This is article 8 of 18 of the Spirituality Series, click > Table of Contents
Have you ever wondered about body language and the responses of eye contact?
I was talking to a good friend recently. We met for breakfast and talked through lunchtime. Somewhere during the third hour of our non-stop “catch up” and sharing, I went beyond the usual eye contact.
For a moment a gazed deeply within his soul. As I connected with him in this way, his eyes seemed to smile back a kind of appreciation. My sense was that somehow being seen and known in this more intimate way, was received by him as love.
The Island Spirit of Aloha
Sandy and I live on an island in Hawaii. It’s common here to walk past a stranger and have them make direct eye contact, served with a smile. It’s called “The Aloha Spirit”.
In contrast, at present, I’m doing some consulting in the large city of Seattle. Just as an experiment, a few nights ago I walked around one of the shopping malls in the area (it was huge).
Unfortunately, what occurred is what I expected: Although I attempted to make eye contact with hundreds of people, their body language wasn’t very open and very few returned the gesture. Instead of being a large group of human beings, we behaved more like insects. Most of us had our antenna “out there” and did our best to move quickly past each other without bumping into one another; kind of like ants who are hard at work.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t attempting to share “deep gazes” with total strangers! I was simply offering even the briefest moments of connection through making eye contact.
Open the Window
Why are so many of us are committed to avoiding intimacy? Is it just habit? Or fear? Overcrowding? Do we have things to hide? (Our eyes have been called “the window to our soul”.)
Perhaps you would like to take some moments this week and notice your own body language and how you make eye contact. Take an opportunity to slow down and gaze deeply into someone’s soul; let someone know they are worth being seen; connect.
This is one simple way to activate your heart, and the the hearts of others. Who knows what treasures you may discover.
“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
–The Beatles, Golden Slumbers
By Kirk
To view the next post in this series, click > 4 Steps for Success: Life Purpose and Goal Setting
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