I wish I could say that this notion of Beauty as an applied philosophy and daily practice was my brainchild. I can’t. True Beauty, as a society’s central tenet, is not new, just ancient and mostly forgotten now. I am ringing the bell. What The Way of Beauty, as I put it forth, is doing is remembering and urging action. Saying — no screaming — that True Beauty must be reclaimed now. And you and I can do it ourselves, so easily, really.
It will save us and our earth. True Beauty is what keeps the universe in sync. In harmony. In balance. Expanding.
True Beauty is the raison d’être of the Universe.
I am not exaggerating. It is our prejudices and preconceived notions of what “beauty” can be, can mean, and might be capable of that make us scoff at the notion of True Beauty as a power. As the reason, our Universe exists and continues to expand. When I first was struck with this notion, it was one part intuition and three parts instinctual certainty. But I thought I might be a little mad. Courting hubris. So one day, I told Brian Swimme (author and cosmologist) that I believed that True Beauty was the raison d’être of the Universe. His response? “Well, of course!” as if I were stating something obvious to all.
I was heartened.
As I said above, other civilizations have embraced True Beauty as their society’s guiding principle. The Navajo (or Dine as they refer to themselves) come to mind. I love that the Dine might measure a man’s worth to their community by the number and quality of songs that he contributed to it. Their culture of Hozho valued beauty, harmony, balance, and health.
And there were the Greeks, of course. Our sense of aesthetics comes from their incredible research and works. But we’ve gotten stuck there. As a civilization, the West has been merely replicating and doing versions of that which has come before. We have adopted the Greco-Roman standards of beauty and have not dared move on. True Beauty is not static. It is always changing, surprising, and refreshing. Think of dawns, sunsets, laughter, the sound of rain on a roof, sunlight ‘prism-ing’ through a raindrop on a leaf; crystals growing in the earth; that feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment after completing a challenging task; sunlight interacting with plants, almost anywhere. The lively twinkle in someone’s eye. A sweet voice raised loudly in song. No two of any of the above are ever the same; all of True Beauty.
If I were a scientist and an artist, I could give you all the “proofs” and “evidences” that support the claims regarding the importance and integral nature of True Beauty. But I am not. One of my fav fantasies is to pull together a panel of folks from different disciplines to articulate, from their area of expertise, their understanding of True Beauty’s nature and importance. I’d have a physicist, a mathematician, a couple of visual artists, a couple of writers, a philosopher or two, and of course, a theologian of sorts. What fun!
In the end, what we would do is create a proper “white paper,” serviceable for the general public, publications, and today’s “influencers” to state with an impressive degree of well-rounded authority what the Navajo already knew: What we call Beauty (true Beauty and not cheap “glamour”) is the raison d’être of our Universe. My fantasy white paper would stir the social marketing gurus to do for the Glamour vs. True Beauty confusion and our western civ’s value system what was done to tobacco and the smoking habit: change the general population’s understanding and values around the issue. Raise awareness about True, Deep Beauty — and banish mere glamour back to the magician’s realm.
Tuning into True Beauty and nurturing it in our everyday lives through these Beauty Practices will raise the vibration of not only (you/me) the practitioner but of the earth itself and all the creatures upon it. At this bleak point in our species’ history, what could possibly be more important? More joyful? Easier? It needn’t be stressful and difficult to help tip the balance back to the light.
Turn off the TV news and experience your geranium growing.
