The Inner Eye

Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes how pupil size is an excellent indicator of mental state. When you are alert or stressed, your pupils dilate. When you relax, your pupils constrict. The response is automatic and beyond conscious control. Therefore Pupillometry has been used to investigate such mental conditions as sleepiness, racial bias, moral judgment, depression. 

I didn't warn you before, but this blog connects to your computer camera so I can check your responses to what you are reading. There, your pupils dilated because you thought I was checking you out. 

Just teasing. I'm not peeking. There, your pupils constricted again because the threat disappeared. 

No, I'm really not watching. You can stay in your pajamas. 

Just kidding. Relax. But you could comb your hair. It's sticking up at the back.

I imagine, though I can't actually see you, that your pupils are busy dilating and constricting in response to hints that I am watching you. We each have an inner eye scanning the inner reality which we inhabit, you and I. When self meets other, each inner eye is busy sorting out what the other is thinking and feeling, weighing group membership, affinity, trust, privilege and obligations. I posit a sort of pupil of the inner eye that is more or less expansive depending on the level of threat and trust. When we feel threatened, we are more vigilant, defensive, exclusive and selfish. When we feel safe, we are more loving, expansive, inclusive, responsible and generous. (A sort of backwards constriction-dilation from that of the outer eye, but this is just a story.)

Here is our dilemma. Gaia is in trouble because we have been rather selfish, and that means we are threatened by collapse of the biosphere. It looks really bad and getting worse, which makes us more vigilant, defensive, exclusive and selfish, putting us in a spiral of destruction feeding destruction. 

But beautiful, fragile Gaia needs us to act as if we were safe and secure, to be more loving, trusting, expansive, inclusive, responsible and generous so that she can recover from our willful self-absorption.  It's the right thing to do. We can do it together. I trust you and you can trust me.

You're looking a little weary. You should get some sleep.
Just pulling your leg. Can't see a thing.