Have you ever heard the expression, "Third Eye"? Do you know what that means - what it refers to? Webster describes the "third eye" as, "A sensory structure capable of light reception." It is literally a physical third eye in various reptiles. However, what I am referring to is an invisible third eye that we humans have, but most do not even recognize it. I, of course, have not done a study to see just what percentage of humans are aware of this invisible eye and the benefits that are derived from its unwitting use. I don’t even know if there is any scientific evidence - aside from my own - that such phenomenon exist. But I have eluded to our "third eye" in several previous writings through the years and perhaps that is just my own name for something that I am aware of as I have never heard any other reference to it. So having prefaced my "disclaimer" of whether or not such thing is recognized by the scientific community, or perhaps my life has been more sheltered than I realize, please allow me to explain what I mean by your "Third Eye".

Your third eye is simply the part of your brain that sees, perceives, and registers objects, people, and or events that you are not consciously aware of even seeing. Have you ever thought you saw something, but upon trying to focus in on it found that you had to really look around and hunt for what you thought you saw? If so, then what I call your "third eye" was at work. Your eyes were focused on something else entirely, but your brain picked up on some other detail possibly totally unrelated to your current thoughts and focus.

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Allow me to tell you a little story. The mystery of which was nearly 20 years in discovery. Once upon a time - yeah, as we hit the "senior years", we tend to have lots of those "once upon a times" - so... once upon a time that just so happens to be approximately 18 to 20 years previous to this writing, I was on a sewing kick. Now I call that a "kick" because unlike my dear mother who was an excellent seamstress, I never really got the hang of it. Anyway, I had these clothing design ideas running through my head and when various sale catalogs ended up in my mail box, I paid particular attention to the various dresses - the styles and colors. As if finding treasures, I had a tendency to clip and save the pictures of the ones that struck my fancy. Sometimes it was the flare of the skirt, a row of buttons, the cut of the neckline, the sleeves, or often the color. And in my mind I’m thinking that perhaps I will use that particular detail in one of my designs. Ha! Ha!

Well, on with my story. Those clippings eventually made their way into a box. And the box began it’s long vigil of keeping my little treasures safe through a number of moving events spanning over roughly a period of 18 to 20 years before finally making it back up to the top of my "what’s in this box?" list.

Now hold on... I interrupt this story to tell you yet another one. My sewing kick finally abated, dresses were followed by hats. And I will tell you that I made some fabulous hats, but there were not many places to wear them, and I ran out of room to store them. It was getting to be an expensive hobby, although I did create wedding hats for a couple of brides who were delighted with them. I would have happily custom made them to sell, but lacked a market for the price range they required. And so that phase faded as life dictated other priorities for me.

Then following my husband’s first heart attack, when he came home from the hospital, I sensed that he was uneasy about going to sleep at night without nurses to watch out for him. I suggested that he go to sleep and I would stay up and keep a check on him. Knowing I’m a natural "night owl", he took me up on the offer.

And so... there I sat in the wee hours. I needed some quiet activity to pass the time. I just happened to have a couple of romance books that had come in the mail. I began reading those and then something else happened. For years, my friends had said that I should write - as in "author" a book. I always responded with, "Write what?" I really had done some various types of writings off and on through the years, but the real "what" seemed to elude me. And then in the wee hours of the night as I kept a vigil on my husband, I suddenly knew "what" I wanted to write. "Romance". Not the steamy sort of stuff, but something that was enjoyable reading without the heavy trauma of violence and gutter language. By this time I had already had more than enough trauma in my life, I really did not need to fill my life with any more by writing it. Miraculously, having decided that "Romance" was my "what", it all started falling into place. My title just popped into my head. With a pen and some 3 x 5 cards, I began creating my characters, and then I just started writing, by hand at first, and then I got a nice new electric typewriter as that was BPC - before personal computers became a standard household fixture.

As my story began to evolve, my characters took on a life of their own and basically wrote their own stories. Then one day another one of those sale catalogs came in the mail. On the front cover was a beautiful model, but more than that. When I saw this particular model, it was like looking at my character - my heroine in my story. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I saved that little catalog. And yes, I still have it and a few others that followed in the next few years with that same model appearing somewhere in the pages. Through these years that model has unwittingly given me a closeness with my character. Of course, I knew she was really someone else, but it has always been like looking at my special character when I see her. Ironically, I saw her on TV not long ago. I instantly knew she was the model from the catalog. And so my character took on another dimension. With the age of the Internet, not surprisingly, I was able to actually put a name to the real live person who’s image was my character’s image before I even knew she actually existed. Now how weird is that!

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Today I made a discovery. Remember that box that held my treasured clippings? The box that was all but forgotten through the years and various moves? Well, that box surfaced because I’m really trying to downsize the mounds and stacks and boxes of paper and other long forgotten little treasures. And guess what? I was looking at those clippings featuring stylish dresses when suddenly I was looking at my "heroine" - my story character’s image so vivid in my mind, and... I was looking at the model who unknowingly to either her or to myself, had become my special character in my first romance book.

It was in that instant that I knew my "third eye" had seen her all those years ago. I was focused on the dresses, not the models. But when I created my characters roughly five years later - I haven’t counted it up exactly - the characteristics that I gave to my heroine so exactly matched the model apparently seen and recorded by my "third eye" that when I saw her on a catalog cover later, I instantly knew she was the image of my character. And now the amazing discovery that my brain knew this all along, but it took me nearly 20 years and the long forgotten box to make the connection. And to add to the discovery, confirmation of my "third eye" theory - the "eye that sees things that we are not aware of".
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Discovering Your Third Eye
The realization of the power of discovering and unlocking the hidden secrets and knowledge acquired by our third eye is awesome. While to me, the third eye concept is not foreign, I had never really given much thought to the power of using it. With my discovery, however, I now have to wonder and ask, "What if?" What if we can somehow tap into that hidden resource of knowledge? Is there some level by which we can consciously tune into this? We know that the average brain is never fully utilized. We are all apparently capable of much more than we ever realize or achieve. Is our third eye at least in part responsible for our dreams and aspirations? Our intuitions? We know that our subliminal can be affected by what we hear that we don’t necessarily realize we hear. I submit that our subliminal can also be affected by what we see that we don’t necessarily realize that we see. And as was in fact the case for me, the stored information remained in place for years without my conscious knowledge of it’s existence. There were roughly five years between the time I saw and saved those clippings and when I created my character. It was roughly a year or two after my characterizations that I saw the model on that cover and instantly matched her with the image of my character in my head, and on paper. And now, nearly 20 years later, I drag out a long forgotten box, dig through the contents, only to discover a detail heretofore known only to my subconscious.

Well... I could admit to feeling rather dense all of this time. Rather, I believe it to be an awesome discovery of how superior our inner workings are created, and how under used our abilities. As I ponder these revelations, I am aware that although it is not labeled as such, advertisers do in fact try to tap into the resource of our third eye. They flash their messages passed us in split seconds knowing that our brains - our third eye - will record portions that we are not even aware of, but yet will likely influence our buying habits. It is then up to us as to how we react to that influence.

I challenge you to think about your "Third Eye" and how you may possibly tap into that hidden resource.