There's a beauty that makes the heart ache. A beauty that transforms and inspires, that brings us closer and closer… to what? To a lover, to our selves, to nature, to the whole of life, to the divine – does it matter? To some degree it is the “closeness” that matters - the sense of expansiveness, vulnerability, intimacy and tender belong that is so often awakened by a genuine encounter with beauty.
In the west, this kind of beauty has become lost within a tyranny of “attractiveness” and the terrible pressure placed on women – and all of us – to look a certain way. While women have gained so much power in the outer world, we have also let patriarchal ideals about what is beautiful undermine our own ability to see, feel, and embody the real power of beauty.
But beauty is an essential quality in all life – many have called it a divine quality. As we have lost touch with beauty, we have lost touch with our own selves at this deep and sacred level. This is a tragic aspect of our patriarchal culture – it has contributed to our forgetting of the living beauty at the core existence.
Beauty has long been recognized as feminine both in the world of cultural norms, which link women’s value to their beauty and men’s value to other qualities and capabilities, and also in spiritual traditions where beauty is an aspect of the divine in contrast with masculine qualities or male gods.
Like all things “feminine” women have a particular closeness to beauty. The Islamic Hadith describing Muhammad’s night journey through the heavens articulates this connection:
Women are not created weaker but more generous than men. They are created more beautiful, and less fierce, as beauty hates to hurt and harm others. That is why they seem weak to people but in reality they are not. Angels are the strongest of created beings, and women are closer to the angelic nature than men, and they are readier than men to carry angelic light.[i]
The relationship of women to beauty in our modern sensibility is often muddled. On the one hand, many of us want to free ourselves from the yoke of cultural norms that tell us that we are more successful as human beings if we are attractive. On the other hand, we have a genuine longing to know and express beauty that we must protect as we free ourselves from the oppression of “pretty.”
The deep purpose of beauty is also muddled in our modern world. We know the power of attractiveness and how it helps many get what they want. A Jerry Harrison song says it clearly: “A pretty girl can go anywhere, all doors open for her….” But real beauty has a mysterious purpose that we need to reclaim. This is why beauty is on the “Power Wheel” – it is a power that serves us and also sustains life itself. It is not easy to describe this power, but some have said it clearly – like Rachel Carson, the founder of our environmental conservation movement: Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.
Our longing to know and embody beauty is not other than life’s calling to be seen and experienced in the most intimate ways, and protected for its true nature. As we honor beauty, we are brought into right relationship with life – one that includes a conscious awareness of harmony and humility, and our own place in a vast and magnificent wholeness.
Beauty is alive beyond all the power structures of this world and it transports us into a dimension of life that is free. It is given freely and also frees us from things that bind us. A walk in a meadow – light on the tips of grass, birds calling, enveloping summer warmth – transport us directly into the mystery of existence where the real nourishment of life is always available. The beauty of a child’s eyes reminds us of what is important and enduring. Knowing our own beauty is to find ourselves in the sublime landscape of our soul. Sensing the divinity of beauty ignites our relationship to God.
Like so many feminine qualities beauty asks women to walk a thin line, compelling us to honor it without using it for our own ends or allowing others to impose their versions on to us. In a patriarchal culture, feminine values and qualities are always vulnerable to corruption and abuses.
As women sense into the power of beauty, we always have to take responsibility. No matter how much we blame culture’s adoration of women’s attractiveness, we must become more and more confident to stand wrapped within beauty, at the same time withstanding the unfairness of imposed cultural ideals. This is no easy task. But as women, it is largely up to us to reclaim and honor the forgotten feminine.
Beauty, love and life
Why is beauty so important? As we reclaim our understanding and appreciation of beauty, we are drawn into the heart of life. We can’t help it. Beauty is compelling, disconcerting, evokes our vulnerability and inspires us to respond. Beauty is so linked to love and devotion that we can hardly separate them.
