Soft Eyes and an Open Heart

Soft Eyes and an Open Heart — open-heartedness requires an empty heart — a difficult concept for Westerners to grasp. Soft eyes produce astounding clarity. Let’s see how this works as a dance of intimacy.

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I was sit­ting with a client after Body­work, and she was ask­ing ques­tions. One con­cerned her shoul­ders — why she left our ses­sions relaxed and loose, and then would find her­self tight­ened up.

I not­ed that she was sit­ting light­ly in the chair, arms and legs open, shoul­ders com­fort­ably neutral. 

I asked her to feel her body, and mem­o­rize what relaxed felt like. Then, to notice just one step away from relaxed, stop, wig­gle, and loosen.

She looked at me, astonished.

“I could take what I learn here, and use it at home!” 

I laughed. Of course. This would be the point. 

She got off track when she went up into her head, told her­self sto­ries, tight­ened up, yet missed the tight­en­ing. When she noticed (final­ly) the pain (as opposed to notic­ing the tight­ness before it turns into pain), she told her­self sto­ries as opposed to doing some­thing different.

And all that is required is letting go — of the stories and the tightness.

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Where I get caught is with “wanting to help.”

I get all invest­ed in my sto­ries — I see where peo­ple want to get to, and I get into tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for oth­ers’ dra­ma. I get invest­ed in doing more work, expend­ing more effort, than the oth­er per­son. And as soon as I go there, my heart clos­es, and I feel cold and shut down.

Ben Wong and Jock McK­een wrote sev­er­al great books, includ­ing The Illu­mi­nat­ed Heart. Here’s a quote that speaks to this:

“You suc­cumb to the trap of hope, which is the flip side of despair. In your hope is a pre­sump­tion that things could be, should be, dif­fer­ent. As we have often dis­cussed, this is the one basic sin… the sin of pre­sump­tion. We can­not make life dif­fer­ent. Hope tries to do that.” (The Illu­mi­nat­ed Heart. 44–5)

This has been a key under­stand­ing for me… one I con­tin­ue to work on. I find ease when I let go — when I emp­ty myself:

By staying put in my own “self,” emptying myself of my desire to “help” — by seeing the other person with an open heart and soft eyes.

It’s all about emptiness

As I was read­ing “The Illu­mi­nat­ed Heart,” the East­ern sec­tion, I was struck by this: in acupunc­ture the­o­ry, the yin organs are recep­tive. The heart (a yin organ) func­tions best if emp­ty.

West­ern minds, ever lit­er­al, strug­gle here.

Especially over the thought of an empty heart

[In Chi­nese thought…] “The shen are life spir­its that reside in the heart. The heart itself is emp­ty and is the spe­cial place where the sub­tle spir­its can come and go freely. But the heart must be open or the shen will not stay.” (p. 305)

In both Indi­an and Chi­nese med­i­cine, the Heart is at the cen­tre of things. 

For the Chi­nese, the heart is the locus of both thought and feel­ing. It’s the medi­a­tion point between heav­en­ly (yang) and earth­ly (yin) energies. 

In Indi­an med­i­cine, it is the Mid­dle Chakra (1,2,3 heart,5,6,7).

So, I’m won­der­ing: if a heart is full, might we say it’s full of thoughts and / or feel­ings? And being full, there is no room for any­thing else. 

If the thoughts and feel­ings are not clung to, the heart process­es them, and returns to an open, and emp­ty state.

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But… people fear emptiness, and so they “attach.” Physically, people tighten their chest ligaments

Why? To lock in feelings (so they don’t escape — nothing worse than a loose feeling!) and keep out “threats.”

The chest con­tracts, the shoul­ders roll forward. 

Many folk, when asked about their feel­ings, add a lay­er of pro­tec­tion by cross­ing their arms over their chest. In a sense, the phys­i­cal action serves to keep the heart full.

It’s no coincidence that, when we are in “emotional overwhelm,” we describe it as, “My heart is full.” 

Almost no one in the West wants to utter the words,
“My heart is empty.”

This is because we fear empti­ness, as it’s way too close to anni­hi­la­tion.

