Allowing Beauty

Walking through the deep heat of my Southern garden and home, I am often taken aback by the simple and profound beauty of nature.  The sights, the smells, the sounds all combine in a wave of beauty that elevates my soul.  Nature is innately beautiful. 

Many of us are raised to see beauty as frippery, an unnecessary indulgence.  Yet history shows us, in culture after culture, that beauty was valued, pursued and nurtured.  Why?

What if beauty is generative?  Generative energy is literally a generator creating power and possibility out of nothing.  When you have something that's beautiful in your life, it is a generative energy.

If you are making the bold choice for a life full of possibilities, the choice to surround yourself with beauty and elegance is a choice that will multiply, exponentialize across your many-faceted life.  Those choices can be small and simple, every choice compounding.  A house plant, a lamp, a friendship.

When you look at the objects that surround you and you notice the beauty, the consciousness, those elements become greater and your life becomes greater because you are receiving from the beauty. Can you sense the lightness?  When you have something that's really ugly and doesn't really match the energy of what you would like in your life, and you look at it,  does that elevate your life or is it more on the degenerative spectrum?  Does that actually work for you as a contribution to your life? 

This isn't to say that you go and throw out everything in your life that you don't love, rather it’s an invitation to the constant question of How can I upgrade this?  How can I upgrade this? How can I upgrade this? 

I live as that question with my home.  Right now, we're doing a shower renovation.  For years our shower has been a commonplace acrylic surround that was installed by our builders.  It functioned well enough, it did its job but did I love it? No. I was always wishing for stone beneath my feet.  Or marble surrounding me.  Now we have the opportunity to upgrade.  

So I explored all the ingredients of a shower, all the possibilities.  I looked at aesthetics and textures and styles.  I talked with people and was curious and playful.  Somewhere along the way, I began to adore gold faucets, very modern and currently on trend but I always think big picture. How will this look 10 years from now?  What will actually work for me?  

And then my sister sent me options for unlacquered brass shower fixtures and ping!  My whole body lit up!  They were stunning.  My first thought was to eliminate them as a possibility for a million different reasons: too expensive, too high end.   But I was so aware of the energy of touching that fixture every day in the shower, my hand on the tap as I turned the water on, admiring the beauty and receiving the elegance, the gift of it.  That could be judged as wasteful frippery or it could be acknowledged as the choice to create a tomorrow that is greater than my today and to step into being whatever it takes to actualize those beautiful futures and the me that flourishes within them.  

What could show up if you committed to beauty and ease?  You may have been taught to vilify beauty but what can you choose now?  If you valued beauty would your life be greater?  Could your life generate itself and hard work cease?

Here are three questions you can ask to start generating more beauty in your life. 

1. What energy, space and consciousness can I be to live my life as a total celebration?
2. What beauty can I receive today that I've never received before?
3.  What is beautiful about me that I'm not willing to claim, own and acknowledge?