The spiritual depth of occupation: making worlds and making lives.

W hen it comes to discerning a spiritual dimension in occupational therapy, it helps to consider the kind of seeing that causes three-dimensional picrures to emerge from designs called steteograms. Stereograms are patrerns of brightly rendered bands or figures, their overall effect much like gift wrapping. Experts give this cue for finding the rhird dimension: Gaze through the patrern to some point beyond it (Baccei, 1994). This broad way of seeing, freed from a fix on details but still led by them, yields a vibrant picture. The discovery is awesome. The dimensionaliry of the srereogram can go unnoriced. Because the deep dimension emerges only when a viewer knows how to look, the term that best fits the requisite looking is discemment, an act of seeing through or seeing into that yields discovery (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1993). The patterns of occupation and occupational therapy seem much like srereograms. Within them is a depth nOt always seen.