"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure. And we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us."
Rainer Maria Rilke
Beauty stops just short of annihilating us in an all-consuming desire to possess it, a desire that can never be satisfied as long as we view ourselves as separate from the beauty for which we long. If we allow ourselves to sit with the discomfort caused by unfulfilled desire, we will find that beauty serenely becomes a mirror that is able to reveal to us the endless riches of our own desire.
When we really look into our desire, we see that it is simply the way in which beautiful things are able to appreciate themselves within that very longing. At the same time, we also realize that beautiful things are simply a crystallization of our longing. In both instances, we find to our great delight that we are already united to the things we desire!
Photo: Prickly-pear cactus pads, with the Needles in the background. Canyonlands National Park, UT, November 27, 2011. Yes, the cactus pads really are this shade of purple in the wintertime!
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