Eyeset

I recall the arrival of the term “mindset” on the consumer level of American language.  

Now it is commonplace, universally taken to mean how we think about things--how we regard things, by choice as well as nature & nurture.   

It can be learned/ taught.

In these hypervisual times, we also need to consider eyeset; because the eye does more than the miraculous job of seeing.  It looks.  Faster than you can stop it.  That’s what makes illusions work.  This too can be learned/trained.

If you think this hasn’t already been done to virtually everyone in this culltour (sic), then it has like totally worked on you, dude!

Actually a part of the brain from the womb, and interacting with intelligence via stunning electrochemistry, my eye is constantly scanning (even as I dream!), registering all it sees, focusing as interest indicators increase, then responding like lightning to something in the periphery, then darting back to the exact location on which it had focused.

Point is, my eye learned what to seek, so it can be re-taught.  It took all your life to get it ingrained; so, short of miraculous deliverance (as with my tobacco addiction), this may be your cross, a trial of faith, or just a long time overcoming. 

It took an embarrassingly long time to train my eye not to respond to certain stimuli—not to look. There is, of course, a scriptural term for this problem. 
Lust of the eye is a trainable, controllable force.  The media know this.  It is their business.  It must also be ours if we are ever to “come out from among them” in any way. 

We have scriptural encouragements galore in the areas of mindset and “eyeset.”

“I will set no evil thing before my eyes.”  Set?  Remind you of anything?

I wondered about that for a long time, that choice of words, but it holds up everywhere I’ve looked.  Evidently, in what we think of as “Bible times,” there was something folks put up to look at that wasn’t nice.  They set it there, and admired it, perhaps.

Forty years of personal study convinced me that the translation we need is the one in our hands, and that the odd coincidence of certain archaic terms as they now relate to current language is not, in fact, coincidence.  Like the words “talent” or “set.”

Some folks had a radio set, when the medium was new, but most soon just had radios.  Same with television.  Everyone who watched TV had a TV set.  Sure, we all say “TV,” for both the item and the medium, but ads still say “TV set” or “television set.”  The tuner must be “set” and then the screen must be “set” in a place where we can conveniently gaze upon its seductions.   

I will set no wicked thing before my—children? 

 “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Good advice, no doubt, but how exactly?

Motivational “experts” in the flesh know that our mindset is repairable, even replaceable.  We have user access to reprogram conscious, voluntary operating systems.  We can change our mind.

Bombarded by powerful engineered images as we all are, we owe it to ourselves to learn to retrain our eyeset, utilizing the powerful mind/eye relationship, and become wise to the machine and protect ourselves from it.

Watch it.  Don’t relax in front of it.  Watch it, skip everything you can, mute commercials, and don’t look!  Don’t just accept programming, choose it.  Then watch it not as one entranced, but as one studying it for glimpses of the truth.

Better yet, think of it as the monitor for your DVD/DVR and select only edifying/educational material.  Even then, stay alert to the mind altering effects of the flickering image. 

Seriously.  Start being aware of hypervisual techniques, and resist while you still can.

 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  No, I’m not trying to be funny. Retrain your mindset and eyeset for a new set of pleasures.  The creation is full of them, as is the world of art, if you seek them out.  “Seek, and you shall find.”

If you are a Christian video producer at any level, I beseech and exhort you to stop the quick cutting, flashing, whip panning, and rapid zooming in and out. 
“Be not conformed to the (very) image of this world!”
Don’t give “as the world gives.”  

Become part of the solution, not a panderer.   

Take a look at your eyeset, and how it’s trained.

This week's sight for sore eyes is another Tim Hawkins clip: