Eyes Up Here

A look at where society looks

What direction do you find yourself looking in the most and how does that make you feel?

Where we look as a society has such a profound impact on our overall well being and our advancement as a species. Hell is below, Heaven above. We look down in shame. We look up in hope. We look up when we wonder about the clouds while resting in a sunny field, we look down when we’re walking through a busy area or when we’re afraid to draw attention to ourselves.

 We look down at our phones, we look down at our work. We look down at the road ahead of us while we’re driving. The structure of society has almost always created a means by which the majority of people are supposed to be looking down most of the time. When we had to work with our hands crafting tools and planting crops. When we worked on assembly lines through the industrial revolution. When everything was papers and folders on desks in the late 1900s and now in the modern age. I’m looking at a downward angle at my laptop while I write this. 

In organized religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism you see myriad practices in which everyone is looking downward for extended periods of time. Royalty the world over would require bowing—specifically requiring the “lower” status person to duck farther—even up to putting your head on the floor upon seeing someone who demands your reverence. In some cases no one was allowed to look at or above eye level while in the same room. The effect of power on the direction of human gaze has, at least in recent history, driven us downward.

By contrast, megalithic structures built by ancient civilizations reverse this by causing everyone who sees them to look up. Famously Egypt built pyramids, erected obelisks, and built statues that were all much, much taller than eye level. The effect on their society is likely that everyone was looking up more often. 

In civilizations across the planet the great astronomers of the old world expressed masterful knowledge of the heavens preserved in stone temples and structures around the planet. South America, Egypt, Tibet, India, Mesoamerica and the list goes on and on and on. Masterpieces in monuments and buildings that highlight, align, and represent the movement of our cosmos. 

Without the constant stream of entertainment to distract them or light pollution blocking the view, the ancients would spend hours, days even just… looking up, and seeing what they could see. Every night when the fires were put out, people looked up and told each other stories about the stars.

Hollywood said this about as obviously as they possibly could in the movie “DON’T LOOK UP” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep. The movie’s plot features a meteor approaching Earth that will wipe out all life, similar to the “planet killer” that took out the dinosaurs. A cultural rift is created along American political divisions with those who are open minded looking up and seeing the truth. The powers that be want people to keep their eyes down and keep going about business as usual, since a global panic would hurt the economy. The president tells the country to look to the ground and keep walking one foot in front of the other with their eyes down. The scientists responsible for the discovery incidentally create the “Just Look Up” counter movement since it isn’t long before doom is visible there in the sky right above them. 

The science of looking up has only begun to be researched but the early results are… looking up. 

Looking upward is enough to put us in a different state of mind. We become more calm, more focused, and it can even put us in a state to have new ideas. People usually begin comparing their problems to the whole scope of nature and suddenly it doesn’t matter as much. We get to remember we’re part of something much bigger. 

There’s usually less activity higher than eye level, so you can take a break from the grind and hustle. Getting out of the norm and slowing down. Seeing things from a different angle literally can help you do the same metaphorically. You might just find the breakthrough to that issue you’ve been stumped on.

A long term study by a major university was conducted where an individual looked up just for 5 minutes a day every day. They reported massive improvements in anxiety and depression. The participant talked about how, in any setting, just stopping to look up made things better almost immediately! At night seeing the stars and the glow of cities. The bright clear blue skies and gentle cloudy days. Skyscrapers. Rooftops. It was a practice in finding beauty in any setting simply by stopping. And looking. 

The largest take away from the experiment was that looking up made them less focused on themselves, more collected and more in control. 

Stop and imagine how it would be if everyone was even 1% less selfish, and 1% more calm.

This idea is corroborated all over the place. The Silva Mind Control Method,courses and book by the same title, were created by a radio repairman in the early 1900s. Silva took his knowledge of frequency and signals to studying the human brain as a receiver/transmitter. In his exploration of the human mind he discovered many abilities that become available to us when we learn to access and operate in other brain states. Calm and relaxed minds are running with alpha or theta waves. These states are where we can do the unbelievable with our minds. In the practice of getting to alpha or theta the book explains some eyes closed thought exercises with an added note. Angling your eyes upwards at ~45 degrees, even with your eyes closed, will help you to relax and be in those brain states easier and longer. 

Ashtanga Yoga has similar instructions. With your eyes closed, look at where your third eye would be and let your eyes rest there, angled upwards while you meditate. This encourages accessing divine states of bliss and unity. Looking across ideas and schools of thought this same concept arises over and over.

It’s incredible to think that it's actually this simple. It seems like common sense that looking up would make you feel better and looking down will make you feel worse. So much is hidden in the idioms we use. We even call having a positive outlook “looking up” or when we are feeling optimistic, we say “things are looking up.” 

“The greatest wisdom seems childish” according to the Book of the Way, and how often do you see children looking up in movies and TV? Children look up and they wonder. They wonder at the stars, the sky, the clouds. 

Wonder is such an incredible word, in our society of cubicles, and screens, and concrete, and gray, and tan, we need more wonder. 

We need it now more than ever, when food service workers look down at their stations, office workers look down at their screens or papers, when everything we have to clean requires looking down, and of course with these highly addictive little rectangles. 

So much is pulling our gaze downward. 

Looking up is only relevant to doing work and labor for a very slim sliver of tasks and only a few hobbies. Bird watching for instance, but not much else comes to mind.

According to the caricature of an industrial revolution business tycoon that I imagine as the embodiment of grind culture and hyperproductivity: looking up is a waste of time. Yet, according to the Zen master I imagine who embodies all my internal goals of true peace and mastery of my thoughts and emotions: looking up is far more important than any of that, and these pulling distractions are put for us as a lesson in what truly matters and how to be responsible for how we choose to look at life. 

Down? Or Up?