Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
-Kahlil Gibran
These immortal words of wisdom flowing so eloquently from the soul of Kahlil Gibran in his book The Prophet give us clear spiritual insight. As seekers of Truth in these modern times we are well advised to remember that Truth is a living energy, it is the Spirit of Life itself and it is that power, that energy, that spirit which we, as Spiritual Warriors, are charged with the purpose of embodying in its fullness. This is the great purification of self, the return to innocence, which has been communicated by many and achieved by few. The happy news is that this great journey — this magnificent adventure — through the wilderness of ego into the promised land of our own heart and soul is an unavoidable ‘date with destiny‘. It may take you an eternity to find that sacred path, however, what is sure is that one happy day you will arrive. That path is: “The Beauty Way”.
Walking The Beauty Way essentially refers to a way of being. It colors and defines the power of our thoughts, words and actions. Thoughts, words and actions cause feelings and in turn, feelings cause thoughts, words and actions. A combination of these creates a magnetic attraction between you and your reality, and it is how the world is defined.
It is the ugly discord within us, especially in the content of our psyches, which causes all the apparitions in the modern world that we wish would go away. All facets of human life, which appear outside of us, are a direct reflection of the patterns of thought and feeling we have conditioned within us.
Beauty, Truth, Light, Love — these are the actual qualities a true human being embodies. Far from being the nebulous virtues to which the poet or new age seeker aspires, they are the actual hallmarks of a genuine spiritual warrior grounded and active in the world of form. Each of these fundamental essential human qualities, aspects of self, which deep down inside we all possess, is not only the goal of the spiritual aspirant but also the method and the way.
Our daily lives, the simple everyday business, tending to our responsibilities in relationships, family, community, society and culture, are the testing ground, which provide the crucible or container for the alchemy of change. There has never been a more urgent time for that change. The necessity for you and every one of us to express absolutely the beauty within you, in a fearless, compassionate way, through the strength of loving-kindness is very, very urgent.
By ignoring the critical importance of attending to our inner house, especially that dark basement of collective consciousness where the deepest soul wounds weep in their tortured lament, we have brought a living hell to our beloved Mother Earth.
“To feel beauty, to feel truth, that is self-remembering. Self-remembering is the awareness of the presence of God.”
-Rodney Collins
I was recently listening to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The mans’ words resonate with such profound shining truth. Apart from finding them deeply moving, the main thing that struck me about his words was their spiritual power. The major difference I find between activists and conspiracy theorists, political and social commentators of today and Dr. King is that they essentially have very little spiritual power. Their facts may be correct but the whole slant of their presentation is largely oriented to highlighting, in graphic detail, the problems of the world. A far more effective and actually essential strategy is to embody the solution. An effective spiritual warrior is the living embodiment of the solution to the apparent problems of the times. The real “Super Hero” looks no further than themselves to find both the solution to and the cause of any disharmony, appearing around them. The success of this orientation is guaranteed by certain life-fulfilling facts.
- A perfect “Divine Source” (God) of pure spiritual energy exists eternally.
- Our choice as human beings and initiation as spiritual warriors is to find this “Source” and to merge in consciousness with it.
- The only place to find the portal to this experience is within us.
- All manifestations of darkness, discordance, disease, disharmony and evil are a direct consequence of the creative individual points of consciousness (i.e. our souls), ignoring their relationship with “The God Source” within themselves.
- Over time, cultural ignorance (ignoring the point of life) causes layers of conditioning within the psyche/soul. Individuals born into a culture inherit this conditioning. Our mission is to dissolve it and allow the pure inner spirit (Holy Spirit) to flow into the world.
- The more of us who are learning to do this and consistently achieving this, the faster hell on earth (the consequence of ignorance) becomes Heaven on Earth (the consequence of Truth)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. demonstrates an unmistakable spiritual power born only from this powerful fusion of soul and source, individual and essence, man and God … within. His power came from intense and consistent soul searching within himself and an unshakeable commitment to walking The Beauty Way.
The Beauty of the Inner Path
“Know Thyself.” was the simple inscription found above many of the temples of ancient Greece.
Meeting oneself, knowing oneself is all about relationship and the keynote of that relationship is love. There is no way to approach the inner spirit within without beauty. Divine love, the content of your soul is beauty itself. So many of us have had brutal lives and witnessed, experienced and expressed so much ugliness; yet the pain of that creates tenderness and there is so much beauty in that tenderness. That sensitivity, that vulnerability, the beauty of that tenderness, is the perfect organ with which to meet God in your own soul.
One of the most significant spiritual teachings ever is contained in the shortest verse in the Bible:
“… And Jesus wept.”
