SELECTED EXCERPTS:

“It is morning. I am frozen with fear. Chills course through my limbs. My body feels as heavy as a ton of lead.... I lie, immobilized, on my vintage 1970's heated waterbed, mummified by my white down comforter. The source of my fear is that I can SEE--a fact that has hit me between the eyes this bright May morning like a two-by-four; I can see clearly now, after four years of blindness and almost a lifetime of varying stages of failing sight. Yet, rather than feeling joy in response to this miracle, I am paralyzed with pain and fear....”

“….The fact that my recovery from blindness was more traumatic than losing my eyesight provides a stark illustration of the role that resistance--and denial--can play in creating and sustaining maladies of all kinds (especially when the process of purposefully denying is learned early in childhood and becomes habituated)…. And the fact that I could not completely heal physically until I was able to heal psychologically and spiritually gives fascinating testament to the inseparable oneness of body, mind, and spirit….”

“…More than four years had passed between the time I lost my sight till the time when the last eye patch was removed. Free to fully see once again, I was like Rip Van Winkle waking from a deep sleep--discovering that much of my life had been in cold storage these past years. Enormous hurdles lay ahead at this juncture as I faced the prospect of tackling daunting and seemingly endless tasks to regain what I had lost personally, professionally, and financially….”

“… I once read that Helen Keller had stated:

The spiritual world offers no difficulty to one who is deaf and blind. Nearly everything in the natural world is as vague, as remote from my senses, as spiritual things seem to the minds of most people.

These words resonated with me. They validated the comfort I found behind my veiled vision, and spoke of the rare joy I had found there.

I found myself reaching each morning for my little purple velvet eye pillow, fragrant with lavender (the one I had bought after my final eye surgery) to keep the day at bay. When daylight came and I awakened with my unconscious still close to the surface, I would keep my eyes covered so the sight of the new day would not intrude. I liked the vague world of my unconscious/subconscious. I did not like the external world around me. It had become safe and cozy in that dim and hazy world of mine….””

“….Not only did my fear of seeing the painful realities of my life that had been minimized during my term of blindness threaten to defeat me once I began to see again, it also went hand-in-hand with my inability to now recognize the ever-present energy--love--that was the very thing that had kept me sane and healthy during my time of darkness….What a paradox; I could see the light when I sat in darkness and was inept with that same ability when my eyes began to once again see clearly….”

“…The deliberate choice to see what is in the service of health and wholeness—no matter what the challenges to be overcome—was, for me, the only viable path out of my predicament. This “no-matter-what” decision is one of the most profound and powerful intentional decisions an individual can make…a decision that paves the way to an internal switch that represents the moment in which determination, courage, and faith step in to escort us out of fear and pain into movement and wonder. This powerful progression will, by necessity, be experienced many times over by anyone committed to this way a life of integrity, growth, health, and expanding consciousness.[1] This book looks at these phenomena, analyzed over more than twenty-five years of accumulated research[2], and describes how they functioned as fundamental elements in pulling myself out of my quandary of whether or not to see….”

[1] Given the caveat that this switch--and the decision that precedes it--are used in the service of the loftiest of goals.

[2] WMST research paper, 1985, University Of Maryland; College Park, Maryland, Marcia E. Rosen, Surviving Addictions, unpublished manuscript (Random House, Inc.); Marcia E. Rosen, Journey Back To Me, unpublished manuscript (Random House, Inc.); Marcia E. Rosen, Exploring Your Dark Side, unpublished manuscript (Random House, Inc.)