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Blindness: My Greatest Gift

Eddie Lee, interviewed by Lynn Kidd

 

Lynn: Today we have a really interesting topic: seeing with the eyes of the heart, no longer looking out but looking in. Our guest is Eddie Lee from Jacksonville, Florida. Just so everyone knows, Eddie is blind. And he is going to give us a little bit of a history on what happened. But first I have two lines to start out with:

And now we begin to see with the eyes of our heart. We are no longer looking out but looking in. . . . Within the embrace our sight clears and what we see is known rather than understood. (C:20.8)

Eddie, take it away.

EDDIE: We really do have what I call eyes of the heart. And when we look in instead of looking out is when we truly do know because we’re no longer using the mind, we’re using the heart with the mind. I’d like to share how this has become so important to me.

Ten years ago I lost my eyesight to a rare genetic form of glaucoma. Needless to say I was depressed. I could no longer put toothpaste on a toothbrush. I couldn’t spread mayonnaise on a piece of bread. By Christmas of that year I was absolutely lost.

I had originally found A Course in Miracles two decades before that and had been introduced to A Course of Love, but even with those Course materials I was still depressed. It was Christmas time, two days before my birthday, when I just began bawling, tears just rolling down my face. I thought my life was over.

Then I remember distinctly hearing the voice for love speak to me from deep within. The first thing heard was, “Go to blind school.” Okay, and ultimately I did.

But the second thing that I heard that night was that my life was not over, it was just beginning. That was profound. I’d had to leave work—I was a professor—and I just didn’t know what I was going to do. But there was comfort in the voice and I didn’t question it.

I knew how important forgiveness work was, but I heard that voice for love say to me, “You haven’t forgiven your eyesight for disappearing. Why are you resisting forgiving that?” And at that point I was bawling because I realized I was holding a resentment against my own eyes and even against my genetics.

Well, it was in forgiving my eyesight and in going to blind school that I realized I didn’t have to look out, I had to turn within and then I could see more clearly than I had ever seen before. There was a knowing. Please understand the difference between comprehending what you see out there versus knowing from within. There really are no words to describe it. It just is. I can even say that when I’m up and about there can be physical objects in my way that I don’t know about, but I can know of them from within. I know it in here so I can then follow the internal guidance to navigate around them.

Sometimes people stand in absolute amazement. “How did you know that was there?” I don’t say I can see it because that’s not how I know. I can feel it, yeah, I feel it with the heart. That’s the difference. Intellectual understanding is just thought. But with the heart there’s a feeling, and with that is a knowing.

These feelings open up whole new hallways and doorways of things that I had no idea existed.

But it’s all within me. This has been a blessing in disguise.

LYNN: Maybe say a little more about this communication, this inner experience of the feelings and this new heart-to-heart way of communication. Does it come through images?

EDDIE: We’re so used to communicating through language, yet there is a deeper level of communicating and that is from heart to heart. I know in A Course in Miracles it says that our minds are joined, that all minds are joined. We also must allow our hearts to join. Then we are in true communication, the language of the heart. There are no words, it is all feeling, but from the feeling pops up these images within the mind. And from the image I can—um, there’s no other way to put it—I can read the person. But not like psychic reading, it’s reading heart to heart.

There is no misunderstanding as there could be from mind to mind. There is no conflict because there is no misunderstanding. It’s true communication. It’s the flow of the feelings. But the beauty of it is, it still brings images to mind. And those images now help with the communication, helping to draw a picture of what’s being said from within the heart in that moment. I’m getting that they’re coming from the shared consciousness of unity. There’s no past attached to them. You’re seeing something that’s truly present and authentic.

The image gives an inward vision of what’s going on in the relationship with and whomever I’m communicating with. Obviously I had eyesight for many decades before I lost it, but these images aren’t images of the past, they’re very much in the present moment.

Also there is guidance and direction so that while I am feeling the beingness, the flow of these images that appear in my mind are signposts which I never had before. They guide me to move through that particular experience. There is no conflict. It’s all from a place of peace.

LYNN: You know from A Course of Love about “wholeheartedness” being the union of mind and heart. Do you want to say a little bit about that? It sounds like your images are arising in the mind but also from the heart.

EDDIE: Yes, exactly. I’m glad that you brought that up because it is truly wholeheartedness, where the mind and heart are now serving each other. The mind is no longer preeminent. The heart has been elevated and becomes one with the mind, so now there’s a sharing between mind and heart where before the mind didn’t trust the feelings of the heart. Now there is absolute trust. And from that trust comes knowing.

I love that term “wholeheartedness” from A Course of Love. I had heard it before but didn’t know what it meant. Today I not only know what it means, I’ve had experiences of it.

I cannot imagine going back to the old way!

In fact I shudder at the thought of it, literally, because now I cannot imagine making any choice, any decision, without being first informed by the heart.

LYNN: Oh wow, that’s incredible. I wanted to hear a little bit more about the idea that in order to be who we are, we have to share who we are.

EDDIE: I would love to, because this is my favorite part of—I’m going to use the term Courses. A Course in Miracles gave me insight but I didn’t have the lived experience with it. A Course of Love gave me the lived experience of beingness, where giving and having are seen as one, and the law of being is to give is to have, to have is to be, to be is to know, and to know is to feel. From this experience we become aware, and once we become aware we can manifest or extend our being—extend ourselves. And it all starts with giving in terms of service—that’s how I see giving—and that brings me to the word “embrace,” which is what you started with in the reading.

It is literally embracing my beingness; and when I embrace my beingness I am free to give, to extend. I am free to be my true self in all things. And from that beingness comes the heart to heart because it recognizes the being in front of me. And remember, it has nothing to do with space or physical location.

I do not see the loss of my sight as something to be pitied. It was the greatest gift of my life. Losing my eyesight got me out of the way. And if I can give to the world even one percent of what I’ve been given as a result of it, I’ll feel blessed.

LYNN: It’s just a joy to be with you, Eddie.