Exposing Visual Greed
by Irena Castle
WE WANT IT ALL AND WE WANT IT NOW!
While hustling may be the right thing to do in order to achieve more in certain areas of your life, it will not give you the clear seeing you crave.
VISUAL GREED is a common habit that many people have acquired by using their eyes in a way other than how they were designed to work. Visual greed means trying to see too much at once in an effort to provide a full picture faster. It can range from trying to see a full scenery while standing on top of a hill, to taking in a full word in a book you read. In fact, there are methods teaching those who want to read faster to do just that.
Going for breadth while attempting clarity of vision is fundamentally wrong. PRECISION AND SPEED ARE A MUCH BETTER SOLUTION.
To explain, allow me a detour to the anatomy of the eye. The human eye collects visual signals through photoreceptors called the rods and the cones. They are located in the back wall of the inner eye called the retina and their ability to provide their assigned visual function increases with their increased concentration. In short, the rods are responsible for night time vision and for seeing movement. They are dispersed throughout the retina, but their concentration increases in the outer parts of the eye. The cones are responsible for daytime seeing, and for clarity. They are mostly located in the central part of the retina with their highest concentration in the area as small as a tip of a pin called the fovea centralis. That tiny little spot holds up to 200,000 cone cells per millimeter square. Compare that to the immediate area next to it with only about 30,000 cone cells per millimeter square or the near peripheral area of the eye with as few as 1,000 cone cells per the same size area. This high concentration of cones in the fovea centralis is what enables us to distinguish colors and perceive fine details with greatest precision.
Due to the size of the fovea, maximum visual clarity can only be achieved for a very small area at a time. All other areas of our attention are therefore seen as less clear. ATTEMPTING TO DO OTHERWISE WILL CAUSE THE EYES TO STRAIN and overtime may lead to an array of visual deficiencies, including the most common myopia.
So should you settle for narrow vision? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
While the focus area of the eyes is small, the eyes are also equipped with an ability to move from point to point at a very high speed. They do so via what is called the saccadic movement (jumpy movement from point to point) and the smooth pursuit (tracking in between the saccades).
So, INSTEAD OF FIGHTING NATURE, PLAY ALONG.
1) Accept the fact that only a small spot can be seen with absolute clarity and retrain your eyes to do so,
2) Allow the eyes to move quickly from one spot to the next and let the brain connect the images, so that you perceive them all as one.
Letting go of visual greed is one of the principles which, when followed, lead to CLEAR SEEING. Allowing your eyes to focus as designed will also make your world BRIGHTER, MORE COLORFUL, AND DEEPER.
If that sounds like a good proposition, check your other visual habits through this free guide.
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May your eyesight be boundless.
IC [i-see]
