Close Your Eyes

Some of life’s most profound lessons have come to me not in shouts, but in whispers.

One starry evening, I sat cross-legged on damp earth in a Native American drum circle. The glow of the center fire illumined the toothless mouth of the woman perched on a foldable lawn chair to my right. She was leaning down toward me, lips flapping, announcing something, but with the crackling and snapping of pine logs, I could not hear her, even though all instruments were at a lull for the moment. I craned my ear up toward the elder and she began again, this time close in my ear.

“Close your eyes.” I did.

“What do you see?” she asked. I opened them and was about to tell her, but she interrupted gently.

“Look again.” I relaxed back down, no longer close to her face, and again I closed my eyes.

“What you see with your eyes shut is what counts,” she whispered more audibly this time. I smiled as I sat for several moments watching behind my lids what counted.

The woman told me afterward that was a lesson from Lame Deer, a Sioux medicine man. I have not forgotten it. I still hear her whispering in my ear, “What you see with your eyes shut is what counts.” Try it. Close your eyes, and . . .

. . . Be enlightened!  ~ M