THE MYSTERY OF BEAUTY

From Gregg Braden’s “Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer”

What is beauty? Beauty holds different meanings for different people. When people are asked to defined it, more often than not their response is based on their personal experience. To a scientist, beauty may come in the form of an elegant solution to a mathematical equation. A photographer, on the other hand, may see beauty in the striking contrast between sunlight and shadows in the composition. Albert Einstein saw beauty as an expression of a greater order in creation, stating, for example, “Mozart’s music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.” It is clear that every person’s experience of beauty is unique. For this reason, there may be as many definitions for the experience of beauty as there are people who experience it!  Regardless of how it’s defined in our lives – the power of beauty is real. In its presence, we are changed.

The ancient traditions remind us that beauty exists in all things, regardless of how we interpret them in our daily lives. Beyond an appreciation for the things that are simply pleasing to our eyes, beauty is described by wisdom traditions as an experience that also touches our hearts, minds, and souls. Beauty comes from our willingness to see the perfection in what we often call the “imperfections” of life. To find the beauty in each experience, perhaps our role is less about creating it and more about recognizing that it’s already here. Beauty is always present in all things. It may be found even in places where we believe that beauty could never exist.

As ancient traditions proclaimed, beauty is perhaps the strangest of nature’s forces. Unlike gravity and electromagnetism, which seem to exist with or without us, the power of beauty appears to be dormant until we give it our attention. While it may very well have the power to change our world, that power is asleep until it’s awakened. And we are the only ones who can awaken it! It is awakened only when we acknowledge it in our lives.

In the moments that we reach into the depth of our souls for the power to give new meaning to things that hurt us the most, we discover the great wisdom shared by ancient masters. That wisdom simply reminds us that the power to see beauty is a choice. The choice before us in each moment of everyday is to consider only what we’re shown in the moment, on its own merits, without comparing one experience to another. This is how we plant the seeds of our awareness that become the attractors inviting greater beauty into our lives.

It is only when we compare our actual experience to an idea of what we believe beauty should look like that we’re capable of seeing anything other than the beauty of the moment. We each create our own standard by which we measure the beauty in our lives. The question is, what do you use as a gauge by which you measure balance, success, and failure in your life? What is your yardstick for beauty?

The Way We Choose to See Life

In addition to the beauty that’s inspired by a sunset, a snowcapped mountain peak, or the work of a favorite artist, there are sources of beauty that come purely from the meaning that we give to our experience. In these instances, it’s the way we see life that creates the feeling of beauty within us. The experience of a human birth offers a perfect example. Knowing what the outcome of a woman’s labor will be, changes how we feel about what we see. However, if we could imagine ourselves coming to Earth from a world where the miracle of birth is an unfamiliar experience, witnessing the entire process could be disturbing, maybe even frightening! It’s all about the meaning that we give to our experience.

The principle is simply this: Although we may not have the power to determine what happens in every moment, we do have the power to determine our feelings about what happens. In this way we are given the key to change even the most hurtful experiences into life-affirming wisdom that becomes the foundation of our healing.

Beauty is a transformative power. Through our experience of beauty, we’re given the power to change the feelings that we have in our bodies. Our feelings, in turn, are directly linked to the world beyond our bodies.

The ancients believed that feeling is the single most powerful force in the universe. Feelings, in fact, directly influence the physical matter of our world. So when we say that beauty has the power to change our lives, it’s no exaggeration to say that the beauty also has the power to change our world! The key is that we must find a way to see beyond the hurt, suffering, and pain that the world is showing us and recognize the beauty that already exists in all things. Only then will we have unleashed the potential power in our lives.

Finding Beauty Where Others Find None

To help us in our quest to make sense of things, we’re shown living examples by the great masters of today, as well as of our past. Several years ago the world lost one such master: Mother Teresa. “Mother”, as those close to this great woman would call her, would shuffle down the streets near her home in Calcutta, India, and find beauty where few people believed that beauty could exist. Mother Teresa applied her beliefs to life, and forever changed the stigma attached to the so-called untouchables, the diseased and dying people of India’s streets. Without judging them as “less than” anyone else, she and her Sisters of Charity volunteers would go out each day to search for the people they called “God’s children”. Historically shunned by Indian society, and sometimes even their own families, the sisters would take these people to the hospices that they created to give them dignity in their last remaining hours on Earth. The sisters continue their mission to this day. They are truly angels that walk in this world. This is the power of beauty.

Masters such as Mother Teresa believe that beauty simply exists. It is already here. It is everywhere and always present. Our role is to find that beauty. Life is our opportunity to seek it out and to allow the beauty that we discover it all things – from the deepest hurts to the greatest joys – to become the standard to which we hold our lives and ourselves. Through our ability to perceive beauty in even the “ugliest” moments of life, we may elevate ourselves long enough to give new meaning to our hurt. In this way, beauty is a trigger that launches us into a new perspective. However, it appears to be dormant until we give it our attention. Beauty awakens only when we invite it into our lives.

Life is nothing more, and nothing less than a ‘mirror’ of what we’ve become within. The key to experiencing our lives as beauty, or as pain, rests solely within our ability to become (experience) these qualities in each moment of every day. A growing body of scientific evidence gives renewed credibility to such wisdom, and the powerful role that each of us plays in contributing to the healing, or suffering, in our world. Both science and ancient tradition suggest the very same thing: We must embody in our lives the very conditions that we wish to experience in our world.