I want to make a point about following a method of vision improvement to the letter, and trusting that any one person, or even a group of people saying the same thing, have it right.
There’s this guy Hira Ratan Manek, going by HRM, who for years claimed (and maybe does again) to be able to live without food due to his sungazing practices. He’s got a method where you gradually adapt yourself to sungazing. The guy was outed at one point by someone catching him chowing down at a restaurant near a place he was speaking at about his fasting, and he came out and admitted it. And there seems to be nobody substantiating other things he has said, but the last time I looked into it was years ago. That being said, there’s also no evidence that sungazing for short periods of time in the morning or evening is harmful, even if it dazzles your vision for a minute.
I guess what I’m saying is people have a tendency to drop one doctrine for another, like dropping conventional views on eyesight to follow Dr. Bates’s words to the letter, or some modern person who has written a book or teaches classes. There certainly are people you can learn a lot from, but I wish people would hold back and be skeptical about everything, no matter which side of an issue it’s on, instead of deciding, “Wow that sounds so right, I’m going to believe everything else this guy says.” Why this need to jump on a boat?
So when you read or hear or consider any little idea about vision or vision improvement, try to consider how it could be right or wrong, and how to test a specific point as well as you can. It’s not hard. You don’t need a lab. It just takes some self-honesty about what you really know and what you’re just going to believe because it’s easier. There are so few people out there who look at issues with this level of skepticism and self-honesty, so yes, unfortunately you probably do need to test everything yourself in the small world of natural vision improvement unless humans can get to a point where they can be trusted to look at issues objectively.
It does take longer to learn anything this way, but really you’re not learning anything when you just latch onto bogus information.
I bring this up because there are a number of things in Dr. Bates’s material that is either wrong or misleading. No disrespect to him – all geniuses are wrong about some things, and he made huge contributions to changing the way we look at vision. But unfortunately some folks who want to improve their vision put a lot of energy into reading and understanding what Bates said and in the process they accept it all as the whole truth, as if the entire truth about obtaining and maintaining good vision is in Bates’s material. For a small number of people it seems to be enough. For most, however, it isn’t, and they stagnate with a handful of those old ideas that are not working for them or are not specific enough to be have practical value. Even if you take everything Bates wrote at face value, there is far too much guesswork in the specifics that you are forced to do. So what happens is different people come up with countless different interpretations of how Bates’s ideas or instructions should be applied, and what’s the most important part.
I have written in past posts about the specifics of shifting your eyes and what is really involved in doing so and what kind of pattern you follow, including suggestions about timing and distance of shifts. And there’s a lot more to say. And I’m not necessarily right about everything. But I hope I have gotten a few people to open their eyes to the fact that issues like this are just not being addressed in enough detail to make it completely clear how you have to use your eyes in all aspects to result in better and better vision, so what you have instead are very vague instructions that can be followed easily enough but which you can sabotage in so many ways that aren’t being addressed. I don’t know if anyone out there teaching vision improvement is addressing issues like this. And it isn’t easy to figure out, because we all do things right, whether it’s vision-related or with other parts of our body, that we aren’t conscious of, but ironing out the specifics of this is possible and has to be done.
As it is now, people migrate to whatever specific method most interests them, such as palming, and this is almost always based on the fact that they find the method simple and easy to understand. This also means that it’s pretty much worthless the way they’re doing it, because when it’s easy to do and they don’t struggle with confusion about it then they aren’t learning anything! So people get stuck in whatever feels nice or feels as if they’re doing something or is easy to do while thinking about their day, which isn’t much better for their vision than wearing glasses and forgetting the whole thing. Real vision improvement is uncomfortable, because it forces some level of disruption in your programming/personality, because it has to do with the way you interact with the world in every moment. So people avoid what ever is uncomfortable or confusing in how they use their eyes, justifying their actions with the idea of “relaxation” being the key to good vision, implying that anything that feels bad or disruptive is “strain”. And they cling to vague ideas or broad principles that are not specific, or in other words they’re blurry. And they won’t let go of those comfortable, soft, blurry ideas. So consider that your own avoidance of brutally examining issues in this amount of detail reflects the way your use your eyes in not understanding the necessity of literally looking with your eyes at small enough details in order to really see anything clearly.
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I founded iblindness.org in 2002 as I began reading books on the Bates Method and became interested in vision improvement. I believe that everyone who is motivated can identify the roots of their vision problems and apply behavioral changes to solve them.
One of the best posts so far. One could, without any doubt, say that this website and it’s contents are the best in the field of vision improvement. I somehow feel guilty for reading these material for free. I can’t access any international credit card from the country I’m in right now. But as soon as I get out of this “prison”, I’m gonna donate as much as I can to this site.
Thank you, and keep up the good work.