posted May 11, 2014 05:38 PM            

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this book is also for

Nona

with one perfect snowflake

for endless galaxies of reasons

Nahtan the apple of my "I"

Dr. Charles A. Muses whose wisdom never fails

Sally. . . Bill . . . . Michael . . . and Jill

and in loving memory of

Sam 0. Goodman

". . and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death . . ."

REVELATION 21:4

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I consulted with Brewer, who said:

The Apple of one’s eye is the pupil, because it was formerly believed to be a round, solid ball like an apple. The phrase came to apply generally to any very precious or much loved person or thing.

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Meaning
Originally meaning the central aperture of the eye. Figuratively it is something, or more usually someone, cherished above others.

Origin
'The apple of my eye' is exceedingly old and first appears in Old English in a work attributed to King Aelfred (the Great) of Wessex, AD 885, titled Gregory's Pastoral Care.

Much later, Shakespeare used the phrase in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1600:

Flower of this Purple dye,
Hit with Cupid’s archery,
Sink in apple of his eye

It also appears several times in the Bible; for example, in Deuteronomy 32:10

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

and in the Book of Psalms 17:8

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy Wings

The original Hebrew for this idiom, in all but Zechariah 2:8, was 'iyshown 'ayin (אישון עין , and can be literally translated as "Little Man of the Eye." This is a reference to the tiny reflection of yourself that you can see in other people's pupils. Other KJV translations of the word 'iyshown include dark and obscure, as a reference to the darkness of the pupil.

This Hebrew idiom is surprisingly close to the Latin version, pupilla, which means a little doll, and is a diminutive form of pupus, boy, or pupa, girl (the source also for our other sense of pupil to mean a schoolchild.) It was applied to the dark central portion of the eye within the iris because of the tiny image of oneself, like a puppet or marionette, that one can see when looking into another person's eye.

The phrase was known from those early sources but became more widely used in the general population when Sir Walter Scott included it in the popular novel Old Mortality, 1816:

"Poor Richard was to me as an eldest son, the apple of my eye."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_of_my_eye

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The Eyes are the windows to the soul...

&

...Apples don’t fall far from the tree.

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Proverb - the apple does not fall far from the tree

1. A child grows up to be very similar to its parents, both in behavior and in physical characteristics.

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Pears don‘t fall far from the tree either--especially a pear who definitely has her mother‘s eyes!!!...

posted May 14, 2014 12:58 AM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
Yep, but I think she used it in her poetry also.

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You mean this?

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Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning were Twin Selves, and Elizabeth's familiar sonnet, How do I Love Thee? has a karmic theme...as does this portion of a Rossetti poem...

I have been here before...
I know the grass beyond the door
*********the sweet, keen smell
the sighing sound, the lights around the shore

you have been mine before
though how or when I cannot tell
yet, just when at that swallow's soar
*******your neck turned so...
I knew it all of yore.

though age, faith or creed
may keep us now apart...
one travels the hill, th other, the lake
I claim you still for my own love's sake
delayed 'though it may be for more lives yet
much is to learn, much forget
e're the time be come for taking you
but the time will come...oh, yes !
*************************the time will come

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As for the fourteenth line in these Rossetti verses, such reunion need not be "delayed...for more lives yet." When lovers understand how to employ the law of Karma, the waiting may not be necessary, fulfillment is attainable in the present incarnation for both...when they listen to the whispers of the Higher Angels of themselves...and forgive one another.

If you ever happen to be debating the truth of reincarnation or Karma with someone who denies its existence, ask that person to explain or to account for deja vu, those inexplicable, yet very vivid and very real-and often very provable flashes of another time...another place...striking one unexpectedly. Such deja vu recall has been experienced by millions of both private and public people, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Henry Ford, General Patton and many others. You can read about what happened to convince them of the truth of Karma in the books listed in the Pilgrim's Progress
section following Chapter 9, among them, Reincarnation in World Thought , edited by Cranston and Head-or their second book, The Phoenix Fire Mystery , especially the first one, my personal favorite, although the second one is equally enlightening. They may be out of print now, but any good used bookstore should be able to locate them for you through its "grapevine."

A postscript: While writing this chapter, I found another dictionary in my den, and I was right about blaming Merriam instead of Webster for the definition of Karma I gave you earlier ! This dictionary is called Webster's New World Dictionary -no mention of Merriam. The Webster definition, while still a touch chauvinistic, omits transmigration, and it gives a clear and correct meaning of the word.

KARMA: the totality of a person's actions in any one of the successive states of his existence, thought of as determining his fate in the next.

"Quite"

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