Casting my gaze toward the setting sun, I watch the illuminated horizon beyond a familiar coastline. Bright yellows and oranges emanate from the fiery orb. As the light shines upward, it creates an ombre sky, from glowing gold to pastel yellow to a clear blue darkening with each passing moment. As the light cascades downward, it brightens the ocean in a dynamic watercolor dance. Nearing the coastline of jagged rocks and sand softened beach, the sun’s rays are filtered through the mist of crashing waves. The air is swirling and opaque. Feeling the cool moisture of the ocean air and gentle breeze caress my skin, I find myself curious.
This moment, this sunset, this landscape, objectively speaking, it ‘should’ be beautiful. Yet, as I cast my gaze outward, I do not perceive beauty.
Following my curiosity, I allow my imagination to transport me to landscapes I have visited, vistas that left me speechless in their splendor. Inhabiting these landscapes in my imagination, I notice a shift in my body. To share words so gracefully woven together by Prentis Hemphill, something rearranges itself within me. I notice an easing in the space around my heart, a softness unfolding through my belly, and a brightness in the quality of my thoughts. I allow myself to rest for a moment in the nourishing warmth of these sensations.
Returning to the space of the setting sun before me, these shifts rearrange themselves once again. A dull numbness and bracing envelop me.
From the physical landscape, I turn my attention to my mental and emotional landscapes. I sense the layers of sadness, disconnection, and disjuncture that have accumulated over a tumultuous year. I sense the grief of farewells imposed too early and goodbyes that remain unsaid. I sense the confusion of returning to a place that I once felt held and at home, and now feels hollow and strange.
Becoming present to the layers of experience that filter my perception, I learn a quality of beauty.
Beauty is a felt
sense, resonance between worlds
inner and outer.
Beauty is a deeply embodied and felt experience, a harmonious resonance that emerges from the inter-relationship between our internal landscape and that which we perceive. Our sense of beauty is as much reflective of our inner landscape as our outer landscape. In the moments when these landscapes harmonize, beauty unfolds, an intimate and boundless experience of nourishment and loving embrace.
Honoring beauty as emergence and relationship, I find myself curious.
How can we orient to the world around us to enliven the possibility to experience beauty?
How can we practice noticing differently to create more opportunities for beauty to emerge?
How can we tend to our internal landscapes so as to be receptive to moments of resonance with the outer world?
How can we be in relationship with ourselves to recognize the spark of beauty that lies within?
May we each be enfolded in and nourished by beauty’s embrace.
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