In my class on research skills students practice oral presentations. One student gave a presentation that was hurried and unclear, the student spoke much too quickly, and the main message of the presentation was lost in the amount of detail shown. I was judgmental and my inclination was to vent criticism. But then I looked more closely and became aware that this student was extremely nervous. The problem was not that this student did not know how to give a presentation; the problem was that he was overcome with nervousness and as a result hurried through the presentation. His insecurity led him to show every possible detail, so nothing was left out. The problem of this student was his lack of self-confidence. I was glad I paused to look carefully at the student, otherwise I made have made his lack of confidence worse by giving harsh criticism. (I must confess I have done that too at times.)
The turning point in the story above is the moment where I paused and carefully looked at the student. Instead of focusing on the outward behavior—the presentation—I looked at the inner person instead of the outward behavior. When we do so, we may get a completely different view of others because we behold their core rather than the outer shell. This shift from the outer person to the inner person is captured by the following quote by Laurens van der Post from his book The Heart of the Hunter.
“Vision is complete only if we saw reality with both the outer and inner eye … I believed one did not know human beings really until one saw them that way as well — in other words, knew them also through a kind of wonder they provoked in one.”
The photo shows Laurens van der Post with one of the native people in the Kalahari Desert. In physical appearance they are completely different, but in his book van der Post explores their common humanity.
Without looking for the inner person, we can be fooled by outward appearances. This is compounded by our tendency to tell ourselves a story about other people. That story may be colored by our biases and expectations which may or may not be correct. We tend to interpret what we see through the lens of our story. But to see more deeply, we must see in a different way. Laurens van der Post calls this seeing with the inner eye. He refers to a way of seeing where you look beyond appearances and sense what goes on within a person. Looking this way takes much practice, here are a few practices that help:
Stop telling yourself a story about the other person. Our eyes don’t just see, much of our sensing happens in our mind where we make sense of the electrical impulses coming from our eyes. We tell ourselves stories all the time, and these internal stories give shape to our reality. But here lies a problem; the stories can be wrong or they can be restrictive. And as a result, our view of others may be wrong or restrictive as well. In the anecdote of the student giving a presentation the story I told myself probably was something like “this student ignored what I have told him.” This reinforced my critical stance. But once I looked more deeply the story changed into “this student is so nervous that he is hurrying and wants to be complete.”
Be quiet. Part of letting go of the story we tell ourselves is to give space for the story to be rewritten. In this process is helps to be quiet. When we are quiet, we suspend the story, which is necessary to develop a grander view of the person. When we are quiet, we also communicate to the other that we are paying attention. And when we do speak up, it helps to ask open-ended questions. That avoids that we project our bias and expectations into the conversation and cloud our view of the other again. Being quiet helps us hear the story behind the story. Healthy listening habits can be found in my newsletter Are you Listening? Many of the listening habits described there apply to seeing as well.
Grow the inner eye. This habit is hard to describe. It is a way of looking at others that focuses on the inner person. It involves seeing beyond the surface. It does not refer to an analytical dissection of body-language, it is much more intuitive than that. The inner eye is also described as the mind’s eye, the spiritual eye, or the third eye. The ability to sense with the inner eye can be developed by gentle looking for what’s below the surface. This is a practice can be grown, mostly by intentional observing while leaning into your intuition.
Most of us already see beyond appearances, but are you willing to further grow your ability to see beyond the surface? You can start by suspending the story you tell yourself about others, by being quiet, and by observing carefully with the inner eye. These habits may reveal unsuspected depth in others, and as described by van der Post, this may also generate a sense of wonder. In addition, these habits help to grow empathy. When you do this, you embody the common saying that “there is more to this than meets the eye.”