Alison, who participates in a California Power Wheel circle described a recent encounter with beauty:
I was working on a photo shoot with a model, and this woman was so beautiful. Something about her was just so beautiful I can’t even explain it. And I had such a strong response from my whole being to protect her somehow – to make sure she was all right, that she was not cold, that she had what she needed. I was so surprised – it was like they were deeply connected – her beauty and my response of care and protection. I’ve never really had that experience before.
Mothers will understand this response to the beauty in a child. Conservations know this need to protect the beauty of the natural world. And of course men will understand this response to a beautiful woman. Chivalry and the practice of courtly love created a code of conduct that served the beauty of a lady. This code of behavior is illustrated in Troubadour poetry from the middle ages, and such poetry also shows the divine aspect of beauty, how it links to the power of longing, for the love of the troubadours was always cut with the knowledge that the beloved would never be fully possessed, desire never satisfied.
As we gaze in awe at some great window
Shining in beauty against the splendour,
Seeing her, my heart so sweet is rendered
I forget myself in her beauty’s glow.
With the stick I cut, Love brings me pain,
For, one day, in his royal domain,
I stole a kiss for the heart to remember:
Oh, for the man who can’t see his lover![ii]
In this love inspired by a beautiful lady, a troubadour is taken into a “royal domain” of the soul’s longing where the things of the world mean nothing and service to love is all.
We see how this happens in our own lives when we fall in love. Can we really separate love from beauty? When we love, everything seems beautiful. As we see beauty, we are delivered into love.
A culture that has lost its sense of beauty has also destroyed its capacity to work with love.
Beauty as Divine
Beauty is a divine quality. Goddesses of beauty exist in many spiritual traditions, and perhaps Aphrodite of the Greek pantheon who is the Roman Venus is the most well known. The Goddess of beauty and sexuality, she had the power to ignite love and desire in anyone, and her son Eros (Cupid) helped her in this work. She was born from the foam created in the sea by the castration of the sky god, Uranus by his son the Titan, Cronus, suggesting a sexual power beyond the masculine.
In a 2008 speech, Pope Benedict XVI described the beauty of the Virgin Mary: “This beauty is totally pure, humble, free from arrogance and presumption.”[iii] Her beauty points to the beauty of Christ and draws us closer to God.
In Islam, beauty and mercy are the feminine counterparts to the masculine divine qualities of majesty and justice. We can experience the fear and awe as we recognize the majesty of God, and we can experience the intimacy and love when we experience God’s mercy and beauty. In the words of the great Sufi Poet, Hafiz:
We are the guardians of His Beauty.
We are the protectors
Of the Sun.
There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:
To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.
Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying,
"Hafiz,
Don't just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing -
Help unfurl my heart into the Friend's Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!"
We are the companions of His Beauty
We are the guardians
Of Truth.
Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved -
A harbinger of joy,
The harbinger of
Light.
Beauty opens to the divine. When we encounter the harmony or symmetry within nature, we are reminded of the harmony within our soul. When we feel the expanse of beauty, we are reminded of the oneness of life.
In Zen Buddhism, the style of wabi-sabi art invokes beauty through imperfection and even absence, and reflects the essential emptiness of Reality. The word “wabi” is often translated as “poverty” and “sabi” as “loneliness.” Together, one senses the longing of the hermit monk, moved by the transient beauty of moonlight spreading across a hillside. Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect compares it to western ideals of beauty:
Wabi-sabi represents the exact opposite of the Western ideal of great beauty as something monumental, spectacular and enduring. Wabi-sabi is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent they are invisible to vulgar eyes.[iv]
The wabi-sabi ideal of beauty is one that suggests the wholeness of life – a vision of life that includes and does not reject absence, earthiness, or imperfection. This wholeness is also included in the beauty of Aphrodite and other goddesses who represent the power of fertility and the deepest processes of creation earth. Beauty is not just about the symmetry of form, but the symmetry between form and formless, the evident and the hidden, the movements of life and death at the deepest levels.
