How to See Clearly (Even When Life Feels Blurry)

3 Steps to Sharpen your Insight and Psychological Perception

“If the eyes are the windows to the soul,” the saying goes, then the quality of our perception and insight is how the soul sees itself.

Read that again, then ask yourself:

• Where has my attention been?

• Through what perspective am I seeing this?

• And what does that reveal about the needs of my soul?

Don’t rush to answer. Let these questions simmer and we’ll unpack them together in what follows below.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how psychological perception, the way we interpret meaning, truth, and emotion, is a lot like adjusting a pair of binoculars. My husband and I bird-watch, and every time we pick up our binoculars, we have to re-focus. His settings never work for me, and mine never work for him. But when the image finally sharpens, when the blur gives way to clarity, we both gasp.

That moment, that “aesthetic gasp,” is what the Greeks called aesthesis: not just seeing, but taking in the world as something alive and meaningful. There is an instant when the soul meets the world and recognizes something sagacious in it.

The same thing happens inside of us. When our inner lenses are distorted, everything from our relationships, purpose, even our self-worth, appears foggy or fragmented. Inner work is how we bring those lenses back into focus.

It made me realize how much of life we live through someone else’s focus settings like cultural conditioning, collective expectations, algorithms…and how that blurs the image. It’s the difference between living in color and living in grayscale, or in pixels and fragments.

“Without the numinous and mysterious we can only think of the world as atomic particles, and the human being is reduced, by pragmatics of such.”

— McConeghey, H. Aesthetic Perception

When we allow ourselves to take in the world, with the truest and fullest vision we can set, it becomes sacred again. “Perception is a reflex like breathing, a sensitive repsonse that can change mere events into meaningful experiences by revealing their import.”— McConeghey, H. Aesthetic Perception.

Here is an opportunity to get a clear focus on your soul (inspired by bird-watching):

3 Steps to sharpen your insight and psychological perception ⇩

1. Find your focal point. What are you really looking for?

Psychologically, we’re all looking for something when we “see.” Some of us scan for danger, others for love, validation, or belonging. Becoming aware of what your psyche is searching for changes everything. Your focus can shift from day to day, so take note of your focus for the next week and adjust accordingly.

Try this: 1-3 hours into a new day, take a moment to ask yourself, What am I really looking for today? Safety? Approval? Understanding? The answer reveals where your inner gaze is directed, and where you might be unconsciously seeking clarity, understanding, or healing.

2. Adjusting your lens. What is shaping your perception?

Every experience we’ve had, or external influence that is not ours, leaves a subtle fingerprint on the way we interpret the world. The child who wasn’t heard grows into the adult who sees rejection everywhere. The perfectionist only notices what’s wrong. The headlines show you crisis. The list continues.

List the things that influence you most. Is it a close friend? A favorite news source? The algorithms curating your feed? Or maybe certain memories from the past?

To adjust your inner focus, start by reflecting or journaling on this: Are these influences bringing me clarity, or pulling me further from what I am looking for (the focal point you named in step one)? Then ask, What story am I telling myself about this?

Often, it isn’t the world that’s out of focus, it’s the filter through which we’re looking.

3. Chose how to interact with what you take in.

Once we’re aware of what we’re looking for and how we’re seeing, we get to choose how to meet the moment. This is the essential step of inner-work.

When you begin to see through the soul’s eyes, the world transforms. Colors come to life. Ordinary things shimmer with significance. You start to perceive not just what’s in front of you, but what it’s trying to show you.

This is where the mysterious beauty of life begins to reveal itself. The more you learn to notice and expand your experience of that beauty, the more you nourish and tend to your own spirit.

With love,

Keila Shaheen

🖤 Thanks for reading Shadow Work to Expand Awareness: a space where inner work meets the outer world through shared prompts, writings, and livestream conversations with Dr. Connie Zweig, Ph.D and Keila Shaheen.

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