The Two Forms of Vision

The retina of the eye permits two forms of vision, two photoreceptors, the rods and cones.

Here is where I am going with this: you are aware of more things than you are perceiving. This has been called “figure and ground” in perception. While you are looking at a figure or object, you are also aware of the ground above, below and around that on which you are focusing. So that if something from the wings of your awareness suddenly flies in your direction, you will likely immediately turn your attention to it.

It is very important to work on becoming more consciously sensitized to the ground of your perceptions, to the peripheries as well as the center of what you are seeing and sensing. Attaining this greater sense of what is surrounding your perceptions has been called “mindfulness.” It is at the heart of meditation of all varieties. You don’t just look at what you are looking at; you work on sensing the silent setting or context of that upon which you are gazing. This can greatly help you to interpret the meaning or intention of what you are seeing.

For example, though you may be tuned into what a person is saying to you, you also need to be aware of their tone of voice, facial expressions and body language. We might be saying one thing, but meaning something else, as in the “I’m just fine,” when we are not.

This awareness has been called our “sixth sense,” or intuition. It also goes by the term “discernment.” We have to work on this all our lives. Things are often not exactly as they seem; people are what they do more than what they say. What persons do not say can be as important to gage where they are as what they actually do say.

It is interesting that among the questions Catholic investigators of purported heavenly visions concerns not the center but the periphery of the visage. They would ask about the feet and hands of the alleged heavenly being. Were they heavenly or bestial? Were the fingernails finely shaped or grotesque?

It is as important to gain greater awareness of the periphery of our inner perceptions as our outer ones. In my work as a counselor, my job was to assist persons to become mindful of thoughts and feelings which they may have missed on their own. Perhaps, for example, they are consciously obsessed with the abuse they suffered from their father. At some point, however, they will also need to face the previously unconscious issue of their mother’s failure to protect them.

As I learned during my own counseling, sometimes the seemingly peripheral is in hidden reality something of real significance, waiting to be discerned and resolved. What your cones do not pick up, your rods just may have.