Contemplating The Experience of Beauty: journal prompts and meditations
Hello there!
With a new season well and truly upon us here in the northern hemisphere, it couldn’t be a better time to let our minds and hearts range over the topic of beauty.
And when I say beauty I’m not talking about luxury make up and spa products – although I do love pampering! After all, there’s much to be said for a little TLC and as the old saying goes, if you look good you often feel good.
However in todays blog post I’m championing beauty from a wider, more artistic perspective. For example: A beautiful sunset or painting. Amazingly, beauty is both everywhere and free. But many of us spend lots of time and money trying to become more beautiful and create a more materially beautiful life while all along a lush beauty exists all around us that cannot be bought.
And there’s more. There is something conveyed to us in beautiful things and it goes beyond aesthetics. True beauty is a calling card from eternity. They (beautiful things, flowers let’s say) reach down within us and grab hold of the part of us that has a quiet remembering of a profound place we have once known, and now know again through the flower. A place like home where we are splendid and magnificent. A place where nothing is missing.
Beauty plays an important role in our sense of peace and wellbeing. So let’s notice it, let’s appreciate it and let’s share it with others. Oh, and let’s meditate on it too. Here are some beauty inspired prompts to ponder on your morning walk, during meditation or maybe over afternoon coffee.
- What is it that allows us to find beauty in the world around us?
- Do we need an artistic sensibility or an awareness of the art scene in order to enjoy artistic beauty when we see it, or is the ability to appreciate beauty innate with us?
- Does everyone respond positively to a beautiful sunrise or lovely flowers, are there some things that are universally beautiful regardless of who’s looking?
- What happens when you smell a rose? What is the timeless eternity, the floral black hole you disappear into as you inhale its fragrance?
- What’s happening when you enjoy a moment of true connection and friendship?
- What happens when you see a great tree? Read a beautiful poem? Hear the birdsong or stand in front of a work of art? And what do these experience share in common?
- What is it in us that stands still?
Contemplate Beauty With Me At Our Next Event: Art Meditations at The National Gallery London – Tickets
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