If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us.

"There is an uncanny symmetry between the inner and the outer world . . . Each of us is responsible for how we see, and how we see determines what we see . . . We have often heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This is usually taken to mean that the sense of beauty is utterly subjective; there is no accounting for taste because each person’s taste is different. The statement has another, more subtle meaning: if our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us. We will be surprised to discover beauty in unsuspected places where the ungraceful eye would never linger . . .

 [B]eauty waits until the patience and depth of a gaze are refined enough to engage and discover it. In this sense, beauty is not a quality externally present in something. It emerges at that threshold where reverence of mind engages the subtle presence of the other person, place or object. The hidden heart of beauty offers itself only when it is approached in a rhythm worthy of its trust and showings. Only if there is beauty in us can we recognize beauty elsewhere: beauty knows beauty. In this way, beauty can be a mirror that manifests our own beauty . . . There is a profound balancing within beauty."

John O'Donohue

Photos: (Top and Middle) Alpenglow sunset on Long's Peak; (Bottom) Ice patterns on Dream Lake, with Hallett Peak in the background. All three photos were taken in Rocky Mountain National Park, CO, on January 9, 2015