Recently, this wave of thought has been in my mind that could be a gift. I quite cannot really recur where I got this idea but I guess it may be coming from the advance yoga materials and deep meditation programmes I have exposed myself to. ‘’the gift of silence’’ seems very common a phrase to use in all of the settings. Time without number I resist this thoughts of the experience of blindness; for if blindness were really a gift in real time, I would have to acknowledge and accept in my reality.
Wait a minute! Could there be any way that blindness is a dark, paradoxical gift? Does it offer any sense of serenity of mind and pureness of thought or perhaps vision into the invisible realm? This indeed is a strange gift. It is broken and it breaks those who eat of it because they may have to live with it the rest of their lives. As long as you have this bread with you and his cloak around you, you live a very uneasy life.
If you are given a gift there is no question of repayment. Of course there is no need for paying back but the reception of a gift places one in a relationship with the giver in which an exchange of gifts is courteous and appropriate.
But if blindness is a gift what could be appropriate as exchange for it?
What could I possibly give that would match the numinous and the brilliantly destructive qualities of blindness?
How long do I have to be blind before my dreams begin to lose colour?
The people I knew before I began blind have faces but the ones I have met afterwards have no faces. Another strange feature of not knowing what people look like is the effect this has upon reported speech.
As though I were blind I am beginning to learn more and more about the amazing power of sound and the voice in the human person. I find that all emotion which would normally be expressed in the face is there in the voice; the tiredness, angry, the suppressed excitement and so on. I am beginning to take solace in this gift and become the best I can ever be.
People like Cobams Asuquo gives me strength and new hope when I hear of how much he is of a blessing to his sphere of contact even though he is blind.
The philosopher Brentano did a lot of his creative works well just after he lost his sight, and he attributed this to his blindness. It seem your sense of vision and focal power is magnified when blind.
Should I then think of myself as graced with the sight I have?
If blindness is a gift, it really is not one I would wish on any, because I would not want to receive it myself. A gift you cannot help receiving is rather a strange one.
I suppose I must be grateful for the sense of sight and more that I have.
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