Living Beauty
Like so many of life’s most essential qualities, beauty is free. It is everywhere around us – in nature, in all beings, and in ourselves. But also like many of life’s essential qualities, it often takes a certain quality of attention to access and work with it. Not everyone lives on a golden hillside or by the sea; many have to make an effort to find nature or to create a garden or sift through cultural ideals to recognize the beauty within.
There is always a mystery to how life gives us gifts and then asks that we work to maintain the right relationship to those gifts. Like love, beauty is free but thrives when it is recognized and honored through reverence and care and our capacity to create. Georgia Okeefe, the great artist, once said: Nobody sees a flower -- really -- it is so small it takes time -- we haven't time -- and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.
To reclaim our relationship to beauty means to be with beauty - to breathe with beauty, hold it gently in our hands, give our heart to it, feel and honor and follow it. It has its own rhythms and revelations that live beyond our cultural measures of time. It asks us to step aside from the demands of modern life and our modern desires.
Beauty will return to all of us in different ways, but it is important to acknowledge her power and the need for her presence.
Dr. Guang Chen Sun, Chi Gong practitioner and researcher at Bastyr University who has contributed to many of WPW articles, told a story of beauty’s return in his own life:
My wife and I had been looking for a statue for our yard. Regular thinking says – “get this, it looks beautiful,” or, “get something from the eastern culture such as a statue of Confucius, Buddha or Kuan-yin or Dragon or Crane etc.” But then, I was working in my yard, and I heard the word "Aphrodite." I heard it spoken in my ear - this one word repeated and repeated non-stop. It continued for three days.
Why did I hear it? I didn't know. I shared this experience with my wife. After our discussion about my experience, I got the message. My wife agreed with me. So we got a statue of Aphrodite.
The amazing thing is that we placed the statue in the garden and my heart and whole chest became filled with warmth and joy. Even when I just see the image in my mind - suddenly I feel this presence. It is beauty - and it brings this warmth and tenderness and joy. And also, lately, I have begun to see more feminine goddesses on the inner planes - there are also beautiful mermaids. Female spiritual energy is rising. Being connected to that kind of energy – I feel like it has really changed my life. It’ s very significant.
Aphrodite and the mermaids – they are different energies but there is beauty, and they are feminine, and love. The love of the mermaids is pure and non-sexual. The problem now is a misuse of sexuality. Reproductive energy is most divine and holy. It is not treated appropriately. This is the first thing from Aphrodite. The sexual part is part of her beauty and identity – it is the blessing from the divine. Now many people have sex and take it lightly like a sport – without love and without the heart. It is not healthy. Her major message now is about how to respect and honor the beauty and holy nature of a woman.
If we are trained to listen to our intuition, many of us will likely receive messages and instructions like Dr. Sun, which will contribute to a revival of feminine powers that help restore the sanctity of every aspect of life here on earth.
Seek beauty. Honor beauty. Evoke and invoke beauty. Understand that it is a life-force and a way of living both.
In the Navajo tradition, there is a ceremony and chant – the Beauty Way – to heal and restore the balance within an individual and within community, which includes earth and spirit. The harmony reflected in this understanding of beauty has been missing from our world. But it is not entirely lost…
In beauty may I walk
All day long may I walk
Through the returning seasons may I walk
Beautifully I will possess again
Beautifully birds
Beautifully joyful birds
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk
With grasshoppers about my feet may I walk
With dew about my feet may I walk
With beauty may I walk
With beauty before me may I walk
With beauty behind me may I walk
With beauty above me may I walk
With beauty all around me may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk
In old age, wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk
It is finished in beauty
It is finished in beauty
[i] See the hadith about Muhammed’s ascent through the seven gardens of paradise. http://collectionofislamicebooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/27th-rajab-seven-g...
[ii] Peire Vidal (1175-1205) from: http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/French/FromDawnToDawn.htm
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