I was glancing at someone’s facebook feed with a friend yesterday and saw a familiar face.
“There’s that woman I’m in love with!”
My friend was like, “What?”
(We both know I fall pretty far on the hetero side of the sexuality spectrum.)
So, let me back up and tell the story. The Universe brought together some circumstances that put me in a relationship class a few years back. I say it that way because I did not think I wanted or needed a relationship class. I was at the end of my marriage and exploring some new relationships, but not really serious about anything. I was serious about getting out into my local community and, somehow, this is what presented itself.
The final day of the class just happened to land on my wedding anniversary. I was happy to be out of my marriage, but it was still a bit of a wistful day for me. I decided to go to the class and make the best of it.
One of the final practices was to stare into the eyes of a partner for a long time. I believe it was at least 30 minutes. Some people were in the class with their partners. Some weren’t. I got paired up with another single lady for the exercise.
I don’t remember the details of the time we eye gazed. But I remember feeling totally in love with her at the end of it. Not like, I-want-to-make-out-with-you in love. But just LOVE. I didn’t really know her. But I was feeling like… We should hang out! We should be friends! We might have even said we would. This was back in 2011. Five years ago. I don’t think I’ve seen her again. Maybe once in passing. (Small town.) But the feeling of just LOVING her was SO STRONG. Neither one of us followed up on being real in-person friends. I never felt bad about it. I never “missed” her. But if I ever think of her or see her picture on Facebook, I’m just like, “OH! I LOVE her!” and I’m flooded with such good feelings. Even just remembering it now, I feel those good feelings.
Now, we might think… Ok, that’s interesting. That happened. What a fluke. Well. Here’s the funny thing. Through more Universal machinations, I ended up REPEATING the SAME class! I still had no partner, and at the final class, I was paired up with a man whose partner didn’t make it that night. Now, I knew I was about to fall in love and felt a bit awkward about it this time. I knew his partner and liked her. I had no attraction to him. What was gonna happen? Eek! Well, here goes nothing.
Same thing happened.
It didn’t make me want to be with him. It didn’t make me think we should be together. I didn’t see him as a potential partner. It didn’t make me even care if I talked to him ever again. But, I still just felt so much love when I thought of him or saw him. And this one is funny in a different way, because I DO tend to see him around town. In fact, we ended up getting divorced on the SAME day at the same time. So funny. Total rebonding of our “love”. I never hang out with this guy. But I do have really good feelings about him and wish him the best.
I’m sure there are lots of studies that have been done on eyegazing. I’m guessing this is not new information to a lot of people. But maybe to some it is. I’m not researching it intellectually at the moment. Just sharing what happened to me experientially. And it’s POWERFUL. It really makes me feel we need MORE of this in our lives and culture and leadership.
What do I feel about it? I feel like we see the essence of a person when we bring our presence to each other through the eye gaze. I feel we see that we are one. We bond. We see the Utter Innocence of the Being in front of us. The Truth of our Utter Connection becomes manifest in those moments. It’s an agape love. Universal, spiritual love. It doesn’t need to manifest romantically, although I imagine practicing it in romantic relationship is a brilliant idea. (Why haven’t I tried this yet? Hmmmm. Good question.)
Actually, that’s a good point. Because I had this idea and so did another woman on my facebook feed. Let’s “use” this to get people to fall in love with us! I don’t believe it “works” to get someone to fall in love with you in that way. It’s a deeper human and spiritual connection, which is always brilliant. But if you already do have that romantic love, I believe it can strengthen your ability to relate from a place of Divine Love and Wisdom. Romantic relationships tend to be the place where most of us get triggered and tripped up the most. So bringing in more compassion, empathy, and divinity is definitely a good idea.
In general, this practice is a little bit taboo in our culture. We don’t just stare into peoples’ eyes for a long time. It makes us uncomfortable. We are not used to that much or that kind of connection. Why do we think that is? Almost anything that is taboo is likely to bring us deeply into our power as divine beings having a spiritual experience. These taboos exist because our current culture is one that is set up to enslave the many and empower the very few. But that is changing. This is a simple but extremely powerful way we can cooperate with that change. Let’s break these taboos and look at each other more. Let’s take the power of connection back. It is so needed.
What if we started all meetings with some eye gazing? What if, in really tense times, we took 15-30 minutes to just stare silently into each others’ eyes before even trying to talk? Imagine how the presidential debates might have been different with this practice. Business meetings. Political discussions. Romantic talks. I predict that resolution would come so much easier. Maybe instantly. There is just a feeling of wanting to be of service to that other person because we see there is no other person.
Please share your experience of eye gazing in the comments. I’d love to hear more. And if you haven’t tried it, try it and report back! Bless.
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