An Eye for the Right Life

Wednesday, January 17 ~ Thousand Oaks, California

I'm sitting in the car, rain streaking down the windshield. The building in front of me houses my optometrist (chosen largely because he calls his clinic "Agape"). I've just completed an eye checkup that has left me stunned...and pleased.

Some ten years ago when I was living in Toronto, I embarked on a personal campaign to improve my physical vision. With one eye conventionally uncorrectable and the other severely myopic, I was determined to take off my glasses and see, to borrow the title of optometrist Jacob Liberman's powerful primer on vision improvement (Take Off Your Glasses and See).

Over the years, first by working with Toronto vision educator Elizabeth Abraham and later on my own, I have steadily improved my vision and been able to weaken my prescription.

Last year, for the first time in nearly a decade, my eyes weakened. And this past year, having experienced frequent eye strain, I expected to need another strengthening of my prescription.

Although disappointed, I wasn't surprised. I've spent so much time behind a wheel or in front of a computer screen over the past two years that my eyes could easily have suffered. Besides, it's been quite some time since I maintained a regular regime of eye exercises.

So imagine my surprise when the doctor said, "Your eye strain isn't because you're glasses are too weak. It's because they're too strong."

They had improved!

But how?

As I sit in the car pondering that question, I'm reminded of the philosophies I try to live and model. Call them Mark David's 10 Rules for Living:

Rule #1: There are no rules
Rule #2: What works today may not work tomorrow
Rule #3: Listen to your heart; it speaks with the voice of God
Rules #4: Treat yourself as you would your best friend: with love and respect
Rule #5: It's not what you do, it's how you live
Rule #6: It's not how often you meditate, it's whether you live your life as a meditation
Rule #7: It's not what you shed, it's what you embrace
Rule #8: It's not how hard you push, it's how fully you surrender
Rule #9: It's not about being perfect, it's about being human
Rule #10: There are no rules

Through all the stresses and strains of the past two years, I have done little exercise, taken few supplements and eaten pretty much anything -- a function of life on the road. Yet I'm healthier than I've been in a long time. I even look better (and younger), according to many.

I'm not advocating a couch-potato, fast-food lifestyle. What I am saying is that activity, meditation and diet -- what you do -- will always be secondary to what you are.

If, ultimately, everything is vibration, then it's the vibration you live that is the ultimate arbiter of your health. The highest vibration is the one closest to your divinity, your passion, your light...the one that loves your humanity while living your divinity.

I haven't done it perfectly, but it's not about being perfect. It's about being human.

Drawing by Mark David Gerson: "Freeing the Voice of Your Vision"