High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘beauty’

Now and then, an hour drifts past, rare in its perfection.  Thought dissolves in its beauty and peace. The line between you and not-you falls away.

Now you are the sky and the high wisps of cloud.  You are the blades of grass and the ten thousand leaves.   You are the rocks and pebbles in the stream and the stream itself.

The shadows and the light within you cast themselves across the calm waters.  The crooked and the straight, the rough and the smooth of you shine back from them and from their shores.

The distant laughter of children at play, the hum of insects, the coursing of your blood, and the rhythm of your heart all merge into a single song.

The soft air breathes itself through you until you, too, dissolve completely.  And all that’s left is the knowing that there is no outside.

You could tell within days that this lily was possessed with a passion.  It shot through the soil boldly and grew stronger and taller with every passing day, its leaves unfolding, its stalk stretching higher.  This one was focused on excellence.

“That’s the way you get results,” its instructors told it back at the Interdimensional Flower Academy.  “You give your attention completely to the work that is before you, and strive to do it with all your love and all your might.  Make your goal excellence.”

And that was exactly what the lily was determined to do.  It discovered that when it gave itself wholly to the work it hand, it  was engaging and absorbing.  And it made up its mind it would let no distraction lure it from the satisfying feeling that the work produced.

The work was so fascinating, watching the life force flow into every cell the lily created, that before long the lily sensed the harmony of working in tandem with it.  It sensed that it was a vehicle for the expression of the beauty the Great Yes sent forth on the force.  “What an honor!” it whispered to itself; “What an exquisite joy!”

One day, in late June, its blossoms finally opened to the sun, thick and firm and radiant with color.  The humans who came to see it marveled at it and sang its praise.  It gladdened their hearts and raised their spirits.  And the lily, seeing that it had fulfilled its purpose, rejoiced.

In the highest space, the white petals open.  Seemingly, thousands of them unfold.  You are lost in the beauty of their infinity, drunk on their sweet perfume.  “This?  This is mine?” you ask, not even knowing to whom you am directing the words.

The petals flutter at your question, a gentle undulation.  They pull you in, surrounding you with their smooth.  “Yes, my child,” they whisper; “Yes, if you so choose.” Their words echo through the layers, reverberating against the tall, cool walls.

Gently, the understanding unfolds for you.  This is the Labyrinth of All Possibilities, a cosmic candy store of experiences one can choose, and your pockets are lined with magical wishes made of inexhaustible gold.

So you choose.  And when you wake, the first of your dreams begins to unfold.  And your delight goes on forever.

It wasn’t that she was immune to life’s challenges.   Why, what with the late snow and the powerful winds that had swept past, just opening her petals had been a major task, requiring every bit of focus and energy that she had.

She had watched as some her neighboring buds succumbed to the cold or were ripped from their stems just as they were about to open, and she had felt grief over losing their companionship, and sorrow for their unfulfilled potential.

Today’s wonderful warmth had already brought the insects.  She could feel their tiny feet tip-tapping around on the back of her petals.  Soon, bigger, hungrier ones would come and begin to gnaw on them.

No, she was quite aware how fragile life is and how difficult and dark some of its passages could be.

But even though she was still quite young, she had already learned a great secret.  If she dwelt in the memories of the dark times, they eclipsed the beauty she could be enjoying right now.  And if she spent her moments worrying about the difficulties that the next hour or day might bring, she would be blind to this moment’s delights.

And so, she surrendered herself to the present, doing what was before her to do, and deeply feeling all the sensations and emotions that flowed through her. And as each moment passed, she opened herself to the next.

One by one, she met the challenges as they came.  And one by one, she emerged on the other side of the sorrows, more grateful and compassionate because of them.  And what she discovered in living this way, focused in the moment, was that the goodness and beauty of life far outweighed its problems and pain.

And so she collected the moments’ joys, and reveled in them, building a treasury of them as if they were jewels.  And her heart was light and filled with happiness.  And she flourished and was beautiful and strong.

In the great spiral of time where the holographic now flows in its quantum mystery, a white tree branch with red buds curves into a blue spring sky forever.  Nothing of beauty is ever lost.

Worlds exist beyond our tiny dish where all the lessons we are learning are already known and love shines more steadily than moonlight and knows no waning.

And they live, these worlds, within the stardust from which our cells are made.  And we blink into awareness on their shores, off and on, off and on.  And spring sings itself forever.

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Perched on a leafless branch beneath a sky that still wears winter wool, the robin sings.

How can I tell what you these few, clear notes awaken in me?

