Looking and seeing

I REMEMBER an old song, happily revived in a movie some years ago, that has a line that struck me while I was watching the film. The line was: “I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.”

Of course, the song had a beautiful, haunting melody. That, in itself, was
enough to enthrall me, a hopeless romantic, especially in my younger years. But the line resurrected my curiosity in probing the difference between looking and seeing.

Both actions involve our eyes. But I think there’s a big difference between
looking and seeing. Looking is the more active and intentional act. While seeing is the more passive and receptive act.

Looking uses the eyes as its door of exit, projecting what is inside a person’s mind and heart. It gives meaning and color to what one sees. Like the mouth spoken of in the gospel—“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”—the eyes used in looking practically reveal what’s inside us.

Seeing uses the eyes as its entrance door, apprehending things around and
eliciting instinctive reactions in our inner senses. It discerns qualities like shape, size, color, position and posture crucial for us to start to know and relate things.

It’s good that we learn to distinguish between the two so that we later on would know how to put them together. We may separate them from time to time, for some reasons, but in the end, they go together. As I understand it, the process looks like we first see things, then
we
look at them, then we see them again in a different light. The first seeing is an entirely sensible act. When we start to look, we apply our intelligence to what we see. That’s when we see things differently now.

Again as I understand it, the process is a continuing cycle that can either be an upward spiral toward our development and maturity, or a downward spiral to our regression and perversity.

Thus, a great sense of responsibility has to infuse our seeing and looking. We just cannot be complacent about this duty, simply allowing our instincts and emotions to rule over them. Our intelligence, then our faith, has to guide them. Nothing less than our dignity is at stake here.

I remember that in my teen years, someone close to me advised me to avoid
looking at certain things that I might see. He talked to me about developing a custody of the eyes, which later on developed into a custody of the heart.

I understood the advice, and was mightily thankful for it because it helped
me cruise safely those tricky and turbulent adolescent years. It was not easy, but I managed to survive, thanks be to God.

To a large extent, it’s skills like this, knowing how to distinguish and relate looking and seeing, that help us to maintain purity of eyes and purity of heart, crucial in seeing God, as the beatitude affirms:

“Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” (Mt. 5,8). And again: “Blessed are your eyes, because they see…” (Mt 13,16)

The proper use of our eyes in the endless cycle of looking and seeing is indispensable if we want to immerse ourselves ultimately in God while still in this world.

With our eyes, we should not just be confined to the physical and natural world. With our eyes, we can enter the world of faith and love, of spiritual and supernatural realities. A living connection is then made between our senses and our soul.

This is actually what those mature Christian souls, the contemplatives, enjoy. These people may look like us, and yet they see things very differently. They can see God in everything.

Even the ugliest things our biological eyes see can occasion the presence and mercy of God when seen with the developed eyes of faith and burning love of God.

We should try to arrive at this condition of our eyes. When you have another eye check with your ophthalmologist, try to check your spiritual vision also.