem endless. That’s because the ego counts on us remaining distracted and despairing over our unconscious guilt and fearing God’s retribution, rather than actually considering the improbability of Perfect Love somehow also being capable of hatred, vengeance, and punishment. In the ego’s thought system, where we make God over in our own image, He would be retaliative, vengeful and attacking. We have to project Him that way, since that is how we regard our brothers and thus ourselves.

So, the only way we are going to get out of blindly continuing to  crash into the walls of self-sabotage is to stop believing that we are guilty and deserving of punishment, and we do that through developing Perfect Vision.

Perfect Vision is ultimately seeing ourselves as we truly are, working from two perspectives.

 

The first is having the willingness to look clearly with Spirit at the ways in which the ego mind undermines us, sabotages us, and advises us to make choices that are unconscious and lead to anxiety and anger at ourselves, which then gets projected outward in all of the various forms it takes.

This is also known as dealing with our shit.

I have been in hiding from and afraid to face a lot of things – resulting in denial and procrastination – which often then bring about a more painful outcome or consequence than if I just dealt with my shit in the moment it appears to be happening.

This pattern of internal conflict and struggle –  over choosing to do what will really make me feel good as opposed to what the ego is telling me  – has been a monkey on my back for as long as I have memory. It’s the ego mind whispering in one ear, “Don’t do that, you’re too tired, you can’t afford it, you don’t have time, it will take too long, you’re too overwhelmed, it will be painful you won’t be able to do it…” or conversely, “You should totally do that, don’t deprive yourself, you deserve that, you need to buy, have, experience, or be that; who cares if it’s not responsible – you can figure out how to pay for it / resolve it / deal with it later / tomorrow.”  But tomorrow comes and I’m not doing that. I’m either guilty or in denial, and either way I’m not dealing with my shit.

Seeing with Perfect Vision is not being afraid to look with Spirit at how our belief that we are separate is causing our sight to be distorted, and choosing instead to have it restored to clarity.

And how do we do that?

This brings us to the other perspective from which we work toward Perfect Vision – rocking the forgiveness practice. If we are holding anyone or anything – including finances, debt, the IRS – in judgment or guilt, we are keeping ourselves there as well and thus not seeing the Truth in either of us. Like the jailer who has to stand right outside the cell, guarding the inmate – both are in prison.

You  cannot have an attack thought about a bro and not have one about yourself. They are a package deal.

Which simply means that whenever we allow ourselves to judge, criticize, condemn, resent, ridicule, find fault with, blame, shame, play the victim, or otherwise send a bro on a guilt-trip, we cannot avoid packing up all our baggage and boarding that bus right behind them. And as we all know, the guilt-trip bus is one-way (meaning it does not take us home) the wheels are guaranteed to come off of it, and it’s navigation system takes us right over the Cliffs of Insanity and  into the Pit of Despair.

So, Perfect Vision means everybody off the bus.  It means seeing your brother and thus yourself as completely innocent. Your brother is the mirror in which you see your own image, and the only thing that fogs up the reflection of gorgeous pure light that you are is your refusal to forgive your bro and yourself for whatever you are insisting on keeping either of you guilty of.

Having Perfect Vision is about seeing the truth of the dream of this world and forgiving everyone and everything that appears to happen in it for the illusion that it is. Seeing that our ego minds have set it all up as a game that we always lose, a house of mirrors we never get out of, a gamble that never pays off.

It is seeing the ways in which the ego operates in our lives, and asking to see it differently. It is refusing to keep looking through the body’s eyes, and being willing to have your vision corrected. It’s making the decision to choose a different teacher. One Who won’t fail us.

So, I invite you to join me in this New Year endeavor – to challenge yourself to have Perfect Vision in 2020.

 

To be willing to look with Spirit at what has been clouding your sight. What are you in denial about – how are you keeping yourself in the dark? Where do you sabotage yourself? How are you not dealing with your shit? Where are your blind spots? In what ways are you allowing yourself to remain nearsighted? Who are you unwilling to forgive? What do you know you would feel so relieved to look at, and deal with, but you are too afraid of what would happen as a result?

We have the choice in electing which way to see anything – with the crystal clear, loving sight of Spirit or the blurry, fearful, tunnel-vision of the ego. One way leads out of the maze of self-limitation to clarity, the other keeps us groping blindly down one dead-end after another.

“Vision is freely given to those who ask to see.” T-20.VIII.2:10

2020 is the year. Perfect Vision.

Let’s do this thing.

If you find that this blog has called forth in you a willingness to see, yay you! I’d love to hear about it in the comments below. I adore them, and I read every one.

I SEE you, and you are truly a magnificent vision to behold.

Love,Kelly

Rev Kelly Russell,

Transformational Life Coach, Psychotherapist & Teacher of A Course in Miracles