Those words contain the greatest secret. The tenderness and power of the Spiritual Warrior. It happened just before He raised his friend Lazarus from the dead. I will leave you to consider the mystery. Let me simply say there is a balance between acute sensitivity and strength that we need to attain. That balance is articulated perfectly in another scripture from the letters of St. Paul to the Corinthians:
If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered; it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and it always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Keats once wrote, “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty”. There is a living Truth within you; it is the light of God, the light of His Spirit within you, which is the light of love. It is beauty itself. You find it by coming into harmony with it, merging with it, and being one with it. This is a simple act of surrendering everything you are not. This is a feeling, which requires acute sensitivity within; Attention to detail of the finest hue. You see, within us, are all of the qualities of our divinity and all of the virtues they fuel merge into a living oneness. So the light of enlightenment, intelligence, wisdom and knowledge is merged with the love and beauty of Truth in a blissful, peaceful oneness. All we have to do is allow ourselves to experience it and that is a whole lot simpler than most people believe or teach.
This great and merciful act of sanity — this surrendering and return to innocence — is the most powerful thing any of us can do to transform the world we see around us. All of the social injustices that appall our innate sense of right and wrong are merely a reflection of the discord within.
Embodying The Solution
“Never mistake outward appearance for reality.”
-Huang Po
When David the 15-year old shepherd boy, came down from the hills to face Goliath on the battlefield he was alive with a living Truth. His God was “The Living God”. You see spirituality evolves from an idea, into a very definite experience, and spiritual practice is all about relationship. Relationship requires feeling; that is the juice. The more sublime the feeling the more beauty in the relationship. The more beauty in your relationship with your inner lover the more you become the embodiment of the living Truth and the more able you are to defeat your own personal Goliath. This meeting with the monster within is not an option; it is a pre-requisite for the evolution of your consciousness. As sure as infancy follows birth and adolescence follows childhood, so too will you go through certain rites of passage that cannot be avoided. They can however be delayed, but your appointment with the destiny of your soul can never be put off forever. There is a great clarion call sounding out across the hills and valleys of life, it is a call to action and if you are reading this it is calling to you. What that call is communicating is that you have a choice. It is the choice to evolve through suffering or through joy. Only you can make that choice and the choice begins anew in every moment of your life.
A great maturation process is underway in the world, and as we become more spiritually and psychologically awake we actually embody different qualities of being. This is an undeniable consequence of spiritual growth, the definite, incontestable demonstration of higher states of being expressed in the material world.
One of the biggest secrets that so many of us are beginning to grasp is that the whole game is going on inside of us. Of course there is the appearance of the world around us and because of the appearance we dance, but in order to master that world around us or at least affect it in a conscious and constructive away, we need to master the world within.
This inner journey is an adventure. It is an adventure in self-discovery of such critical import that it has been alluded to by every indigenous culture that has ever walked upon the face of the earth. It is represented in stories and mythos throughout all time and is now boldly glorified in our own culture — blazing like the universal sun rising from the ocean of imagination.
The journey within is the heroes’ journey and in more modern parlance, the super heroes’ journey. Why? Because it takes a super heroic effort of will, focus, courage, determination, discipline, consistency, patience, forgiveness and love to navigate successfully the inner realms.
Beauty is our compass, tenderness our way.
As we look around the world today, especially through the lens of the popular media, life can appear so very, very ugly. What are we supposed to make of this, those of us who aspire to walking the beauty way? I love these times. They are as exciting as they are sobering. A massive reality check. A rude awakening. Perhaps the most significant factor in the mix right now is the realization that what appears to be around me is a reflection of something within me. Not necessarily a quality but a pattern; an archetypal pattern that exists in the collective consciousness of my own culture and, more significantly, in my own psyche. An even more significant realization is the acceptance that I actually have the power to change the world I see around me by dissolving the patterns within me. And that I must do it because if I don’t then who will?
Let’s take an extreme example here — something that is making big rumblings all over the modern western political world, and that is the shocking amount of pedophile activity occurring within politic and high society echelons. It shows up increasingly in our society and makes it clear that there is a political archetypal realm dreadfully abusing the inner child — the boundless, eternally youthful spirit, which is designed to play in the world of form and express — through boundless creativity — in an innocent and childlike way.
What is this a reflection of and where is the beauty factor in this? This field has agendas, timeframes and vested interests and is manipulative and controlling especially around power, possessions, sexuality and money. This is the political realm within us we all possess to some degree. The extreme nature of this internal condition and the critical import of its dissolution are being reflected by what we are seeing in the world of form around us. This is a great wonder. So the way to make it go away on the outside is to dissolve the pattern on the inside and great tenderness is required to do this swiftly and effectively. It takes a lot of precision to cut away the cancer of the soul.
