Interestingly, even though I recall being aware of my squint at some point long ago, it never occurred to me that this could have any importance other than cosmetic. It is not that I have been even aware of it at all times - in fact, I would forget about it for years, then recall, then forget again, then recall again. I also misinterpreted the concept of a "dominant eye", thinking that the eye is dominant if when I close it, the image shifts.
So here we have two issues. One is fusion, including but not limited to the issue of binocular vision. The other issue is what happens with the mind when it sees two incoherent images.
Last week I tried looking at the "Magic Eye" pictures once again. I have never been able to see anything there but what was plainly seen with each eye in isolation. Last time I tried to look at those pictures was long ago, and of course, I was not thinking about squint, nor about binocular vision. After all, I guess, I didn't really know what binocular vision was, and there were too many other things I couldn't do well (like noticing mushrooms), so I didn't attach much importance to being unable to see the "Magic Eye" pictures.
Anyway, I tried looking through the picture, moving the picture back and forth and changing the angle. I also tried pulling the contents of the picture through my eyes into the upper visual cortex. I did not see what they meant for me to see, but this time (last week) I certainly did see something 3-dimensional. First of all, I found that at some angles the picture became like a surface in space, and I saw shades as if the sun was shining from above. Then, as I kept experimenting, the pattern of the picture started to expand up in space and to form various spacious configurations. As I slowly turned the picture upside down, the configurations also slowly turned, and then started falling down in chunks, into nothingness. It was all objectively seen in the sense that I could stay with the image and it would stay the same, as long as I was not doing anything. I could move a little bit, and the image would change a little bit. Also,I could blink my eyes, focus on the page, and then all constructions would disappear.
I played with these things for a couple of days but couldn't get anything other than weird spatial configurations, and those only from some pictures in the book. Somehow my use patterns were too strong and I had to do something with them.
Then on Sunday evening I was again looking at the Magic Eye pictures. I found a point where my eyes actively started to compete. That is, they started to switch back and forth on their own: left suppressing right, and then right suppressing left. The rate was several times a second, back and forth. I was only moving the page a little bit and trying to relax the eyes, hoping the visual system would figure it out. I did it for a total of maybe a minute or several minutes, taking a few short breaks.
I slept very well and felt good on Monday morning. However, a little later I started to feel sick and tired. I guess it can be described as fairly strong headache, unclear vision, and some loss of spatial orientation. I also felt overly sensitive to many things, in particular, I picked up tension from other people at work who were worried or nervous. I felt totally uninterested in anything. My squint became really obvious for other people. Particularly, when the right eye was centered (the right eye is usually deviating to the side and the left is usually centered), the left eye would go all the way to the outside of the left eye and stay there.
I tried to get back to the old mode of suppressing the right eye and using only the left one, when I could at least see clearly in the distance, but couldn't find a way. (Note that my right side is overextended and tends to take over when seeing things far away, yet somehow I have been using the left eye for seeing in the distance for quite some time.) At some point as I was walking somewhere in the building I noticed how my shoulders suddenly collapsed forward without any apparent reason, and at the same time I felt tension in the lower back. I undid both things right away, since I was not really in the mood for self-study. All this time my mind felt messy and full of clutter, and I had no motivation for anything.
After 2 pm I took a break from work for a yoga class (in the same building), as I often do on Mondays. It somewhat relieved the dizziness and the anxiety, and it also brought the eyes much more together (as seen in the mirror), which surprised me. I still felt pretty bad, though, and was often checking my eyes using my phone as a mirror, but not as often as before the yoga class. (Perhaps, once every 3-5 minutes instead of every minute.) Also, the headache diminished somewhat. (Although, technically, this did not feel like headache, but this is the best term to describe it.)
One positive thing of all that experience was that I was not "trying to look at something", since this was impossible. Basically, I didn't quite know where to look. Instead of one picture I saw maybe fifteen pieces arranged somehow in space, and I was constantly wrong with respect to how far to move my eyes to see something. This felt like inhibition in Alexander Technique, except that I did not have to inhibit anything. So, I guess, better to say that it felt like repatterning.
A little later I looked at one of the keyboards, at the lowest row of letters with "Z, X, C, ...".
I noticed that when I moved my hand from left to right or from right to left in front of the keyboard, the letters on the keys would change. Thus, instead of Z, X, C, V, ... I would maybe see V, X, B, C, or something like that. The keys were fixed in place, but the letters were moving from place to place, or morphing one into another, or blinking back and forth.
When I looked into my cellphone as a mirror once again, for some reason, I had a pen in my other hand, and I looked at the reflection of the tip of the pen as it moved. Strangely enough, it brought my eyes together very quickly, and I could see it since the reflection of the tip of the pen was fairly close to the reflection of my face. I found it particularly helpful to bring the pen into the visual field from the side of the deviating eye, so the deviating eye gets "picked up" and brought into the center.
That day later I went for my ballet class. Before the class I felt much better than during the day. The eyes were somewhat together, although I felt that this condition was somewhat temporary. Recalling the experience with the reflection of a pen, I "took" my pinky finger and started slowly moving it from the side through the peripheral vision of the right eye and further to the left. My right was solely following the finger until it got to the point where the left eye wanted to take over. I slowed down and tried to keep some tension in the right eye so it does not relax completely. I moved the finger very slowly to the left until something changed, then I stopped and just kept looking at it without changing anything. The right side of the finger remained the same, but the left got illuminated with a white glow. I was not sure if that was a true fusion or not, however, four hours later the eyes remained very much together, as judged by my reflection in a mirror, much more together than during the retreat, so I concluded it was true fusion. I also felt much more focused and much of the anxiety disappeared.
I tried looking at Magic Eye pictures again. This time I didn't really see much there, that is, no weird effects. However, I experienced a certain integration, that is, I felt that both sides actively resisted seeing these weird effects, since it was pulling them apart. I felt a certain amount of muscular tension in the eyes, or muscular work. I also felt more personally engaged in the process, that it was me looking at the picture (and not seeing anything), rather than the picture acting on my eye muscles.
However, I was able to fuse two coins into one. I placed one hand between my eyes to separate the images. In order to check the fusion, I took a pen with the other hand and used it to touch the single coin that I was seeing from both sides. It allowed me to notice when one eye was suppressing the other. In fact, my mind turned out to be very inventive. Recall that I had two coins, on the left and on the right. My mind imagined a third coin to the right from the rightmost one, and then it "fused" the left coin with the imaginary coin into the right coin, thus suppressing one of the eyes, yet giving me what I asked for... However, I am pretty sure that I was able to achieve some kind of fusion, since every time I stopped, I would suddenly see two coins in totally unexpected places. Also, when I rotated one coin a little bit so the images did not quite match, I became virtually unable to see one coin instead of two coins.
Eventually the eyes disconnected, but somehow they acquired a tendency to come together without any apparent reason. That is, one eye would deviate, but then I would just look at several different things, and the eyes would be much more together. It seems that when this tendency is there, many methods such as eye exercises or the vision dance, or just looking around, reinforce this tendency. However, without this tendency you can just keep seeing with one eye.
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