Visual Perception Exercise

[Scholar]

The past few days I've been focusing on a visual field exercise while meditating. When you look at something, whatever that is, it is always in the middle of your visual field. When you move your eyes, the next thing you look at is still in the center of your visual field. The center of your visual field never moves, but the image does. Yet, the brain tricks itself into believing that the center moves. It believes that you are looking up and down, or left and right.

So, what I do is basicly focus on that feeling, and try my best to sense the entire image moving through my visual field, instead of my eyes moving in a certain direction. Once you kind of get the grip of it, the visual information will seem flat instead of dimensional. Instead of your sight being a laserbeam that is moving through the room, the entire room will be moving through your visual field.

It gets more difficult when you get closer to the corners of your eyesockets, because your eyebrows, nose etc. signal your brain that your eyes are moving to the "border" of your visual field. But what really is happening is simply the border coming closer to the center of the visual field. So in the end what I try to do is lose the sense of space, as far as my visual perception goes. The movement of the eyes is becoming the movement of the content. I think it's similar to making the sense of the outside world disappear when you close your eyes, but that's something I'm far from being able to do.

I'm not sure if there is any point in doing this, but it's fun and challenging. 

Edited February 4, 2017 by Scholar