Juleigh Howard-Hobson
What mystics call the third eye, science calls the pineal gland (so named because it is shaped like a pine-cone). Located in the center of our brain, it nestles between the hemispheres, right at eye level. If you had to pick a place on the outside of the head to show where it was, you’d point to the middle of the forehead, right between the brows. Exactly where people ranging from Tibetan Lamas to Charles Manson mark their heads.
Although pea sized, this gland profoundly affects bodies and minds through its production of the hormone melatonin which regulates everything from sleep patterns to reproduction to the ability to endure pain.
Additionally, the pineal gland receives visual messages from the eyes and sends them forward to other parts of the brain—our third eye indeed, with both science and mysticism in agreement. It is this mystical aspect that is connected to divinatory vision.
The third eye has been consistently considered throughout the ages as the gateway to heightened visionary states. We are all capable of fully using this gland, this ‘eye’, this tool to finer consciousness, we merely must learn how.
Unlike beginning to read Sanskrit or play the piano, beginning to actively look with our third eye is more akin to learning how to walk, or talk. It is innate—some say instinctual—ability that the vast majority of people have simply not been encouraged to develop much. But, that’s not to say that we cannot develop it to its fullest potential later than sooner.
The fact that you know your third eye exists is enough to begin to awaken it from its mostly unused state. I say mostly unused because seeing with your mind’s eye, trusting a hunch, going with your gut…even letting a daydream take real shape in your mind….are all basic functions of the third eye. We all do use some of it, we just don’t know how much we don’t use all of it.
Meditation of any sort on the 6th chakra (a seat of spiritual power—there are considered to be seven chakras in the human body), which is located right between the eyebrows, is very helpful in ‘kick starting’ an underused third eye: Visualize an eye-opening, visualize power flowing from your feet to your third eye, visualize purple or indigo energies traveling through your body and pushing out negative energies, visualize your forehead growing warm and tingling as your third eye, your pineal gland, begins to function properly and powerfully.
Wearing purple or indigo clothing (both colors traditionally associated with the third eye), and/or eating food like plums and purple grapes will also help with giving power back to your third eye, as will placing a piece of quartz crystal (particularly purple amethyst quartz) on your forehead between your brows for a few minutes a day. Lapis Lazuli – a stone long connected with awareness and insight – is excellent for the awakening of the third eye when worn or even just held during meditation.
The third eye allows us extrasensory aspects of vision, such as clairvoyance, ‘the sight’, and remote viewing, as well as heightened aspects of other extra-senses like physic hearing and precognition. This ability to see and function on other planes of existence beyond what we know as our real world belongs to every one of us. All we need to do is clearly look.
