Saw a big jump today. I haven't changed anything I'm doing. Really, vision therapy consists of virtual reality gaming, as well as mindfulness about binocular posture in general. I've been thinking a lot recently that in vision therapy, a lot can be achieved through mindfulness alone.
I've been thinking about thinking a lot lately, and thinking about the mental states we go through, and how we're, for the most part, just victims of causality, and really just going from one mental state to another, constantly buffeted around like the silver chrome ball in a game of pinball. Most of the time we have no idea why we think and do things the way we do, and if we really just paid attention to our thoughts, sorted out what's useful, and what's not, we could be so much more effective as individuals.
I've been thinking about myself and my visual system, and our relationship and how it's changed over time. It's really similar to how one's relationship to a sport or subject changes over time when one spends an incredible amount of time and thought on that sport or subject. Your neurons build around that object.
Initially, you don't know anything about whatever-it-is. You only have the most coarse and basic understanding. Then you start poking at it, looking at if from different vantage points. Your understanding, while still small, builds. You quickly take that information in, incorporate it into your database, but for whatever reason, you still want more. You get on top of it, and climb inside. Now you know what it looks like from inside out. But there's still more. You notice all these little details, you poke at them. The more 'curious' time you spend on it, the bigger the object's imprint on your mind. The closer you look, the more there is, and it never stops. This is how some people become unfathomably good at some things. They've spent more time than you have building their database about that subject. That could be for any reason. Maybe they're more interested in it, and maybe they've just had more time than you.
This describes my relationship with my visual system exactly, particularly when I'm talking about Zeno Paradox where, objectively, everything is improving always. There is only one direction and that is improvement. But also, the more I look, the more there is, and the more work I have to do. It's a bit discouraging at times, but also exciting when I think about it. Because I am a curious person, and I enjoy exploration. And I am a kind of philosophical person by nature. And I do find myself often having philosophical thoughts when doing vision therapy and thinking about vision therapy.
My vision is indeed better now than it ever has been. My mental resolution and mental representations about the subject are ever-increasing. I have spent an ungodly number of curious hours on this. And I think I just have to keep going and keep thinking and keep building and developing my mental representations of my visual system. As said in previous entries, one of the objective markers I've used for checking on progress is the difference in accommodation between the two eyes particularly when reading text up close. I've seen quite a lot of improvement and I haven't really been doing anything new or different, or even 'vision therapy'. It's been basically mindfulness about binocular posture entirely. I wonder how I'm going to use this knowledge moving forward when I've achieved my goals and am totally done with vision therapy.
