“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ~ Aristotle
As obvious as it may sound, eye contact – as the primary way living beings communicate, alongside body language and the spoken word – is more important than you might think. The difference is, unlike body language and the spoken word, that eye contact can be something we forget to do.
Let’s go one step further and hold the lack of eye contact (amongst a group of city commuters for example) as one of the biggest missing links when it comes to making a heart and soul connection… this one simple change in our habits may be the key to rediscovering our dialogue with the whole, and revisiting the days of unlimited energy and positive vibes we had as children.
So let’s start at the beginning. Before I had children I completely took it for granted the importance of eye contact. But knowing what I know now, I can see how the lack of eye contact we got, as babies especially, may be accountable for a huge amount of depression, misinterpretation of the other and general disconnect in our adult lives. In short, eye contact is how we see into each other’s hearts.
Take the newly born child. Say, for example the mother experienced a particularly traumatic birth, or that she wasn’t being supported fully or was living in a threatening or stressful environment, she would most likely fall prey to Post Natal Depression and the amount of eye contact she treated her new baby to would understandably plummet.
In sensing his mother’s distraction, the baby would crave this soul connection and find other ways of getting her attention, feeling ignored and starved of something perhaps more important than milk, it would cry more, become fussy… it could entirely effect its subsequent connection with his mother for the rest of his childhood.
When we look into a baby’s, animals or other person’s eyes, and ‘lock on’, we tap in to an inevitable and sacred connection with each other. This connection then triggers a surge of love from the heart, or perhaps we might look deep into another’s eyes and truly understand them for the first time where once we detested them and interpreted all of their actions as coming from a place of hate or jealousy.
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but how long has it been since you last remembered this truism and practiced such a powerful soul-to-soul connection? As is the greeting Namaste; looking into one another’s eyes in soulful eye contact we recognize and respect the light in another as it is in us. It’s an incredibly healing and enlightening thing to do.
So what happens to derail us from this practice? When our trust is broken or we are deeply hurt, avoiding one another’s gaze can be a natural but damaging habit to cling to. Looking at the space above other’s heads, at the floor, over their shoulder, even slightly to the right of their pupils or at their mouth can be handy ways to rob yourself of that heart connection.
It makes people distrust you. If they can’t see who you really are, and that you’re guarding something, they will take that as a sign you’re not to be trusted.
Perhaps you are introverted and find eye-contact draining. Or perhaps you’re ashamed of who you really are and don’t want others to see into your soul – do you feel like you’re inferior or secretly ‘bad’ from past mistakes or even past life mistakes that are still swimming around in your subconscious and lowering your self worth.
Perhaps you are resisting life and are afraid that if you make soul connections then that’ll invite a whole flood of challenges. Perhaps you are even a little on the lazy side and are allowing a partner or friend to make all your soul connections for you… but still, it comes from a place of fear.
Projecting a false self forward only hardens our hearts. Like the baby who wants more than milk our hearts need to be fed and avoiding eye contact can be one of the most damaging and cruel ways to punish yourself.
Perhaps, even if you are unaware of it, your mother through no fault of her own didn’t feed you enough of this soul connection when you were an infant. Was she ill or unhappy or working and distracted… is it simply a habit to override?
Others may interpret this ‘selfish’ guarding of your light in any number of different ways, but however they do so you can guarantee that most will punish you for it. We are inter-dependent and eye contact is the easiest way that we ‘share’ our energy and good vibes. A person could spend their whole lifetimes making this one simple mistake in their interactions – do you want to be that person?
Getting to the root of the cause can be frightening, but it’s time to rectify it and start enjoying your life again. Walking around in a bubble does no-one any favours and especially not YOU.
Melt the ice around yourself and rise above the ego’s niggling acid drops of doubt. Let down the draw-bridge and begin to find joy again. What’s the worst that could happen?
Image Source