Visual disorders also may be linked to negative conditioning. Some people who wear glasses are consciously aware of fluctuations in their vision according to emotional state or time of day. Let's take a case of nearsightedness. A two-year-old is taken to the zoo by his mother and father, and falls asleep on his mother's shoulder. As she speaks with her husband, she happens to turn so that the sleeping baby is facing the lion's cage. Before anyone realizes what has happened, the lion has come to the part of the cage nearest the baby and let out a deafening roar. The baby is startled into waking and finds himself faced with the lion's gaping jaws. He feels confused and extremely frightened. He now turns his head and sees his mother. As he does, his level of tension begins to decrease; he feels safer. In order to see his mother, however, his eyes must focus down from the distance at which he has seen the lion to the near focus of his mother. As we have all seen babies do, he turns back from the safety of Mother's arms to look at the frightening thing again and then rapidly back toward his mother for reassurance.
Each time that he looks at the lion, his eyes go to far vision and he feels tension. Each time that he looks at his mother, his eyes go to near vision and he feels a release of tension. Thus we have the beginning of a conditioning that can grow stronger and stronger throughout his life. The association of fear with the focusing of his eyes on a distant point may be reinforced by similar events, and by the time he is six or eight years old, he may notice that when he is very frightened or angry that his vision seems blurry. One would expect, from his conditioning, that situations requiring him to deal with difficult things that are at a distance would tend to elicit the program of fear and the focusing of the eyes to a near point as an escape behavior. This prevents the mind from seeing the object. When he reaches puberty and dating time comes around, he is faced with quite a challenge outside his home. This is one of the major times for youngsters to become so nearsighted that they need glasses-the time when they begin to become involved with things away from home. Or if the boy should be placed in a class that is too advanced, the pressure could produce a deterioration of vision; the blackboard could slip into blurriness. I have found that following the inductions at my seminars, some people have become so relaxed that they have been able to see perfectly without their glasses. In addition, others have experienced, through explorations, an improvement in their vision.
You can see the way in which various diseases can be produced through these mechanisms. It merely requires that a situation of unpleasant emotion be associated with incoherent patterns related to a particular organ. As this emotional state is repeated, the incoherent information is programmed more and more strongly, until finally an actual disease may occur in this part of the body. Of course, before performing an Exploration, we can never be sure whether the visual problem will be resolved, for many visual problems are not caused or maintained by negative programming. But we must consider the possibility that there is negative condi-tioning involved any time a disease becomes repetitive or chronic, as in the case of inadequate focusing of the eyes. In general, peo-ple who are aware of their vision changing occasionally especially in relation to their emotional state, stand the best chance of improving their vision through exploration and deconditioning.