Find the feeling inside of you that translates into: beauty.

There’s almost a part of us that doesn’t want to do it. There’s almost a part of us that dismisses this exercise before it even begins, before we realize—wait, I actually do want to sit down and contemplate on the feeling of beauty because then I can spend time feeling beauty, and how boss is that?

Feeling beauty is so different from feeling beautiful—because the word beautiful—despite all our attempts at redefining it as physically irrelevant, still must be accompanied by the phrase “inside and out,” when indicating that we are not speaking strictly of physical beauty.

Beautiful is a designation given to us by another party. Like a medal ribbon. Or a pin. Or, if the supplies are low, a thumbs up! hand stamp.

Beauty is a fucking noun.

Beauty will fill us entirely if we would let it. Beauty is the direct result of the belief that we no longer have any problems. They’ve all just gone away.

When we fill ourselves entirely with beauty, we access that part of ourselves that we’ve come to know a few times over the course of these years—the part of ourselves that loves us unconditionally, even when we’re not connected to the feeling of beauty.

This part of us just puts their arms around us and gives bows a shoulder for our heads. This is the part of us that is God, or at least knows God in a very friendly way. And when our heads release and relax into the support of God (or God’s friend), God (or God’s friend) says to us in meditation:

All the beauty in the world is Here, Now. We are the ones who say yes to it. When we start saying, no there isn’t beauty—that is the moment beauty stops existing for us. Therefor, beauty is a choice. Choose beauty to be here now, in everything around you–what you see, what you sense, what you feel, what you are—choose so much beauty that there is no more beauty anywhere else—it cannot be conceived of. Make this moment a place that covers you in beauty.

God (or God’s friend) knows that in a few minutes (which does not yet exist, because now is the only time that exists in this place, stripped of the concept of a clock), we probably won’t feel beauty anymore. We’ll be feeling something else because that is what it means to be human: to be in motion and flow—in and out of nirvana thousands of times over (without us even realizing it).

God (or God’s friend) will not be frustrated with us, for they do not know what frustration is.

They will simply hold us tightly before they let go, and tell us that it’s our job to remind ourselves of beauty as often as we can.

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: elephant archives