They’re like a promise fulfilled, an assurance that my long plodding through the frozen nights and colorless days was not in vain.

They flow into the hollows of me and fill me with rainbows.  They quench my longing with their liquid song.

They sink into the earth of me, and apple blossoms rise where they fall.

They pull me into the windy Now of this mid-March day and drench me in its beauty.

On a leafless branch, a robin sings, and I am alive again and overflowing with joy.

As we ascend through the dimensions, I once read, rising from heaven to heaven, our bodies acquire new capabilities so that we can perceive the multitudinous wonders of our ever-expanding experience.   Instead of merely five senses, for example, we would one day have seventeen.

Imagine!  I think I’d need a different body  – much larger, much stronger – to hold that much joy.

The beauty that is here before us now is almost too much to withstand.

Look, right here, in a couple square feet of creek bed: sky spread across smooth waters, the papery layers on a fallen branch of birch and the deep shadows it casts, strewn pebbles, wet leaves, the glints of sunlight on the dancing wavelets, the colors meant for an artist’s eye.

And oh, the music of it all, the clicking of the rolling pebbles, the roar of the rushing, snow-fed creek, the wind in the branches of the trees, the sharp cawing of crows.

The cold air brushing against my cheeks and my skin soaking in the sun’s warmth despite it.  The wind whipping my hair and carrying the fragrance of the leaves and the water and the soil.   The give of the earth beneath my boots, the smooth slipperiness of the mud.

All this, in the lowest of all heavens, the one where the light barely shines through the thickness of our darkly clouded minds at all, except in rare moments.

I walk along the creek bed and practice.

Not all universe creatures can detect the wondrous music of the spheres.  Some worlds are too dense, you see, for the delicate mechanisms that receive its sounds.

And so, long, long ago, the Celestial Artisans created a way to downstep the melodies for the benefit of the spirits who were embodied on the heavier worlds.  No one, after all, should be deprived of their inspiration and beauty.

Thus, the School of Sound Designers came to be, and they carried semblances of music to the outer worlds.

But then the Artisans discovered that on some worlds, and even within any given species, some creatures were more attuned to sight than to sound.

“What if,” one of them asked, “we could translate the music into some kind of pattern they could see?”  It was a brilliant idea and the master Artisans immediately set about developing it.

When a method was perfected (And that is a whole story in itself!), they took it to the Ministry of Planetary Graces for approval and adoption.  The Ministers marveled at the possibility of entire worlds swept with visual rhythms and harmonies.  They delighted at the prospect of multi-colored birds and fishes and flowers in the fields.  And they were moved to awe by the grandeur of sunrises and sunsets, by the hues the sea could display and the sands of the deserts.

Not only did the Ministers approve the idea for immediate adoption, they awarded top honors to the Celestial Artisans for inventing color and bringing it to the outer worlds.

One day, if you so choose, you can view the entire story in the archives of the cosmic library.

But for now, I thought you might like to know that when you are invigorated by a dashing flash of red, or comforted by a blanket of blue, when your spirit is moved by the magnificence of a painted desert, or sea, or sky, the colors were put there just for you, for your inspiration and joy.

When I look through my lens at this beauty, whose eyes are peering through mine?

What leads me to this very vantage point, with the skim ice just so and the hills falling brown into the still water?  Why now, in this light, with its blue snow and the faint glow on the horizon?

I didn’t intend to come here.  My thoughts were on supper, on curling with the cat in the warm glow of the fire.

But something irresistible said, “Turn here.”  And now I stand in pristine snow, breathing air that makes little clouds as it leaves my mouth, gazing at February in the Pennsylvania hills.  It feels like a privilege, an honor, a gift somehow.

Despite the cold, I sense the turning of the season toward spring.  The maples, lean and bare, even now begin to pull their sweet sap upward.  Beneath the icy waters, tadpoles wait to be born.

But right now, the beauty of this winter scene stretches before my eyes and I feel a hunger pour through them devouring it.  Our eyes, I think, are not for us alone.  Something larger seeks to gaze through them, borrowing them, and in return, lending us some of its joy.

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For the winds at play, sweeping gossamer clouds across the vast sky, and for frozen drops of water that catch the light;

For the sky’s breadth and limitless depth, for the motion of it all, the endless dance;

For eyes that see it and a spirit that is moved by its beauty, lifted up, and freed;

For the way it stills our prattling thoughts, and sweeps gossamer waves of wonder across the vastness of our quieted minds;

For the way its breadth encircles us and sings our names, and bids us soar,

Let us echo its Yes and give thanks.