If I ask you to recall something beautiful, what comes to mind – an interaction, a place, an object of devotion, an event? Did the original experience have a positive affect on you? Does revisiting that experience have the power to affect you again?
My experience of beauty often takes me to a place of wonder – a place of such enormous splendor that it outstrips my ability to describe it. Beauty seems to have the ability to stop me in my tracks, to stop the world from turning, to hold my thoughts in suspension.
Once when I was meditating, I happened to reflect upon something beautiful and noticed it had the affect of turning off my internal dialogue. I was able to hover in that state for a while. I was so enthused by the experience, I thought, “I’ll have to read a book about this approach.” It was such a powerful experience and the effects were so transcendent, I assumed it was an established path to enlightenment. But when I looked, I couldn’t find anything specific about it, not along the lines of what I expected anyway. I decided I would just have to continue to investigate on my own.
Since then I have been building more beauty into my life and noticing its tremendous ability to bring me closer to God. This blog is an exploration of ideas on how anyone may bring more beauty into their life, so that you also may experience the upward currents of this approach.
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okaihaujardin on said:
Reminded me of a story my sister once related to me over the phone: When I was about five, my family visited a missionary friend of my parent’s in San Francisco and I went missing. My sister was sent out to look for me and she found me in their greenhouse quietly sitting, fully transfixed by the surrounding flowers. She said I seemed to be in a state of transcendence. I had no remembrance of this event, but when I got off the phone I started to weep, as I found myself emotionally and viscerally transported back to its essence. The accuracy of my sister’s memory was not important; the experience of beauty was somewhere touched and embedded in my psyche. H
cr8vkat on said:
For me beauty is experienced as a feeling of “open heart.” I had a strong surge of it when I first moved to Portland and the sun was out as I crossed the Steele Bridge seeing my new town and knowing I had done the right thing to move here. This experience made me start to notice, when my heart is open and takes in the beauty around me…a true blessing!
Check out “Beauty and the Soul” as it looks at this important topic. Beauty requires us to be open, but perhaps it is why we are here. Enjoy! http://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Soul-Extraordinary-Power-Everyday/dp/1585428337