Amber Mattingly

My assignment starting tonight is to hold 24 hours of silence.  The interesting part is that I am not going away to a retreat center.  I am not staying home in my room by myself.  I am going to experience 24 hours of silence while being in the world, doing my normal Monday routine of getting the kids ready for school, drop off, yoga class, grocery shopping, pick up kids and nighttime routine.

I did not plan to be writing about being impeccable with my word while experiencing silence, so I am going to focus on all that is said and communicated without words: body language, eye contact, facial expression, & gestures.  I never realized how important eye contact is until I began working with my son who has autism.  I love seeing his beautiful brown eyes, but I only see those eye from afar or if I ask him to look at me and then I only see him for a few brief moments.

We use our eyes to gaze deeply at our loved ones.  We use our eyes to direct questions when we are serious.  We roll our eyes when we are being silly or we are annoyed at someone.  We use our eyes to look away when we don’t want to look at someone, don’t want to be seen by someone or have been too hurt to reveal the pain in our eyes.  Our eyes dart around in conversations that we are not engaged in or when we are uncomfortable.  We look away when we are thinking deeply about something so that we can formulate our words.

How can we be impeccable with our eyes?  How can we speak love and truth using this very sensitive area of our body?