Learning to See from a Blind Man

by Gregory Allen Butler

We always have a choice to speak, think, or act in ways that will either strengthen us or weaken us. It's a question of awareness and purpose. If we have the purpose to strengthen our consciousness and vitality and we want to experience life at its deepest level, we choose one way. If not, we choose another.

Anyway, I was pondering the significance of this earlier today when a memory surfaced from many years ago. I finally understand it.

I was a freshman music major at the University of Cincinnati, playing tenor sax in the jazz band. The director of the band announced that Stan Getz was going to be playing that night in Dayton, Ohio (about 50 miles away) and suggested that some of us go hear him. Since he was one of my favorite tenor saxophone players I was seriously interested in going. Just then a blind alto sax player named Jeff stood up and asked with great enthusiasm, "Who's going?"

I announced I was going. Jeff asked if he could have a ride and I told him yes. Another sax player also wanted to go and bring a date. I picked the three of them up later that night and we headed up to Dayton.

We arrived before the first set began. Everything so far was a typical night out at a club with friends but that was about to change. As soon as Getz played his first note, Jeff, who was blind, stood up, leaning forward, in an attempt to make sure he didn't miss one note that Getz played, sort of a blind person's version of getting a better view. His ears were his gateway to the world and he made sure that nothing stood between them and Getz's saxophone with its beautiful sound.

The whole night was like that. It was as if he were St. Francis having a vision of Christ. It was a transcendent experience for him. I heard great music. He seemed to be hearing something from another world--something sublime, something majestic. It was as if something was resonating in him like pure sound from the celestial spheres, or perhaps like the ringing of bells that Hafiz wrote about when describing the sounds from the higher planes of consciousness.

When the music for the night was over, and Stan Getz had headed back to his hotel room, we got in my car for a late night drive back to Cincinnati. I turned on the car radio. Jeff, who was in the front passenger seat, reached over, and despite his blindness, found the on/off knob and turned it off. "We just heard Getz," is all he said. It seemed to me I heard Getz and Jeff had an experience of satori. I honored his request and we drove home with the radio off, with Getz still playing in Jeff's mind.

That story has stayed in my memory now for over 30 years. Something about it seemed significant, and some part of me stored it away under the category "Not to be Discarded," under the name, "We just heard Getz."

The whole story serves as a metaphor for how we pollute our consciousness with stimuli that weaken our energy, and from Jeff's perspective, that is what I was doing when I turned on the radio. He was having a beatific experience; I was about to pollute the rivers of his sublime experience with mindless top 40 radio.

This became quite clear after I read Power vs. Force by Dr. David Hawkins. In the book, he introduces chapter nine with these words:

The ability to differentiate between high and low-energy patterns is a matter of perception and discrimination that most of us learn by painful trial and error. Failure, suffering, and eventual sickness result from the influence of weak patterns; success, happiness, and health proceed from powerful attractor patterns.

In life, each day we can choose between experiences that will strengthen us or weaken us. If we have a purpose in life, and we are serious about getting there, it behooves us to choose the experience or principle that gives us strength, which enlivens us.

In the massive scale of kinesiology testing done by David Hawkins, he found that even certain words weaken us while others strengthen us. Love, peace, and joy will strengthen us. Hate, war, and misery weaken us. The names Gandhi and Mother Theresa strengthen, Hitler and Stalin weaken. It's the same with music, literature, movies, and television. Some of the choices will weaken you, while others will strengthen you. Choose what will strengthen you. Avoid what will weaken you. It's like following a healthy diet or eating junk food.

I can see these choices more clearly now, thanks to that blind sax player who set me straight by turning off my radio.