The Gift of the Mind's EYE

The Gift of the Mind's EYE
 
Where do you go for peace and quiet? 

What calms your storms and rough seas?

Is it a place you must literally go to?

Or, a place in your mind's eye? 


The Mind's EYE looks out from the world of your imagination.  It is more than thinking about something.  It is actually seeing it, feeling it, smelling it--all the senses help you to visualize it.  So when you need peace, quiet, the blessing of tranquility can you visualize such a place and experience it? 

William Butler Yeats wrote of just such a place.  Writing in Ireland in the 1880's, his poem "The Cabin on the Isle of Lake Innisfree," gained immediate popularity.  Even the title tells you where he is going "to a cabin" that is located on "an isle"--not just the country, but set apart from the country.
The title, "Innisfree," while an actual place, also conveys being set free from his urban environment.  No matter where he is, even back in the city, he still can say:

"I hear it in the deep heart's core." 

The Mind’s Eye can use all the senses and visualize the 

place.   You can place yourself there, at rest, filling your 

soul from its connection to nature—since we were not 

created for concrete!  

In fact—try it yourself.   

Ease back in a not so comfortable chair that you fall asleep.   

Take yourself to a place and use your senses to feel it.   

Breathe deeply, breathe in the place, and rest.  

At any time of day you can go to your place and drink to 

your soul’s content.   

You can hear it “in the deep heart’s core.”  

                      For those who wish to read the whole poem….

 The Lake Isle at Innisfree

                            William Butler Yeats  

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.