Beauty

I need beauty . . .

It is a word that seems to vaporize when I speak it. It is a word that melts into a hundred meanings and ideas. It melts my imagination into transcendence. Poetic harmonies are unlocked just for a fleeting moment and I swoon.

Beauty calls to my higher self. This is the part of me that finds goodness in my everyday world, that urges me to participate in this different reality and to let go of the “to do lists” which are the compass of everyday life. In this fashion, I sense the ineffable gestalt that underlies all creation. Seeing beauty is a way of going beyond the mundane, a peek beyond the burden of survival and its crushing demands.

As I walk along, a stripe of sunlight appears in a dark place. A green leaf with bright spots shakes my attention for an instant, and the veil is lifted. Beauty occurs the moment when I am surprised by the tiny waterfall that lies beyond the blind corner of the road. No human mind can make these moments happen by force or plan. Unearthly perfection and exquisite poetry appear in the ordinary world naively, without pretense and unbidden.

Beauty reminds my higher self to be awake to the existence of harmonies and goodness beyond the naked eye. Beauty and goodness welcome us to develop and evolve in ways heretofore unknown to us. In the same way that I don’t have to prove the earth exists to walk upon it, I don’t have to prove beauty exists or define it to feel its effects upon my being and evolution.

There is no glove soft enough to hold “beauty.” There are no instruments or tools to carefully dissect it or to discover its essence. Yet it is a word that inspires poets, artists of all inclinations and ordinary people, to aspire to its life-affirmative qualities.

And, most importantly, I need beauty to keep me humble.