BEING SEEN

My wife, Myla, and I sometimes do an exercise with people who come to our mindful parenting workshops that involves remembering back to a moment in your childhood when you felt completely seen and accepted for who you were by an adult, not necessarily a parent, and dwelling in the feeling tone and images conjured up by the memory.

Alternatively, if no such memories of being seen in childhood arise when invited, you are invited to notice, if they arise instead, moments in which you felt unseen, disregarded, not at all accepted for who you were by an adult in your life.

It is amazing how quickly and how vividly moments of being seen and fully accepted arise for us in memory when invited in in the safety of such a gathering. Stories emerge of quiet moments digging in the dirt as a child with one’s grandmother, or of a parent simply holding one’s hand while gazing into a river, or of someone dropping an egg on the floor on purpose after you had done so by accident, just so you wouldn’t feel alone or ashamed. These memories arise spontaneously, often without having ever been consciously recalled before. They have been here with us our whole life, never forgotten, for we are not likely to forget, even as children, moments of feeling completely seen and accepted.

Most of the time such moments are without words. They often unfold in silence, in a parallel play of doing together and being together wordlessly. Perhaps there is merely the exchange of a glance or a gaze, a smile or a sense of being held or hugged or your hand taken and held. But you know in that moment that you are seen and known and felt, and nothing, nothing in the world, feels better, puts you more at ease and sets the world aright, puts you more at peace. Even if there is only one such memory in us, we carry it forever. We never forget it. It is in there. It is in here, because it meant so much, revealed so much, honored so much. It was more of a gift than we could consciously know. But intuitively, we knew. The body knew. The heart knew. And we knew non-conceptually. And in the knowing, we were moved, and are moved to this day by the memory.

It is also amazing how few such memories any of us have, and how many of us have no such memories. Instead, there may be recollections of moments in which we felt distinctly unseen, unaccepted, even shamed and ridiculed for being as we were.

The message from such an exercise for parents is, of course, that every moment with our children is an opportunity for us to see our children as they are and to accept them fully at any and every age. If such moments of being seen were so important for us as children that we have never forgotten them, even if they were extremely rare or singular, then why not be mindful of the healing power of such quiet presence as can come from seeing your children at least in some moments beyond your expectations for them, beyond your fears, and your judgments, and even your hopes. These moments can be fleeting, but if inhabited and embraced, they are deep nourishment, an oxygen line of lovingkindness straight into the heart of the other.

So our regard (from the French regarder, to look) is itself a worthy object of attention, to be held in awareness and the consequences of it seen, felt, and known. For it is not just seeing that is important. There is also its reciprocal, being seen. And if that is true for each of us, it is true for all of us, for any and every other.

Seeing and being seen complete a mysterious circuit of reciprocity, a reciprocity of presence that Thich Nhat Hanh calls “interbeing.” That presence holds us and reassures us and lets us know that our inclination to be who we actually are and to show ourselves in our fullness is a healthy impulse, because who we actually are has been seen, recognized, and accepted, our core sovereignty-of-being acknowledged, embraced.

All this is part of the reciprocity of seeing when seeing is true seeing. When the veils of our ideas and opinions thin enough so we can see and know things as they are rather than staying stuck in how we desire them to be or not to be, our vision becomes benign, tranquil, peaceful, healing. And it is felt by others as such, instantly. It is felt, it is known, and it feels very very good.

It is not just children and other people who know when they are being looked at and can feel instantly the quality and intent of a gaze. Animals know it too, and sense how it is that we are seeing them, with what qualities of mind and heart, whether in fear or in gladness. And women, of course, know and have always known the ominous, depersonalizing, objectifying, sometimes predatory aggression of a certain male gaze unsoftened by caring and by an honoring of the sovereignty of the other.

Some ancient native traditions believe that the world feels our seeing, and sees us right back, even the trees and the bushes, even the rocks. And certainly, if you have ever spent a night alone in the rain forest or the woods, you will know that the quality of your seeing and of your being is felt and known by Abram’s “more than human world.” You will sense that you are definitely being seen and known for what you really are, if not exactly how you normally think of yourself, and that whether you are comfortable with it or not, you are an intimate part of this one animate and sensuous world.

Only the garden was always marvelous. No one had cared for it for a very long time, and it had gone back to seed and wildflowers. Its beauty was in a subtlety only careful watching could perceive.

GIOIA TIMPANELLI, Sometimes the Soul

There they were, dignified, invisible,

Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,

In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,

And the bird called, in response to

The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,

And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses

Had the look of flowers that are looked at.

T. S. ELIOT, “Burnt Norton,” Four Quartets