Note to the Reader: In writing this, what ensued was what appeared as a series of meditations moving in varied ways around a center, at times appearing to threaten to disengage from that center, only to show itself entwined purposely within the fabric of the whole. To read the following with that in mind may prove helpful to the reader. One may benefit most by savoring a segment at a time, at least after a first reading. I recommend reading through it all, at least initially, for the whole gives meaning to each part.
Also, in this writing, I will often use 'see' rather than 'looking at.' When one sees, they have direct insight into the inner nature of the other, which is one's own true nature. In that moment, one is the seer. In 'looking at,' the other is fully other, an object, and consciousness is captivated by appearance, missing essence. So, theistically speaking, God sees through you as much as you are prepared for God to see through you: appearance or non-appearance. 'Seeing' is timeless and non-local; 'looking at' is bounded by time and place.
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I looked in the mirror. I observed someone I had never seen. I saw through my face. The face was there, and it was mirror-like of the shining essence, full of liveliness. Beauty there was, but not merely in form - formless, the Sun behind and shining through the cloud-body. This brightness had always been present, but I had never seen it before.
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Spiritual growth is not uniform in all development lines. I have grown from early and quickly in what many would see as a developmental line 'spirituality. I have not matured as quickly in relationship skills. One can be highly spiritual, in a sense of consciousness, and lack development in another developmental line. Yet, the seeing of which I write, thankfully, is not about relationship skills in a psychological sense but a post-psychological sense. One may know nothing about how to play a violin and, yet, enjoy it very much.
Neither, however, does aptitude in consciousness skills mean one should be lax about improving relationship skills. And there may be persons who have exceptional skills in relationships at the conventional level of subject-object but are underdeveloped in consciousness, where one matures to relate subject with subject and, finally, subject.
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Relationship skills manifest in a different form and manner when one sees than prior. Why? For one who sees is not defined relationally only by conventional modes of relationship. Hence, one may think I am, so to speak, lacking in relationship skills, yet they will be judging from their own degree of consciousness development. From the view of a seer, they may be lacking in relationship skills, for their skills are purely conventional, to suit a status quo a seer's consciousness no longer complies with.
We see from where we are, and that changes as consciousness develops from pre-conventional to conventional to post-conventional. A Jesus or Buddha would have little interest in a status quo. Most people might judge them as relational failures.
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Have you ever had a moment of seeing someone in which the details of your prior history with them were absent, and you were, you could say, just seeing? Or, possibly, you have looked at someone you have no history with, have never seen, and sense strongly, purely that you know them?
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Icons, as religious art, usually a painting, are most closely associated with Eastern Christian traditions but have been more accepted in the West recently. An icon is an image one gazes mindfully into to turn awareness within. Through the icon, one retreats from waking consciousness to encounter the essence the image implies.
If, for example, the icon is of Jesus, one seeks to connect with Jesus in spirit or what he represents. Some might prefer to speak of this as an experience of an energy connected with devotion or as an experience of an archetype in the collective unconscious. Regardless, the connection is real.
The intent for connection is why icons are painted with prayerful mindfulness, and the meditation is a means of taking the Christian message of the Incarnation into prayerfulness. The Christian message of God-becoming-flesh honors, in a way many within Christianity fail to see, and many critics of Christianity criticize, how the unseen Presence meets us through matter, while matter is a legitimate means for us to retreat to meet and commune with Presence. See, Grace, by nature, meets and greets, whether we interpret this as a going out or a going within.
This movement becomes spontaneous, and within and without merge into an indivisible communion-in-union. This flow manifests as one Presence dancing both ways, and unpredictably. Though one Presence, the one seeing still sees the other's physical appearance. The seer does not become a rock.
A buddha would still see my appearance and call me Brian, for example. Yet, most people would see me as only Brian. They would see me as a form, nothing more, an object to relate to or with. Rather, I am a presence, an intimacy welcoming intimacy. I am a presence through which Presence welcomes others. The welcome is there, even if I never speak it. Presence by nature is welcoming.
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We find teachings across the major world religions pointing to each person as an icon of the Sacred. In Sufism, we find the truth of how one can meet and experience Allah through another, as Rumi did with Shams. In Buddhism, we are reminded of the Buddha Nature within, and that we are already Buddha. In Judaism and Christianity, there is a reminder that each person is in God's image. In Hinduism, we see teachings about the Atman, or Self, the one Soul we truly, timelessly are, while the person, or self, is a fleeting veil.
In most Eastern paths, the idea of a self going to a heaven is neither true nor desired. The form, or person, is what needs shedding, what keeps us in a suffering world of other forms. Hence, for them, what could be called God's image is all that could go to a heaven, not a collective of persons transferred from Earth to some celestial place full of forms - another material dimension.
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I was cycling in Virginia, USA. Cycling through an apartment parking lot, I came upon a young man, about 20, walking. Immediately, though I had never seen him before, I was startled into attention by a profound sense that I knew him. This was not a rational knowing. We smiled at each other. That moment is still strongly imprinted on the mind and can be revisited at any time. This is an example of seeing. With the eyes I looked at him, but the looking at was only the opening to seeing. He was iconic.
This seeing of the Sacred in and through the self of another is free of story; there is no history attached to it, as in our general interactions with others. Seeing is not touched or contoured with history; it is 'I know you,' not 'I know about you.'
Did the young man see me or only look at me? I do not know. That you see another does not mean you are seen. That another sees you does not mean you see them. And one may see another before the mind is prepared to recognize seeing as seeing; hence, they may be confused by something different, but not be able to name and process it. They are trying to fit the seeing into the looking, a regression.