The exis­ten­tial­ists made this point repeat­ed­ly, by insist­ing that angst had every­thing to do with fear­ing mean­ing­less­ness and death. 

Most have learned to “stuff” the “empti­ness / alone­ness / void-ness” feel­ing (typ­i­cal­ly felt in the chest/ heart region.) The stuff­ing, again, is done by using our old friends, thoughts and feel­ings.

If I focus on “stuff,” or “stuff-ing,” I can avoid the void.

I think most people “live” with a feeling of despair.

Believe it or not, most find despair prefer­able to actu­al­ly liv­ing, which requires embrac­ing every­thing — empti­ness and full­ness, life and death. 

With­out judge­ment or preference!

“When we do not stand forth [be our­selves — through open­ness, hon­esty, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty — WCA], we fade into the obliv­ion of non­be­ing. We are still alive in the bio­log­i­cal sense, but not present, not dis­tinct­ly stand­ing forth, not exist­ing; this has been called “the death in life” and describes a zom­bie-like sim­u­lacrum of a vital being.” (p. 149)

I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that the only way to be present (to stand forth) is to make peace with every­thing — includ­ing emptiness.

Abandoned bodies litter the highway of the Pathless Path, and abandoning yourself makes it damn difficult (Impossible!) to stay present for the dance of life.

Let’s look at soft eyes.

Some years ago, I wrote an e‑zine post called “Soft Eyes.” The plot revolved around going to see “The Best Lit­tle Whore­house in Texas” at a local din­ner the­atre, and end­ing up with a table that abutted the stage. 

As in, the actors feet were even with the top of our heads, and when we looked up, we were star­ing at their legs, and crotch­es. If we real­ly craned our necks, we could see their faces.

The take-away was that being that close meant we were focussed too much on details like how well the scant­i­ly-clad actress­es had shaved, and how ripped and torn their cos­tumes were.

We needed distance: in the article, I wrote:

Much like our seats at the the­atre. Noth­ing we did from those seats could change any­thing. We made jokes, we rubbed our necks, we looked away. And every time we looked back, we saw more. Razor nicks. Band-Aids. Vari­cose veins. Bruis­es. With each new rev­e­la­tion, our atten­tion was drawn away from the enjoy­ment of the play, and into, “I won­der what we’ll see next?” ”I’m sure it will be worse!”

The only way we could have fixed the sit­u­a­tion was to get up and move or get up and leave. 

The fix was less detail and more dis­tance. See­ing the big­ger pic­ture, as opposed to drilling down on the details.

Soft eyes accomplish this.

Anoth­er client, like many, had been “trained from birth” to stuff her emo­tions. She was quite suc­cess­ful, in a pro­fes­sion where stuff­ing emo­tions was a necessity. 

She stuffed her stuff by telling long, con­vo­lut­ed sto­ries, (fill­ing her heart with sto­ries) while tight­en­ing her body. Not only that, but she had zeroed in on one or two “big issues” as “the real prob­lem.” (Too much detail, and too close a perspective.)

I was heartened (wink) to notice that, when she uncrossed her body, she was able to express some emotion.

We decid­ed to work on con­nec­tion through Bodywork. 

After some breath­ing, she let her legs and arms open, and I helped her stretch her neck, in a sense length­en­ing her into her full height. 

Her breath­ing deep­ened and sound­ed bliss­ful, deep, and even. 

Her body began to trem­ble. Her shoul­ders dropped back to the pad, and in that instant, her quite wet eyes popped open, and locked on to mine. 

This soft-eyed gaze is a marker that the stories have, for the moment, dissolved.

Her heart was emp­ty (of her sto­ries), her body was open and unde­fend­ed, her throat was res­o­nant with sound, and her eyes were soft. At that moment, noth­ing was needed. 

If either of us had suc­cumbed to the need to “fill” the empti­ness — with sto­ries, expla­na­tions, with tight­ness or resis­tance — the moment would have snapped away, and we would have detached, becom­ing closed and impenetrable. 

There is no intimacy without openness.

An open heart is an emp­ty heart, always ready to dance, to dis­cov­er, to meet, AND to let go. Not to cling, but to let go. Not to detach, but to let go.

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