Seagull I would like to thank you for your words I have been thinking about them for a little while and in my heart I think you have a very valid point.

It took me back to the first holiday abroad I had with my children, on the first evening we went down to the beach in Halkidiki to find a restaurant for dinner!! We got to the beach road to the right were a lot of restaurants and hustle and bustle, to the left a single one a little way along which had a grass roofed deck across the road from it directly above the sand!! It pulled me there and thankfully my friend we had travelled with and her children also wanted to be quiet as we were travel worn.

After a much required meal my freinds son was crying (only 4 years old) so she took him for a walk in his push chair, leaving me with her oldest and my children playing in the sand. I sat and took in the wonders of the beach and the warmth on my skin of the sun as it was going down in front of me. The freindliness of the locals, I sat feeling relaxed, totally unwound and at one with the scene, no worries everything had just melted away, the waiting staff bringing me free drinks as I sat appreciating the view.

And then I was rewarded with the most beautiful sun set ever!! The whole of the horizon seemed to play its role with the sun as it went down, showing me beautiful lights and colours to appreciate!!

I have sat since this time trying to recreate it but always something missing, and now I know what it was!! The oneness of it all!! The wonder that nature creates this beauty, Giai so talented at showing us just how we feel inside~ mirrors of our souls!! However didnt I see it before??

Thank you again Seagull a beautiful wonder has been unfolded to me

Love Kerry

I thought about it yesterday while having a depression attack: why do I reject this mood, this state, why can't I accept it and be happy in it? Why did I decide it's wrong, unhealthy, bad and not natural?

I think that it's not the question whether our state influences the outer world... it obviously does. It's enough to look around to see how humanoids can influence the way the world looks.

I even had an idea that we influence weather, and not by polluting and "warming", but by our inner states - we are "stormy", we are "flooded", we are "hot", we are condradicting each other in our desires, we are out of balance, and so we are affecting everything, since everything is interconnected.

Also for sure there are things that are present or show themselves 'independently' on an individual state (there are other forces in the world, and there is a collective effect also), but it's not for sure you'll notice, since one can perceive only something he can resonate with. For example, I can walk the same street where I live, but each time I pay attention to different things, according to my inner state.

I think, that more important is question what is beautiful and what is not?

I feel, that "ugly" or "beautiful" are results of some kind of judgment. If I feel something is ugly, doesn't it mean I'm ugly inside? I mean, at the root of things maybe there are no bad or ugly things in the world...

When I heard about mathematicians, who proved mathematically and claimed, that the world is deterministic, since electron does not have "possibilities and probabilities" on short enough time-scale, thus extrapolating on the larger scale... I was walking in the woods and I saw plastic bottles down on the ground, judging them for being "ugly", polluting, etc, but I couldn't help myself not feel that if that's deterministic, then the Nature itself put it there, of all the possibilities, someone specific was here, and left this specific bottle here at this very place in this exact way... I felt it was genious and beautiful.

Yesterday we didn't know that polyesther is "bad", so it was good, wasn't it? And now it's bad, because I decided I'm going back to nature. So which one is it really?

Also I see the way animals behave. They don't say - this city is all dense and ugly, and oh, this plastic bag is ugly, they take it and eat what's inside or play with it.

I look at the children, for example, do they ever put labels on things "oh, that's beautiful, and this is not"? They just take what they like and want to play with, or eat, and reject what they don't. Today it is good, tomorrow it's not. They adapt to anything around, play and enjoy anything.

What I'm trying to say is, why can't I say that everything is beautiful, see beauty everywhere? See the perfect flow of ANY form, shape, material and events? Why should I say - only things that I define now as natural/colorful/'happy' are beautiful? How can I be sure it's not my mind tricking me - "today we beleive that rainbeau is beautiful and plastic box is not"?

I'm still exploring this one. And I'm not sure whether things I now define as beautiful are not a diversion from the truth, which I more and more feel can't judge, label, devide and make selection rules. One day I feel perfect walking on the beach, but the other I feel not less happy driving a car...Or playing with "plastic" ball. One day I feel natural and great wearing thin cotton, and the other I put on modal+spandex and feel absolutely perfect.

That's why I try to ask as few questions I can and keep it to feelings. And I get an alarm when definitions come to picture - it's good and that's bad...

The beauty, I discover, is a FEELING, not an object ouside. It can be generated by whatever I look at, if I'm in tune with a Source.

I really believe that the first moment of any experience is pure and perfect, but one millionth second later it's distorted, processed, questioned, put in a "box", catalogued,labeled and put as an asignment to reexperience again if it was pleasant or good, and avoid it if it was otherwise.

The first moment is a rainbeau, sea, flower,anything, and feeling being expanded and overwhelmed by it's beauty, and the next moment is starting to quench this experience to a box.

Is there the beauty and the beast? Or these two are sides of the same coin, distorted and set apart by a dual mind?

I keep to the feelings, to the joy and to the happiness in whatever place, whatever view, whatever mood, and whatever state.

And if I see something ugly, then I know for sure, I'm being revealed a distortion, a 'lens' breaking the pure light into something else.

