Visioning with the Eye of the Heart

   Which, if any, image calls to the “eye of the heart?” One of the opportunities I find in photography is to notice how certain visuals have special appeal and persist in their command. Of the many photos I’ve taken in recent years, I’ve selected 85 or so for my screensaver folder, so that they appear in random order upon my computer screen, often showing next to the page I’m typing or viewing. 

    Perhaps more than any other, when the one shown above appears, my breath most often holds and tells me to allow my being to still and to receive the peace it offers. Maybe it’s the backdrop field of diffused green, sometimes said to be the color of the heart. Or it might be from the butterflies, as they frequently transport an image for the soul. And the purple-pink flowering plant, the native American medicinal plant echinacea, has constituted “ the top-selling herbal medicine in health food stores in the United States.” Of course, without any such confirmation, without exercising cognitive analysis, the “eye of the heart” knows the value of this manifestation of beauty, whether or not the human accesses such knowing.

            As discussed in previous blogs, The Eye of the Heart, is the title of one of Frithjof Schuon’s books and the first essay in the volume. A favorite passage, tells of this point of “seeing”:

“Thus the heart lies as if between two visions of God, one outward and indirect and the other inward and relatively direct, and from this point of view the heart may be assigned a double role and a double meaning: firstly, it is the center of the individual as such and represents his fundamental limitation—his ‘hardness,’ as the Scriptures say—and thereby all his secondary limitations; secondly, it is the center of the individual insofar as he is mysteriously connected to his transcendent Principle: the heart is then identified with the Intellect, with the Eye that sees God—and that consequently ‘is’ God—and by which God sees man…” (p. 7; Footnote 12 explores the meaning of “Intellect.”)

          The Bible and the Qur’an each offer over 100 scriptural references to the human heart. The “hardness,” which many of them attend, along with simply the awesome prospect of even looking toward God, suggests how it is that a person might easily pass through the lifespan with little if any benefit from this treasure gifted in the heart. As with any beloved, it’s important to pay attention and thus increase our realization of the subtle beauties. These hints of the Beloved, signaled by the heart, while in a sense are “free,” yet they also demand respect and love, or they may well disappear, their deep value never becoming known.

         Again, a kind of teaching metaphor for the activity of the eye of the heart is readily available through photography. How does the image produced through the framing, focusing, and editing open our eyes to the many manifestations of beauty? Frequently, the initial viewing of a photo just taken stirs disappointment with a sense that the photograph doesn’t reflect the experience. But I’m also finding that when I play with resources available through my camera and in editing, I’m able to feel further into the treasure of beauty. Is an artistic rendition real? The search of value to me is toward the Truth that moves further than the eye of science and that believes beyond into the vision suggested by the eye of the heart.