Listening With Your Eyes: A Form of Contemplative Meditation and Prayer

I had posted this on an old blog but it has since been requested to be viewed. I thought it would be okay to share it here as it is such an intergral part of myself, especially the part of being an illustator.

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On the retreat I was on in November 2016 I created a meditation and shared with the rest of the people on retreat. We were asked to share what is one thing we wanted to get out of this retreat and being at the mountain. I said I wanted to listen more with my eyes.

If you know me, you would not be surprised by this statement. I like mixing up the senses when I write. I like to think you can listen with your eyes, see how something sounds, and feel how something smells. In this case however, all I meant was to be more intentionally observant.

Noticing how light trickles, fades, and illuminates the space around me is something I wish I could constantly absorb. Noticing how shadows flicker, swallow, and soak in all the surfaces. Noticing how the layers of color are constantly changing when the light comes and goes. Noticing that nothing is really the colors we think they are at first glance.

In order for me to paint or draw something from life, these are all things I need to notice, but I forget to appreciate just how beautiful it is. While I was on retreat I began to remember how beautiful everything truly is again - it soothed me, until I realized that maybe the people around me didn't notice these things I have noticed them. I sat in a rocking chair staring at a group of trees for about 30 minutes thinking of how I would walk through the steps I go through when I intentionally focus on something, looking at something, particularly something I would like to draw, or simply something I am just admiring.

Generally I don't think of them as steps, but I broke them down, and eventually put a simple version of it on paper that I shared with everyone. The funny thing is that many of the steps are similar to what I had learning in my freshman drawing classes at my university. The first few weeks we focused on the skeletal aspect of everything - gestural drawing, how something is placed or moves. Later we filled the skeleton with muscle, skin, clothes, etc. We focused on lines and how they can create everything. The next few weeks we focused on light and shadow and how those alone reveal the objects of people, or whatever. We'd draw on a mid-tone paper and use only black charcoal and white conte crayon, and leave the mid-tones for the paper to fill up. Next few weeks we'd focus on colors, and how those, in layers and layers, make up the shadows and mid-tones, and highlights, and how the warm colors were often highlights and shadows were often cool colors, but not necessarily. Thanks to my wonderful drawing professor, Bob, I really began to look at everything differently. I learned a lot in his class, he was one of my favorite professors.

Somebody asked me after I shared my meditation "Is this how you see the world? Wow." My answer to that... not quite. I try to see the world in this way, but it's only when I am doing it intentionally. I mean, I do notice all the different aspects of what's in front of me, but usually not all at once, and I don't really think about it unless I want to, especially when it comes to focusing on what colors are where.

The point of this meditation is to focus on how beautiful everything is, including how beautiful you are. Later I can write a more detailed version, but this is what I shared at the retreat. It's meant to be read out loud slowly and calmly, as most meditations should be, haha. I should also add that some suggestions in the meditation can be easily changed depending on where the meditaiton is taking place. I recommend doing the meditation where there is some sunlight, but it is fine to do it inside with a different light as well.

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1. Close your eyes. Think about listening with your eyes. Turn off your other senses, except for listening to my voice. Slowly shut everything out. Think about where you are and the things around you. Nature, man-made, whichever. When you open your eyes, you are going to pick an object to focus on. It can be anything. A tree outside. One leaf. A book sticking out of a shelf. An article of clothing someone else is wearing like a shoe or a sweater.

2. Open your eyes. Do not be overwhelmed with how many things there are to choose from. Pick something you feel drawn to. Pick something that you want to listen to (with your eyes), hear its visual voice.

3. Once you have chosen your object, continue to look at it. Gaze. Admire it, and wonder what makes this object so beautiful and intriguing to you. Why did it catch your eye? Does it move? Look at it, every inch of it.

4. Your object may be big or small, complicated or simple, but there are still many parts to your object. A tree has a trunk, brances, leaves, roots, bark. A leaf has two sides, veins, unique edges. A sweater has sleeves, a collar, a pattern, wrinkles. Even a knot in the wood has details. What are the pieces that make up your object?

5. How do you see your object? How is the light touching it? Look how the light touches each part of your object. Is it delicate? Is it intense? Does your object cast a shadow? Where do the shadows and light meet in your object? Notice how the contrasting converstaion between the ligth and the dark create the shape of your object.

5.5. Does the light create warmth in your object? Do the shadows make it cool? Or does the light make everything cool and the shadows give warmth?

6. Close your eyes again, and picture your object. You see it clearly: lights, darks, warm, cool, but now, think about what colors your object contains. Do you remember?

Imagine there are only 3 colors available to you. Red, blue, and yellow, the primary colors, the colors that create every other color. You can have warm reds, cooler reds, cool blues, warmer blues, warm and cool yellows. Now imagine your object again. Where are these colors?

7. Open your eyes. Look at your object again. Look at each part of your object, one at a time, in the lights, in the darks, in the warm parts, in the cool parts. Where are the reds in your object? Is there a little? A lot? Where are the blues? Do they share the same space as the red, creating a violet? Or is there a little yellow fading under some blue, creating a rich green? Maybe there are all three colors sharing a space, creating a brown. Is there more red in the brown, or blue? Are the colors opaque or translucent? Think about how they layer over top one another create new colors as the light and shadow breathe in your object. Keep looking at your object, admiring its complexity in its colors, in the light and shadows, in its shape and size.

8. Extend your visibility. Notice what your object is touching or interacting with. Maybe it's sitting on a table. Maybe someone is sitting on it, or wearing it. Notice how it touches this, and how it touches your object. What colors are reflecting into each object, person, thing? If you picked somebody's jeans, you may notice the shadows they cast on the couch cushion reflects the color of the jeans, or the color along the jeans are reflecting the color of the couch cushion. The table a mug is sitting on may answer why the mug has the colors it has.

Often when painting, an artist will select a palette of only a few colors, like the ones I have given you. It is because every object, every thing, has a bit of a reflection of its surrounding colors. They are all connected by light and shadow, and now you have the power to notice these little details, how beautiful they all are.

9. Close your eyes again. Forget about your object. You can contemplate it later. Now you are going to imagine looking at yourself, without a mirror. You are pretending you are someone else looking at you. Imagine you are, for example, me, looking at you, just like we did at our objects. Imagine someone else gazing, and admiring, how beautiful the ligth touches your hair, the colors of your skin, the shadows your eyelashes cast when you blink. You are noticing every part of you that makes you, you, your hands, your nose, your tummy, your toes! Every hair, every scar, every thing. You see your clothes and how they are reflecting you and how you are reflecting your clothes.

10. Now you may imagine looking in the mirror. Look closely. Just as you imagined painting an object, so did God when he imagined you. God carefully planned out every part of you, and he made you in His image. Just like you gazing at the object, so does God with us. He looks at you not for what He has created, but what you have grown to be. He knows how your colors have blended and changed. How your shape has shifted. How your lights and darks have balanced. He looks at you and He smiles with a loving tenderness that changes everything from cool to warm. Keep looking in the mirror. Remember to notice how beautiful creation is, and remember that it includes you. :)

And you may open your eyes when you feel like you have finished the meditation.

The End!

I hope later to write something more detailed, but this is good for now.