Beauty and Truth
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know "
Extract from the poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' by John Keats. Much has been written about Beauty and Truth, and there are as many definitions and understandings as there are people to contemplate them. Philosophers, poets and artists have explored and expressed these concepts for millennia. Mathematicians and physicists continue this tradition, seeing beauty as a word used to describe the structural elegance of nature, as they delve ever deeper into the truth of the world as they perceive and measure it. Biologists similarly note that living systems seek to minimise effort on the path to express maximum beauty and harmony. Beauty and Truth are intimately related. The poet or artist seeks the Truth in Beauty, and for the scientist they search for the Beauty in the Truth. As life forms inhabiting this beautiful planet, we exist in synergistic resonance with the Earth, as it moves through the Milky Way, in connection with all the other star systems. Our Galaxy extends this movement further again as it weaves a musical path with a multitude of other galaxies forming what we call the Universe – the One Verse or Song. In fact the whole of creation can meaningfully be considered and described as one complex organism, evolving and exploring new forms of expression in a continuous fractal dance of energy and information. Our bodies automatically read the signals of our environment though all of our myriad senses. This contextual flow is constantly being received and regulated by our biology and edited by our minds, which in turn reflect and project accordingly in perfect balance and harmony. We broadcast our sense of self identity back into the world, and the mutual exchange continues in an endless relationship loop, giving rise to our personal experiences that coalesce and form our realities. Our lives are never separate or self contained; rather they are projections of our thoughts, feelings and emotions, as they bubble up and express like surface foam on the infinite sea of manifest creation. So at this fundamental biological level we exist only in truth, and can express only beauty, but oftentimes we are blind to this reality. For most of us, we experience and interpret beauty and truth to greater or lesser extents depending on where and how we place our conscious focus and attention. We have created and invested heavily in countless belief systems in the hope that they can guide us to know what is true and what is beautiful. We are constantly seeking to evaluate each new life event or situation and test it for how it aligns or fits with those beliefs. We generate and feel stress and disharmony when the experience does not match or resonate with our preformed beliefs and suppositions. This is where most suffering arises; but it is also the point of leverage where beauty and truth can be our best allies on our journey to self love. Because regardless of the word play, all of this is about LOVE, as Love is the only reality, which expresses itself through the beauty the truth. The truth of any situation just IS. It is the particular signature of the energy of each moment and each location. As long as we are filtering and editing this complex and ever moving pattern of information through our conscious awareness, we can never know the full Truth, with a capital ‘T’. Similarly, as long as we prejudge certain forms or situations as being beautiful, we can never fully appreciate the full Beauty contained and expressed in each instance. But all is not in vain. We are the entire Universe experiencing itself through a human nervous system. Our bodies are an integral part of this whole, and as such they are manifestations and projections of the Truth of each moment of existence. Beauty reveals itself in the perfected harmony of the entire living system. Beauty and Truth are the essence of our very existence. When we begin to move and feel our bodies consciously, we open the doors of perception a little wider, and our emotion and thought processes begin to align more with the larger context, and we begin to experience our world more holistically. When we open more to see the perfection in each moment, the beauty begins to jump out at us, and begets more of itself. Our bodies respond very positively to the perception of beauty, in terms of bio-chemistry; as the process releases feel good endorphins which we are wired to want to experience more of it. So in essence, we are the Beauty and the Truth that we are seeking, for we are the LOVE that generates both. What remains is to ‘real-eyes’ this and to fully open to the reality of it. From here there is no turning back. We will fearlessly seek to explore ever more imaginative ways to express the Beauty and the Truth in our lives, enriching the experience of all life. It is Beautiful. It is True. Enjoy! |
“The pursuit of Truth and Beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives”
“The ideals which have lighted my way, and, time after time, have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth” Albert Einstein 
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour" William Blake 
"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul."
John Muir
“by plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of a flower”.
Rabindranath Tagore
"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament.
Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing." Ralph Waldo Emerson “The primary power in the world we inhabit is the indwelling divinity of the planet, the Gaian intelligence, called Sophia by the Gnostics. If you are aligned to the Gaian intelligence, you do not see the world as a place of fear and predation, but of beauty, bounty, and magic” John Lamb Lash 
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