Beauty, Experienced

What does beauty mean to you?

Whether we realise it or not, we’ve been conditioned or taught from young, which appearances are considered ‘good’ or ‘ugly’.

So for most of us, beauty is unconsciously synonymous with qualities we can see – like how Asians consider fair to be ‘nicer’ than darker skin tones especially for females.

In other words we have assigned meanings to descriptive words or images, which are not actually true. For example – wrinkles are ugly; sunspots are imperfections.

Most of the skincare/beauty industry is built on consensus meanings of what beauty means for a face. So beauty that is commonly understood, is based on a set of values we agreed to.

Most of us do not question these values because they’ve been instilled, impressed upon us before we could remember anything. And they can change when we exchange past standards of beauty for new ones.

So what I’m about to ask you might seem impossible.
But if you give it a go, it might change how you see yourself forever.

To start, let’s try a short exercise.
Most of us have limited opinions about trees.
(If you happen to have them, please put aside everything you think or know about trees for now.)

Gaze at this picture below.

Take your time. Take the whole image in without focusing on one part.

How was that like? Did you notice anything?

Can you notice for a split second – or longer – a space of wordlessness, when you are taking the image in? The tree is just, that.

Now, put aside everything you consider to be beautiful for a moment.

Imagine you have never seen a face before.

No idea if a face is beautiful or not.

Now look into a mirror. Pause, hold for a moment.

How did you respond? What did you notice?

Before thoughts of labelling or judgement appeared, what was there? Can you sense that?

Did you notice the fullness of that gap?
The same gap we experienced earlier gazing upon the tree?

Did it return? Or did it not leave?

This is the end of our experiment.

Don’t worry if you didn’t ‘get’ anything. Our purpose was not a lesson, but suspend beliefs when looking at something.

It is not easy to ‘stay’ in this gap initially, yet everyone can make a start.
The more you do it, the more natural it feels to be here.

Every time you repeat this exercise, stay in this wordless space while you take in what you see.

See if you are overcome by something indescribable – like awe, amazement, all-at-onceness.

That is beauty in its truest purest, experienced by you.
And it is not in anything you see. It emanates from you.