The relaxation of balance

Around the equinox, when day and night are equally important, the known and the unknown come together and the boundaries between these two spaces are tenuous.

Clearly, the evenings spent together take on greater importance, a form of rest sets in… it is no longer the time to be restless, but to put some breathing space into existing spaces. This phase of the year calls for taking stock… not to evaluate, judge or draw conclusions… but to give weight to what has been achieved, to what is there before our eyes.

This is the season to give presence with the same gentleness that is offered to us in the undergrowth when we look for mushrooms and chestnuts… quiet attention!

The human specificity of sight

Our eyes see, that’s a fact… and this sense is of primary importance to our species, which privileges it over the others. Many of our ‘human’ psychic functions are related to it.

In particular, we have a capacity to focus our attention that seems to be particularly well developed, from which stems the possibility of prioritising information, classifying it, attributing a relative importance to it and from there, eventually, judging it… and it so happens that our eye has the singularity in the animal world of possessing a « fovea »: a more sensitive central zone that allows us to point our gaze, to look with precision and therefore to decipher space in all of its detail.

This capacity for precision of the gaze can make us powerful… but also hard! Keeping the possibility of looking in an open, defocused way requires a real discipline! What meditation or practices centred on the body allow… provided that we really practice it, without which our oriented, judging, categorising, hierarchical mind soon takes over.

Benevolence and the archetype of the watchman

The balance between focus and openness is like that autumn equinox.

A balanced gaze gives a benevolent presence… that’s why we call this archetype « the Watcher ». Basically a presence that sees without judging, that sets boundaries that do not enclose but define a space in which life can unfold and the unknown can emerge. It is like a teacher who trusts that children are meant to learn and that their appetite for knowledge will naturally come in a safe space.

The watchman thus protects through his ability to see accurately to let into the space only what is good for life.

The frame and freedom

The watchman is like the immensity of the void that inhabits the cosmos: a void that exists because there are stars to contain it, because there are atomic and molecular structures to define it.

We know that between everything that is manifested, there is, in the void, a gigantic potential energy… at least 2/3 of the total energy of the universe is not manifested… it’s gigantic… and it’s there, at the edge of the known.

This is certainly why the equinox is celebrated everywhere: a singular tipping point between order and unmanifested… a place, certainly, where we can be received in the totality of what we are and where we can receive from the great reservoir of unmanifested what we are still missing…

At every moment, it is this dance between order and contingency that is at work in nature, and we know little about how these spaces communicate. Balance is a framework that opens up possibilities instead of closing them off.

As the great shamanic free dance teacher Gabrielle Roth (the 5 rhythms) said, « Do you have the discipline to be a free spirit?

Pathologies of the eyes and sight

For lack of a clear, or clearly benevolent, framework, many of us have been straining our eyes from an early age to find valid reference points for our own survival. Few of us have confidence in the framework that has been proposed to us and the framework in general… we know how much this very word awakens various reactions.

A child needs a safe framework to grow up and so does every adult individual… so we can fight against it or become fanatical about it… but until peace is found, our eyes are not at rest.

The great variety of visual disorders is certainly a reflection of the different possible positions towards the framework… hyper tension, blurred, loss of reference points in the short term, or in the long term, abandonment…

The message of the Watcher

« What is your relationship with the framework?

« What framework do you need to feel safe and to give the best of yourself?

« What would you need to feel at peace?

Nicolas BERNARD

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)