On Beauty

Onto the ninth technique, meaning that I have been here in Moldova for nine months-wow! Hard to imagine the day when I will be writing about the 27th technique (which is "Omnipresent Splendor" so good thing I have plenty of time to chew on that)! I decided to stop titling these Ascension posts as "Techniques" and am moving to simply using the technique as a topic and in doing so, relating that topic back to how it leads us straight to our highest Self.

Beauty

The word itself can conjure up a vast array of images.  Close your eyes and silently repeat the word.  What do you see?  Perhaps a woman with any number of appealing physical traits, a flower, beauty products like cosmetics and perfume, the goddesses Venus and Aphrodite, a beauty salon, a sunny beach, a mountain view...and the list goes on.  What each of these images or ideas has in common is that they ignite something within us that is either pleasing, painful, or both.

Beauty is actually very useful, as I discovered in pondering my own karma with the subject. I used to think it was shallow. "Beauty is only skin deep" is a saying many of us liken to when we have been hurt because something we thought was beautiful/nice/kind turned out to be quite the opposite. But here's the catch 22...everything is beautiful and everything has the potential to be painful.  That is the duality of the world we live in.  You want to look beautiful, so you feel sad if you don't.  You want to live in big beautiful home, but your small apartment makes you feel cramped and unsuccessful. Whatever your longing may be, it is the beauty that we imagine outside of us that lures us to that thing.  And henceforth, when we realize that the beauty we see around us is just a reflection of our inner beauty and that the ugly we see around us the same, we can embrace that all is both.  But beauty draws us, hopefully in the end, to truth/love/peace.

"A candle loses nothing of itself in lighting another candle" ~Thomas Jefferson

As I began to point to earlier, beauty can stir us some not-so-appealing emotions, usually in the form of envy or jealousy. To tackle this broad subject I once again turn to my sixteen-year-old self for a piece of writing that came about when in the abyss of a time of jealousy, high school:

-----How do we become lonely, surrounded by the constant beauty, that of the earth? No matter where we may find ourselves, there is beauty. There is beauty in life. All aspect of what gift we have been given as living on this earth, are beautiful.

Now there are factors that can mask the beauty that lies beneath. Hatred, jealousy, and most of all hurt and pain. The hardest thing of all is to rise above these emotions. To rise above all these things and to make special care to notice the light, the love, that surrounds our planet.-----

The Buddha said, “When we find the way, we find the beautiful here and now, and know what beauty really is.”  To me this says that when we find our way, when we “ascend”, we are no longer grasping for some elusive ideal outside of ourselves. When our heart is no longer grasping, beauty is all that is left.

In the end, beauty attracts us and so draws us to connect-with one another and with our world. Let kindness be your beauty secret!

Om tat sat.