Inner Work

For the week of: August 5, 2002

Roving Eyes

            When you see people whom you find sexually attractive, how do you look at them? Do your eyes offer a kind and generous appreciation of their beauty? Or does your glance cross the line into lust?

A grasping quality characterizes lust, a desire to take. In our hearts, we know the difference between appreciation and lust. If the person looks back at us, we instinctively avert our eyes out of shame at our wrong attitude. Or, if more deeply lost, we may even glare at them with a kind of greedy aggression.

When simply appreciating the person’s beauty, we can smile freely, happily, and kindly. But lust leaves us dissatisfied and diminished, further enmeshing us in the furtive and futile search for lasting satisfaction in externals. Even in mild forms, a lustful gaze can cause discomfort in the person toward whom we direct it. Lust considers others and ourselves as mere objects, as bodies. Appreciation, on the contrary, honors the one who inhabits the body.

            For this week notice how you look at people, and the degree to which lust enters (or escapes) through your eyes. Can you be responsible for your eyes and what they communicate?

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