Spiritually-minded people often believe that beauty is a superficial, temporary quality and that we should therefore avoid spending too much time and energy on it. However, if we get in touch with the principle that indwells beauty, we begin to understand that it actually contains quite a bit of depth. Beauty is actually the radiance of a deeper reality, what Plato called "The Good." Thus, the great philosopher could say that "The Good has taken refuge in the beautiful." In this way, beauty leads us to ferret out the underlying reality of which it is an expression. In a person, this means discovering the depths of a person's personality that expresses itself, for example, in a beautiful smile or in a particular style of walking. With Nature's beauty, we are led to research the underlying geological and biological forces that express themselves in a beautiful landscape, and to find the spiritual Source that indwells it, and of which it is a radiance.
In addition, we come to understand that external beauty is the expression of a much vaster reality or principle: a kind of "harmony of contrasts." In the case of The Great Sand Dunes, this includes the amazing juxtaposition of light and shadow, or of mountain and desert landscapes, or of the smallness of the human figure surrounded by a vast landscape. It also includes the fact that such a seemingly non-personal reality - sand - is able to take on the appearance of the lovely curves of the human body. The ultimate harmony of contrasts, of course, occurs between a BEAUTIFUL GAZE that seeks the good in all things on the one hand, and the beauty of the object that reveals itself to that gaze on the other. Whenever we cannot at first find an objective embodiment of beauty in a person or setting, it is this beautiful "eye" or "gaze" or style of perception that is able to coax beauty out of hiding!
Photos: Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO, June 6-7, 2015
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