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My experience has become increasingly about the Beloved in and through others, while once it was mostly about going inward. After decades of contemplative prayer practice, as well as varied other practices, what has emerged is a spontaneous recognition of the non-form: seeing others. Here, language breaks down, for when I see, I do not see just a person. I see the non-person. In such seeing, love is enhanced for the person of the other, and a beauty illuminates the form. The form becomes luminous with the radiant Purity.
I do not always see or expect I ever will or need to; yet, I see more and more. And some persons are opaque, so clouded over likely no one will see them. For me, the seeing is spontaneous, not something I need to try to do but only be receptive to happening when causes and conditions arise for it to happen.
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There is no technique for this seeing, even as seeing through the icon comes through effortless receptivity. And in this seeing, one sees oneself. We mirror each other. The same spirit shines from one to the other and back, and spirit manifests Spirit.
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Spiritual practices are designed to dissolve the effort to see that keeps us from seeing. That which is most obvious is the Sacred, though almost everything and everyone gives us only positive feedback for relating to the less obvious and, so, misses the Holy by ignoring it. Most people do not consider seeing as possible: they are attached to form - thoughts, feelings, and self-identity. Seeing does not ignore any of this but sees through others the one Subtle Presence that animates all forms.
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Of the One Presence manifesting as the diversity of presences, Guru Nanak, the Sikh patriarch, writes -
You hide yourself, reveal yourself, you revel in all colors.
When seeing, you enter a mystery. In seeing, you see and do not see. That which you see is what is not seen. There is something about the other that you cannot access, even when you see. That is the same something that animates and illumines you. The more you see the other, the more you are aware of that you do not and cannot see, and you honor that unseen.
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All roads lead to God, who appears and hides in a single, timeless act. In your seeing, God sees God.
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Yes, "all colors." When you see another, you do not see a religion, a political movement, a race, an economic status, a gender, a sexual orientation, ... - all illusory labels. You see That - the Real. You are able to celebrate the diversity of colors. That you have seen means unlike is no longer a threat. And you no longer want to go to a paradise in the sky full of persons who appear just like you.
Spirit is not anything, yet all things arise from it. Diversity is the garb; Presence is the nakedness of all forms, be it a tree stump or a person. Spirit, colorless, decorates itself with all colors.
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And what would this seeing have to do with love? In this seeing, I find spontaneous loving. This Love loving arises with insight, for in Grace all returns into harmony. Seeing you is loving you - one spontaneous act.
And seeing does not negate self, but summons self to surrender into the Love that is seeing. See, this seeing is Love seeing Love. Love makes love with Love.
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Is this seeing a reversion to our early days, when an infant? That would be regressive. The infant is innocently self-centered. The infant is all ego.
Unfortunately, much spirituality teaches a regressive return to an infantile innocence, as though by comparison, if we demolished all cities and returned to living tribal in jungles and forests and on plains, that would be progress. Should we all crawl around, ignoring our abilities to climb, jump, walk, and run? Seeing is mostly in our collective future, not in any idealized past, even though it always happens now, never returns to the past, or moves forward into a future.
Person seeing person is a contraction of all-inclusive consciousness. So, I do not write of returning to a first innocence, an Edenic bliss, so to speak. Rather, we can speak of a second innocence.
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What about intimacy with and seeing? When you keep seeing the other, intimacy grows. And the seeing occurs when physically with and apart.
While intimacy does not negate feelings toward the other, it is fundamentally 'below,' or 'before,' emotion.
Seeing itself is intimacy. Yet, integrating that, inviting it, to be at home, takes time. Intimacy fully is, intimacy grows.
If you do not see the other, but only look at them, how can intimacy grow beyond the emotional, so the limited, born-and-dying self-as-appearance? Many relationships are two appearances relating, objects together in time and place, born and to die. Yet, spirit-with-spirit, neither birth nor death can touch the intimacy. This intimacy is the doorway to the one Subject.
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Following is a striking example of this 'in-sight', penned by John O'Donohue, in Anam Ċara.
In South America, a journalist friend of mine met an old Indian chief whom he would have loved to interview. The chief agreed, on the condition that they could have some time together beforehand. The journalist presumed that they would meet and just have a normal conversation. Instead, the chief took him aside and looked directly into his eyes in silence for a long time. Initially, this terrified my friend; he felt his life was totally exposed to the gaze and silence of this stranger. After a while, the journalist began to deepen his own gaze. Each continued this silent gazing for more than two hours. After this time, it seemed as if they had known each other all of their lives. There was no longer any need for the interview.
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Your receptivity - the ego must yield - to see the essence, so formlessness, of another sentient being, so form, is equivalent to your choice to love that being. This means love evolved within you to this evolution of consciousness. And other intangible, subtle qualities are free to manifest, for love is only one.
And, in case one would see this teaching as a teaching to negate the self, not so; the self-as-appearance, with its thoughts, body, and emotions, is holy precisely in that the self is, yes, an icon of Sacredness. Thus, in seeing, one grows in insight into one's own innate Great Perfection - not in a moral sense, in a sense of unborn Purity before the splitting of reality into "good" and "bad." True Nature is neither good nor bad - it is.
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As a manifestation of True Nature, you are - nothing added to this. And so is everyone else, and fortunate are those who see and blessed are those who are seen.
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(C) brian wilcox, 2026
*Guru Nanak quote from Guru Nanak. Poems from the Sikh Sacred Tradition. Trans. Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh.
