The Mind's Eye and other Grand Notions

On page 3 of the book "The Enchanted April" that I'm currently reading, there is a reference to both the mind's eye and the bodily eye:

Mrs. Wilkens, having stood some time very drearily, her mind's eye on the Mediterranean in April, and the wisteria, and the enviable opportunities of the rich, while her bodily eye watched the really extremely horrible sooty rain falling steadily on the hurrying umbrella and splashing omnibuses, suddenly wondered ...

I'd never thought much about the first expression before but seeing it juxtaposed with the second got me "thinking" because it's the mind's eye that causes so much trouble in meditation. I'm not currently using any open eye meditations and so when I meditate I close my bodily eyes and then the third eye, that does indeed seem to be in middle of the forehead, takes over and supplies an endless stream of images that prove a formidable distraction.

What I've tried to do most recently in meditating is to unfocus my mind's eye so that I'm aware of the stream of images but I try not to focus on any of them as they pass by. This has not proved too hard to do but ideas still arise as my mind then exercises itself in other, subtler ways. For example, if a meditation session is going well, the idea soon arises that it is going well and my mind then starts to explore that idea. What did I do today that made it go well? How can I repeat that tomorrow? If I shake these ideas off then my ego soon steps in with notions like "yes, you're really getting the hang of this meditation business now, soon you'll be a champion meditator" and so on.

I like to use the term notion to describe the ideas that my ego is continuously generating about itself, other people and the world around itself. A lot of psychic energy is invested in creating and defending these notions.

While watching a cannonball's motion,
Galileo conceived of the notion
That natural laws,
Not a mystical Cause,
Ruled the physical world's locomotion
(source)

A notion can be defined as an odd or fanciful or capricious idea (source) and most of the ego's notions would seem to be of this sort. The notions that I formulate about myself may be at variance with the notions that other people form of me. This can lead to conflicts of course when a notion that I have of myself is challenged by somebody else. I certainly have a notion of myself as being honest and if someone were to suggest that I was dishonest I would take offence. I might form the notion that they were lying or mad or possessed of ulterior motives.

However, as that old rascal Barry Long pointed out "you are only honest at the moment of being conscious of the opportunity of being dishonest". What this implies is that my notion of being honest as a character trait is a total fabrication. I can only be honest (or dishonest) in that moment when I am faced with the possibility of being one or the other. I can't be a constant state of being honest, that's nonsense. If someone accuses me of dishonesty then it is presumably in relation to a specific incident and that can be dealt with. If someone accuses me of being a dishonest person without reference to any specific incidents, then they have clearly formed a notion of me and that's beyond my control. To the extent that I'm free of notions like "I am an honest person" then I'll be saving energy and reducing the risk of conflict with others.

Of course when faced in the future with the choice of being honest or dishonest, hopefully I'll choose to be honest but each situation needs to be considered on its merits. The mother who steals food to feed her starving children is technically being dishonest but most would argue that the situation justifies her being dishonest. In the past, this mother may have been scrupulously honest and prided herself in the notion that she is a scrupulously honest person. If she clings too strongly to that notion, she may decide not to steal the food and her children might die. In this case, the notion she had formed of herself was an impediment to her taking appropriate action in the situation. In less dramatic ways, our notions of ourselves limit and constrain our responses and bring us into conflict with others who hold conflicting notions.