It’s very difficult to recognize sin, prejudices, or hatred once it has been normalized, once we’ve grown cozy with it. Perhaps this is why the Bible speaks so much about blindness: if we’re honest, every one of us is loaded with blind spots, inherited from culture and past traumas and our desire to protect our own egos and prerogatives over and against the needs of others. Acknowledging some degree of spiritual blindness is certainly unsettling, and when our specific blind spots are revealed to us there may be pain involved, but it need not make us feel ashamed. After all, every single one of us spends a lifetime learning how to see with God’s eyes. However, understanding that we are never fully capable of seeing the reality of things does reveal why contemplative practices like Centering Payer place such heavy emphasis on letting go of expectations and preconditions. To the extent that these remain active in our prayer, they continue to blind us to God’s presence and action of God is our world, in ourselves, and in those around us. We continue to see God through the same narrow lenses given to us by a lifetime of conditions and assumptions – and any sort of narrowing is too narrow to see God on God’s own terms. Contemplative practices offer real opportunity to encounter the fullness of God, and to let that encounter transform our perception!