So this has become part of my nature, I find beauty… everywhere… absolutely everywhere. The Only challenge is that I get Very over excited at the sheer abundance of beauty in this life.
It is ridiculously Easy for me to find beauty in nature, I look at Anything in nature and see the perfection that unfurls right in front of me. It’s easy to find endless beauty in a sunset or the ocean or the clouds or Even the texture of the rain and maybe even the sharpness of the wind.
When I am around trees, I not only see each one and really admire it but changing textures and patterns, light and shade and how it is never the same and the energies that swirl. I sense the trees and the plants and the water and the earth and the sky humming and singing and calling my attention to so many different things. It’s hard to walk past everything without seeing so very much and being so excited and wanting to take pictures of Everything I see.
If there is beauty, what about duality, is there ugliness? Can I find that as well? If there is something that I find that I don’t instantly open my heart to, can I sit with it as it is and witness it? Can I drop the labels about any preference at all? Can I find something to praise about it, or something to be grateful for and does that change my relating to whatever it is in any way?
How easy is it to find beauty in the man made? In the middle of a cityscape perhaps? What about in a grey concrete street under a grey sky? OK I live in one of the most beautiful cities, Edinburgh, and it feels Incredibly easy in the middle of a city as well. I don’t differentiate with this place and a wild forest as it feels there is no separation, everything is the same. Same atoms, different vibration, rhythm and dance but at some fundamental level, the same.
My father was an architect and taught me so much about buildings, design, form and aesthetics. A building does not have to be some mind-blowing temple for me, I’ll still find the beauty in a line or a curve or a texture or shadow or use of material. Just because it is made up of steel and concrete and glass doesn’t make it any less or more than the trees in the forest. I don’t see something as beautiful and something else as not, it’s all just as it is, Even the perfection of a bird dropping on a window, Even there! Yes I can have preferences but I am not limited to my choice of noticing were beauty presents.
I work in an office that is corporate and functional and there’s a lot of grey. What do I notice? Beauty! Yes I bring in colour and I have an orchid and a mug I find very pleasing but it’s in the rest as well - it’s in the grain and texture of my desk, the pattern of scuff marks on the door which tells a story of use, the same with stain blobs in the carpet that I can see shapes in, it’s in the design of my pen, the texture of the metal banister beneath my hand as I walk up the stairs. the abundance of art everywhere that people just walk past and don’t see, the places the light comes in and the plants used. It’s only ugly is that’s what you have in you and what you look for, but turn it around and there is Nothing but Wonder even in a corporate building.
I played with the game of noticing at my friend’s house. We were repeating our meditation course which we often do and I was invited to find something in the room that I maybe didn’t like so I could praise it or feel gratitude for it. The room was large and full of all sorts of very eclectic items. I looked and searched and hunted and tried really really hard to find something I didn’t like. There was Nothing that my heart was closed to, not a mark or a cobweb or a pipe poking through a wall or an old book a painting or an object or Any of the people in the space, including myself. I saw the majesty in the totality of Everything Exactly as it was, without trying to change it or make it something different or hide it. Every molecule felt supremely divine and just as it should be.
That is the way with people as well. I used to look at myself, in the mirror or in pictures and not find a thing I could sit with comfortably and would avoid looking at pictures completely. Now, without changing wardrobe, size, weight, hair colour, the whole glorious aging process, I can sit with Everything Exactly as it is. Nothing to compare with any others, nothing to be in competition about. Just a collection of atoms jiggling in a certain vibration that expresses as this person in this moment. What a tingling, radiant miracle of life!
I take the bus every day and I am amazed at the beauty all around me and how these souls have No clue so very often at how incredible they are and how I see their light shine so incredibly. I see people who appear with all sorts of illusionary masks on to try and hide the truth of their Divine beauty and I see through them to who they really are, I’m not interested in their behavior or their appearance, I see underneath all that. We are all the same… radiance.
Today I went for my usual lunchtime walk and went a different route. I passed the docks with all the bustle and noise of industry and I felt incredibly calm and very still and at peace in such contentment marveling at the abundance of beauty and splendour around me. I noticed the pollution in the river and That is something I could Easily get triggered and deeply affected by but Even there I could look at it and notice it exactly as it was, drop the labels and the commentary and allow whatever energy to move through without attachment and Not let it affect my peace!
Look for beauty Everywhere and you may just be surprised at what you find. Maybe you might find a smile creep across your face as you begin to notice.