Thanks for the thoughtful posts Kerry and Someone. It was wonderful to hear your sunset story Kerry. That was precisely the kind of thing I was thinking of re: the rainbow. It seemed so unlikely for it to form in exactly the way it did - the wind, the clouds, the angle of the sun, the rain all had to be perfect and that's what got me thinking....I was feeling the way you described about your sunset and the rainbow seemed to me at the time to be a gift just to me...I wasn't even sure if the other people on the beach observed it in the same way that I did. I was in the right space/place at the right time and I was able to hold the feeling, which I seem to be able to more these days.

I understand what you said Someone about your experiences of Beauty being fleeting. Many experiences of Beauty are just that - observed and then gone..and this is their initial tantalising nature, but stick with the journey. I can assure you that as your consciousness expands, your ability to hold the Beauty/the expansion will be enhanced..go with it, accept it, don't fight it...melt into the Beauty.

And you make excellent points in questioning what Beauty really is. This is an age-old issue! When I wrote about duality, the (metaphorical) darkness allowing us to appreciate the Beauty, it then occurred to me that there is a Beauty in darkness too. So, your plastic bottles....the plastic itself under a high powered microscope would show amazing Beauty in terms of the packing/shapes of its molecules, and who is to say that plastic bottles in the woods aren't beautiful in their own way (as you say)! Though personally I would prefer not to find them there, but then I would be being judgemental at some level about what is natural/Beautiful....that's an interesting one. I wonder what other people think.....

At the risk of adding too much to this post, I spent the weekend at my wife's family farm and there was a wonderful crop of apples. A very good friend of mine who didn't know I had spent the weekend communing with the apple trees (along with several wheel barrows of cow manure dug into the garden - but that's another slightly more aromatic story) wrote the following to me (synchronicity?) as we had been having an email discussion about this issue of Beauty - again, it goes back to how we absorb/appreciate what is Beautiful:

"I guess the meaning is not to "look" at an apple tree with enthusiasm and interest as a child that sees an apple tree for the first or third time, but to acknowledge that we see an apple tree and let the energy of the apple tree reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

This seems to me to be a wonderful description of how to sense Beauty....as usual, it took me a while to 'cop on' to the deeper meaning of what my friend had said - in terms of Beauty. Here's my take on it - Actually, what we see is only a small fraction of all the energy emanating from the apple tree - the energy our eyes can capture...just the electromagnetic wavelengths of visible light, but of course the tree (made of matter (crystallised energy if you like), part of the visible (to us) universe) is vibrating at a virtually infinite number of energetic frequencies, so it (the tree) actually exists in realms/dimensions of reality beyond our senses in addition to those we can see with our eyes....., so this is why no matter how hard we try to "see" the apple tree, our vision of the tree (through our eyes and processed in the mind) will never give us a complete appreciation of its Beauty.....we should allow ourselves to "see" the tree with the aspects of ourselves that are also vibrating at these higher frequencies. The higher frequencies correspond to higher states of consciousness, and to do this we should allow ourselves to transcend the idea that we are separate from the tree, so that the energies passing between us and the tree can interact/exchange more easily, so we then truly begin to "see" the tree with our hearts by, as my friend said, allowing "the energy of the apple tree [to] reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."...I believe this is what happens when our consciousness expands from the heart - it fills the surroundings and we feel much more at-one with everything, since we become more sensitive in picking up the signals/energies in the environment around us....we sense the Beauty in our surroundings...and the tree metaphor is what helped me to see this more clearly!

I hope this helps, especially you Someone and I hope there will be many more Beautiful sunsets in your life Kerry!

With best thoughts.

Seagull

Thanks Seagull, im hoping so too

There was a really stunning sight the other day with a massive white columnus cloud ("cauliflower topped") in the middle of a sunset and a storm cloud wrapping round it the other day, quite spectacular, the next day the crap hit the fan in the family!! All fun hey??!!

Love Kerry

Hi, Seagull, you 'made my heart sing' with your post

"I guess the meaning is not to "look" at an apple tree with enthusiasm and interest as a child that sees an apple tree for the first or third time, but to acknowledge that we see an apple tree and let the energy of the apple tree reach us and flow into our eyes and heart...."

When I read it, I wanted to tell about my experience in the sea a couple weeks ago, when I closed my eyes, and it felt as if this line that separating me from the sea and the wind I felt on my skin was gone, I was feeling like I'm the wind, I'm the water, I didn't feel any restrictions, any limitations and no fear (which is a miracle in itself for all the time frightened me ). I can't even say I felt happy, it's more like I was something else.

And I wanted to say, that maybe if we can really connect with anything, it can't be not beautiful, when the line is gone, you can't judge anything anymore. I couldn't judge the water for being too salty or too cold, while I was feeling so connected with it.

"And then you wrote: we should allow ourselves to transcend the idea that we are separate from the tree, so that the energies passing between us and the tree can interact/exchange more easily, so we then truly begin to "see" the tree with our hearts..."

Thanks for the uplifting words,
Happy me

Hi Someone - A singing heart is always a good thing! I'm glad it helped! Keep visiting the sea and allowing its immense energy to cleanse your soul...I know it helps me in that way.
Best thoughts, Seagull