The human soul is hungry for beauty; we seek it everywhere – in landscape, music, art, clothes, furniture, gardening, companionship, love, religion, and in ourselves. No one would desire not to be beautiful. When we experience the beautiful, there is a sense of homecoming. 

– John O’Donohue

Lately I’ve been thinking about beauty. It started recently in a course I’m taking called The Heart of Your Business, with Mark Silver.

In the course, which is rooted in the Sufi practices and principles Mark has studied for many years, we regularly practice Remembrance, a type of calling in or remembering the Divine through our heart. Early on, Mark explained that we all have the qualities of the divine within, and that we each have a unique expression of it, which is our particular “jewel.”

Our jewel, he says, is already there within us but it may be hidden due to lack of remembrance or consciousness. In our business, it’s that jewel that we want to bring forth, express and offer to others. And it’s a quality we need to nourish ourselves as much as it is something we want to give.

So while sitting in Remembrance, Mark had us ask to be shown our jewel. Once shown our jewel, he suggested that on a daily basis we sit in Remembrance, feel our thirst for that jewel, and then ask to drink it in.

It’s not something to manufacture or to understand with the mind, he explained, but something we are shown, that we feel with the heart and can be filled up by.

Although to be honest, I don’t yet feel 100% at home in this practice, I have experienced Remembrance as powerful. In the Jewel exercise, I was shown the quality of beauty. I experienced it as a sensation deep in my body, a knowing that went beyond anything my mind had conjured up, so I think I ‘got it right.’

One of the 99 names of the Divine in Sufism, Al-Musawwir is “the Shaper of Beauty.”

OK then.

Of course my mind wants to leap in there to figure out what it means:

What is beauty, actually?
Why does beauty matter?
Who am I to be a “Shaper of Beauty”?
How and where can I drink in beauty in the “real” world outside of my Remembrance practice, especially at this time?
How do I offer it in my business?

These questions. And more.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. I offer this to you with the intention that it might provide you with an opening to see some new, or different, or more, beauty in your own life, something that offers solace when you sense only darkness or struggle.

I start with these thoughts…

Beauty is much more than an aesthetic, although it can be that.

Beauty is an inherent quality of the sacred feminine. It is what emanates from us when we are lit up and fully alive. We surely know this by now, although it might take some reminding from time to time. It has nothing to do with the clothes or makeup we wear. (And yes, we can enhance beauty with those things, as well as with healthy routines such as skin care, optimal nutrition and physical exercise.) It has nothing to do with youth and doesn’t leave us with age. It is a reflection of what is at our core, and that expands with age.

Beauty can inspire wonder, joy, reverence, gratitude and open heartedness essential to our wellbeing. It can inspire surrender.

Beauty can be found in the routine and the ordinary.

Beauty is effortlessly sourced in nature. And let’s not forget, we are nature.

Beauty is a perspective. And so to some degree, where we find it and whether we find it is a choice. We cannot find it if we are not looking for it, if we are not open to it.

Confucius said: Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Everything?

I decide to take this reflection on beauty out with me into nature. We’ve been gifted with a series of exceptionally warm days for October in Toronto, so I’ve been spending a bit of extra time at the beach. I head out with my iPhone 5 camera and a notebook with the question, “Where is beauty found?”

I am looking for the beauty behind, beneath, beyond — what might not look traditionally pleasing to the eye.

Here’s some of what caught my eye.

Sunlight and shadow, buds and decaying leaves are a beautiful reminder of wholeness

There’s something about this scattering of broken concrete, and the way the leaves nestle in around it.

Rust and metal seem to enhance the golden glow of these leaf “petals”

Green peeps out from beneath the bonfire ash in the same way it reveals itself under a blanket of snow in late winter.

Stones, debris and a carpet of algae add interest to the shoreline.

As phlox blooms begin their descent back into the earth, the monarchs prepare for their journey south.

Decayed leaves take refuge in a broken boardwalk slat

Even this muddied mess carries the reflection of the park tree

Though I prefer the bloom and green of spring and summer, I can see beauty in all the cycles of nature — the decaying of a flower, the aging process, even in dying and death. Without the fall and winter, I would not see the full beauty of the return of spring.

While I can see no beauty in the act of terrorism or violent crime, I can see beauty in the aftermath, the coming together in common humanity to help and support each other.

While I may see beauty in the elements of earth, water, wind and fire, I struggle to find it when those elements become a destructive force causing loss of lives, homes, a basic sense of stability. But I also know some things must die away for the new to be born, and there is a kind of beauty in that.

In times of turmoil, finding something of beauty can bring us back to a sense of equilibrium. It can re-tether us to what is more deeply true than the experience we are having. If I can sense beauty in the potential of what is waiting for us at the end of this struggle, I will have the strength to do the inner and outer work that’s required to get there.

Beauty is something we can capture and express through our creativity. This doesn’t just include “happy” paintings, poems and other forms of art, but also what’s painful and difficult. We must take to our own art, especially when we feel lost or broken.

Seeing beauty in “the other” might offer a means to resolve conflict and a pathway to peace.

And then there’s this, from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran:

…And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear.
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

…beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
But you are life and you are the veil.
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

What I understand from this is that there is so much more beauty in the world than what we can see with our eyes, or what we can know with our mind. Perhaps if we hold this truth in our hearts we can allow it to shore us up when the coming winter feels like it will be too long, when we doubt that the transformation we long for in ourselves or our world will be birthed.

I think this is saying that beauty is, that we are, an expression of love.

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Where do you find beauty? How do you cultivate it in your daily life? 

Please share in the comments below.