When It Comes to Truth in the Heart, the Eyes Have It!


“The eyes of man speak words the tongue cannot pronounce.”
Native American Proverb

The eyes of humans speak the deepest, and sometimes darkest, truths beyond what human words can express. And there are certainly times when human eyes betray the words that flow across human lips. It seems that there is some sort of invisible umbilical cord between the human heart and human eyes. The eyes always speak the truth within the heart.

Is it any wonder then that we often have a hard time looking people in the face when we have something heavy weighting on our hearts. It’s difficult to muster the words we need and to speak to them honestly when we don’t want to hurt them, much less look them in the face as we speak. I have no doubt this is one of the reasons why email and texting are so popular today. Likewise, this mysterious heart-to-eyes connection is also the reason why we find it very difficult to look someone directly in the eyes and lie to them. Inherently, we know that our eyes will betray our words.

Stop for a moment and think of the many ways this heart-to-eyes connection can betray our true inner-feelings to those people we love as well as to people who are complete strangers. For example, someone we love gives us a birthday gift. As soon as our eyes see the gift, our hearts are disappointed and our  disappointment is quickly sent from our hearts to our eyes. And although we may pretend to love the gift through words and a bright smile, our eyes will honestly speak the truth of our disappointment to the giver of the gift.

Likewise, we can be sitting in the middle of a sidewalk café and see someone who is very attractive to us. They will feel the pull of our eyes and look our way. As this is happening, the longing in our eyes will betray the lust in our hearts to them—and maybe more. Our eyes may also betray our deepest, darkest pit of internal neediness: The one that we are so used to drowning in on a daily basis. It’s no wonder then when their aura collides with ours, they look away. Neediness is never attractive. And yet, neediness in human hearts is almost always spoken aloud through the language of human eyes.

If we want our eyes to speak to others of our human wholeness—instead of neediness-- we need to work on healing our own hearts. This means we must affirm and heal our inner-emptiness and nurture our way into feeling vibrant in and of ourselves. A Higher Power can lend to our process of inner-healing, but we will never find that healing if our hearts—and eyes-- are always hungrily looking to someone else for salvation. People look away from hungry eyes because they know they cannot fill-up the empty black hole inside the heart that is hiding behind those hungry eyes.

Ultimately, our eyes will always betray our true feelings about ourselves. Some of us may be able to talk the good talk, and we may be able to fool some people with our spoken words. But those people who will end up meaning the most to us in this life will always be able to read the real truth in our eyes. So we might as well start being truthful to ourselves now. The more you love who you are, the better you will feel about yourself. And the better you feel about yourself, the more your heart will speak this wonderful truth to the rest of the world through your very human eyes.

Comments

  1. E.S. KraayApril 3, 2012 at 12:41 PM

    One year ago, my wife and I watched a 3-hour film "The Gospel of John." It's billed as a word-for-word adaption of the 21 Chapters of John's Gospel. It was so good that it is enroute from Netflix as I write for a viewing this year. There are not many 180-minute films I'm apt to watch, but here I am watching this one a second time. Henry Ian Cusik [unknown to me but probably familiar to others] portrays Jesus in an uplifting way without the solemnity that too often casts shadows on films of this genre. There is no sadness in his eyes, only truth and hope. He actually laughs and smiles through the better part of the film. The one line I recall him saying several times throughout the film is "I tell you the truth." When he does, you can see it so very strongly in his eyes. If Christ stood before me today, I would believe him. His truth would be in his eyes.

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