Beauty as a healing force

Heavenly blue flowers of the humble speedwell

I came across this lovely article on beauty. Beauty can be healing because it can be a source of fascination. Anything that fascinates us can take our focus away from current pains and worries onto something more pleasurable. But there is more to the healing ability of beauty than this. Beauty by it’s very nature is uplifting and inspiring. It is a manifestation of love+harmony in material form and it has it’s own gravitational pull that draws us towards it’s centre of spiritual unity with the universe. Being at one with beauty brings us into a state of harmony and connects us to our own inner beauty – the beauty of our soul.
Being able to recognise beauty in our every day lives is important and can engage all our senses. The sight of a tiny weed growing on the edge of a busy road, blossoming with the most exquisite celestial blue flowers.The ambience of the dawn chorus is one of the most heavenly and uplifting sounds on earth. The feel of cool water soothing hot tired feet after a long day or the touch of a hand holding your hand when you need it most. The taste of food cooked with fresh spices, love and creativity. The heady smell of roses or lavender or thyme in hot sunlight.

Sweet smelling lavender

How does one actually use beauty as a healing and creative force? Here are some ideas:

• Meditate on all the beautiful things in your life and feel the resonance of beauty deep inside your being.
• Tell yourself you are a beautiful being of light and feel that light radiate outwards as you move throughout the day. Remind yourself that you are a spark of divine essence, of pure love, and nothing is more beautiful than love made manifest.
• Feed yourself with beauty everyday - be sensitive to beauty and look for it’s prescence wherever you are. Find inspiration and delight in all forms of beauty. Eat some eye candy everyday!
• Surround yourself with beauty in your home and work environments. Clear out objects that you feel are ugly. Find objects that are pleasing and you like because of their beauty. Can you beautify objects that you already own? Be inventive in coming up with ways to arrange things beautifully even if it’s a grouping of house plants or placing fruit in a bowl. A little ingenuity can go a long way. My mum is great at doing this. She find interesting little vases and pots of glass and ceramic and groups them with little perfume bottles and an old eqyptian statue that was found in the garden when she was having the house renovated. She has a great eye for beauty and can make mundane things seem magical by the way they are placed.
• When feeling a bit low, looking at beautiful imagery (you can find tons of it on flickr.com for any subject you like, or try M.I.L.K.) and listening to beautiful music can ease the pain and lift the mood into a more peaceful blissful one. Get lost in the beauty and use the power of fascination to take your focus off your pain onto the myriad ways beauty shows itself in the world. I love reading poetry like Keats and there is a passage in the book Gone to Earth by Mary Webb where the main character Hazel Woodus is spellbound by the beauty of a blackcap singing in a tree. I remember being enchanted by the beauty of a thrush singing in the growing darkness of dusk at the edge of a train station. It was so beautiful I didn’t want to catch my train but stay there entranced in the lyrical notes woven silver on the tawny air by that little bird.

Sumptuous iris

My prayer for you is may you discover and know the beauty of your soul and my you always walk in beauty…

Related posts:

1. Introducing “Creative Magpie” Blog Feature
2. Beautiful Corner – Making Way for a Spiritual Life
3. What to do with Nostalgic Clutter
4. Creative Magpie: Jeroen Bodewits
5. Sparkle Girl Comes Home: My Personal Soul Retrieval Story