Instruction for eyes open meditation if you wear glasses.Take glasses off or keep on?

[lmfao]

Usually I meditate with eyes closed but the problem is that I get drowsy and lost in my mind sometimes. As a habit, I've always felt more relaxed in my face and eyes when I take of glasses to meditate.
 

So I try to meditate with eyes open. Facing a wall with my eyes open without wearing glasses (glasses prescription is somewhere between -2.5 and -3, so I'm not terribly blind)

My vision is blurry, and I'm unable to "still the gaze". My eyes randomly shift around and my vision will randomly fluctuate in brightness, colour and focus due to not wearing glasses. One thing being that my eyes will switch between double vision (scattered eyes) and being more normally focused. Any advice and instruction?

One reason for me being "concerned" about this, beside it just being a noticeable aspect of my experience, is that I read in a book by Om Swami that keeping the gaze relatively still is an important thing. Perhaps I can still do eyes open without glasses, and I'm just making excuses, don't know. But either way I have to pay attention to my experience during practice to figure out what I should do.
 

The problem might be that because my vision is more weird without glasses, I might "get lost in the phenomena" as it's called?
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Extra info: A while back, for 1 or 2 weeks I had a semi-regular routine of practicing candle gazing without wearing my glasses. It was definitely an interesting experience, I might try it again but this time try to actively learn what's going on in the process.

[peanutspathtotruth]

I don't know how it really is like because I luckily never had seeing issues, but I can't imagine unclear vision to be a big problem in meditation. When I meditate with my eyes open, what happens in front of me is almost completely unimportant - as in, I don't pay any attention to it, because my awareness is either focusing on an object, or, mostly the case, relaxes or looks at itself. That is, the visual field is just like the thought streams or sounds - it's just there, no need to react to it. 

I'm honest though, I had been hugely distracted by my visual field for a long time. What I found is that there is a) the tendency to react to changes which is particularly intense with the visual field because it's like the strongest sense we have of being in the world, and b) a tension in the eyes that most of us have, which is connected to negative emotions,/ego patterns. It may be possible that these tensions are strong for someone like you with glasses? And even if not, it might be nice to inquire into that. How tense is your face, are your eyes when meditating? Can you really really relax them, let them become soft? I bet that would help!

I'd say try without glasses, you don't need to focus in the sense of having a sharp image in front of you. Maybe this helps ??

Edited January 15, 2021 by peanutspathtotruth

[Fadl]

Take them off or keep them on it doesn't matter, you can even meditate while eating a pizza and drinking a coke.

[lmfao]

@peanutspathtotruth Thanks for the reply man, still encountering this "problem" or dilemma I guess (didn't meditate too many times since the original post, especially eyes open). 

I somewhat get what you mean about ignoring the visual field. Just being fine with it maybe. I think it's possible to have the eyes relatively still, and you don't need to focus on a small point. It's your total visual field just there.

Only other visual thing to fiddle with is experimentally candle gazing in meditation as a side thing 

Edited April 4, 2021 by lmfao

[lmfao]

Sitting even closer to the wall is something to try.

I'm seeing if there's this trick I can do of keeping my attention on my peripheral vision. Does anyone else do this with eyes open meditation? Keep attention on peripheral vision? I might be making things up which are distractions 

Just meditate with glasses on a few times as well

Edited July 19, 2021 by lmfao

[Nahm]

On 1/15/2021 at 1:46 PM, lmfao said:

Any advice and instruction?

In recognition “I get lost in my mind” is one thought, return attention to feeling breathing from the stomach. In regard to drowsiness, meditate first thing in the morning after a full night’s sleep.