"The Eye Was Placed Where One Ray Should Fall"

In 1841 in his essay "Self-Reliance," Emerson wrote these words:

"The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify to that particular ray."

I was 15 when I first read these words and they burned into some place inside me with an indelible blaze.

Meanwhile, like most everyone, I underwent a divorce from myself. I came down with the "disease to please" and a sickening sense of inauthenticity pervaded my days.

Lately I'm looking toward an amiable reconciliation with myself, good, bad, and ugly. I'm interested in the power of autonomy without separation. Standing in the truth of my own experience, without closing down to other viewpoints, is the strength of autonomy.

I find it increasingly invigorating to look through my own eyes, and to see what is to be seen.