For we live by believing and not by seeing. 2 Corinthians 5:7 (NLT)
Open Your Eyes – The Labels Series – Part 3
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4
Yesterday we talked about Daniel Kish and his ability to defy the beliefs and systems we have in place around blind people. Despite having both eyes removed Daniel can ride bikes, horses, climb trees and hike through the woods un-aided.
He does this via a form of echolocation he devised as a child – a clicking sound he makes with his mouth that bounces off the environment and world around him.
Lore Thaler, a Psychologist who specializes in visual cognition, was intrigued to see if Daniel (and several other echolocating visually-impaired persons) actually DID see through this unique ability. Daniel thought it was possible since an image is just something that the mind constructs and sight is just the brain making sense of the signals it receives.
So she (Psychologist, Lore Thaler) took some microphones and placed them near Daniel's ears to record exactly what he heard from and while he “clicked.” She then placed different objects in front of him – a car, a lamp post, a salad bowl. She did the same test with others, too. She wanted to know what information Daniel’s clicks were reporting back to his brain.
They later had their test subjects get an MRI to measure their brain activity while they played back the different recordings of the clicks they made while they were near the test items – car, lamp-post, salad bowl, etc. They then compared the results to sighted people looking at the same objects. Although scientists had thought for years that the visual cortex of the brain remained dark for the visually impaired, they discovered that Daniel’s was coursing with blood flow and lighting up as if he was really, truly, physically seeing. In short, his brain measured the same amount activity when listening to his clicks, as a sighted persons brain does when looking at objects.
Exactly the same.
So what do you think came first? Daniel’s ABILITY to navigate the world without eyes or his BELIEF that he could navigate the world without eyes?
“Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase” said Martin Luther King, Jr.
We all have mindsets about what is actually possible, and these mindsets either set us in cement or open us up to a world of wonder and possibility.
Humans once thought the world was flat and impossible to navigate for fear of falling off the edge. It was once deemed impossible to send a man to the moon or to break the four-minute mile.
The key was that someone was brave enough, had faith enough, to push past the accepted boundary of what was possible and prove wrong a collective mindset.
Achieving the impossible always starts with faith, long before your eyes actually see it come to pass.
Yep, it can be dangerous. Yep, you could be called a fool. Yep, you might experience failure. But when you choose to believe that there must be more going on than what we currently know and understand – when you refuse to sit with a label and let it define the current state of things and people – the only failure is to keep your eyes firmly shut. Success isn’t having the exact thing that you want or believe or dream or expect come to pass. It’s keeping your eyes open and expectant the whole way through the entire journey.
We don’t really live by sight.
We live by what we believe.
What do you believe?
Go to Part 4 – Spirit Lead Me »
Written by Jesse Milani
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