Beauty

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There are plenty of days when I really have to work it to get my spirits up. I have a beautiful altar with images and statues of all five of the archetypal deities I'm working with right now: Green Tara, Kali, Isis, Mahakala and the Medicine Buddha. Every morning, I light candles and incense, ring my Tibetan bell, and settle into a self-healing active imagination session followed by a meditation in which I follow my breath and notice thoughts floating by. I experience inner beauty during these times that deeply inspires me, and gets me through tough days.

Here's a picture of my altar. When I'm not sitting in meditation, my bunny meditates for me.

If I didn't connect in to Spirit every day, I'd be in pretty bad shape, considering what I've already been through and what I'm facing. There are so many ways to connect in, and I know that this is just my way. My partner, Ken, connects in through nature. He goes on walks every day and communes with Spirit through the powerful beauty of the elements. I strongly feel that when we connect in with beauty on the earth plane, we directly connect in with Spirit. John O'Donohue in his masterful work, Beauty, The Invisible Embrace, puts it this way: 

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. Some of our most wonderful memories are of beautiful places where we felt immediately at home. We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul. For a while the strains of struggle and endurance are relieved and our frailty is illuminated by a different light in which we come to glimpse behind the shudder of appearances the sure form of things. In the experience of beauty we awaken and surrender in the same act. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us.

Our Planet of Beauty

I believe that there is a primordial order to the universe that is larger than its expressions of chaos. Cancer might be considered an expression of universal chaos, and I find myself challenged to find the underlying order that would lend meaning to the experience of these chaotic cells that seem to have lost their way. I find that by holding the entire experience of having cancer within a framework of reverence and meaning, I am led to an experience of the ultimate beauty of life. The breast that I never liked in the first place because I thought it was too small is now beautiful to me in its dying moments. Ironically, it had to become a sacred wound before I could love it. We women are so tough on ourselves. Our breasts are too small, our hips are too big, our hair is too thin...the list is never-ending. 

It is time, right now, to accept ourselves just as we are, to stop being picky-picky and be appreciative of our divine beauty. To quote John O'Donahue, Beauty is ultimately an elegant, inner luminosity bestowed by the soul. Seeing beauty is glimpsing the soul. Learning to love ourselves and to appreciate out divine beauty is the path to loving others in their innate divinity, and to loving life with all its warts, tumors and heartache.

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