GRADUATING CRITICISM
These days I am taken aback by Beauty.
Like, I encounter beauty in my world and the intake of breath into my little lungs is enough of a spurt that it literally pushes my body back.
Awe.
I’m not sure which came first—but I know this.
I’d been working on graduating criticism in my mind.
It’s been a tough one. A sticky one.
A little here and a little there, you know, little things. But then I keep catching myself in my own mind cracking really small meaningless comments that are negative criticisms.
This one too, like many… perhaps ALL of the lessons of the interior world, is not a Once and For All sort of lesson learned, graduating done, certificate earned. Nope. This is another one of those cyclical, repetitive… honorable and meaningful lessons we keep practicing over and over again, until we have repeated it enough to have replaced the old default setting with a new one that serves us better.
But here’s the beautiful thing.
Day after day I had tasked myself with the cleaning up of any and all criticism from my mind—catch it here and chuck it there; and today, today I am finding myself face to face with what that old mode of operation is about to be replaced with—the emergence of a vividly enhanced eye for Beauty.
As I walked myself over to the public library in Tokyo, I met Her.
This Divine One.
The Mighty Gingko, still wearing last night’s raindrops as if to play with a little extra shimmer in the sun. Her colors golden, yet in close observation revealing bashful green tones in the center bits of her countless thousands of leaves. She stands alone. And she doesn’t need to say it, because it is her presence that is sure and established in its Joyous Being.
I weep.
Because it’s a ka-bang to my chest—of how Beauty is so clearly an expression of the Divine.
That Magnificence that is Our Nature.
I can’t help it if it’s just a feeling—a plain old feeling, but a deep and unmoving knowing, that somehow, in certitude I know, that this Divine One—Her Magnificence is deeply tied to mine. That I, I am only priming myself to reveal the true nature of my Magnificence, in that moment when I’m done with my criticizing mind, and my being bursts, like Hers, in the Joyous Expression of Who I Am.
I feel inspired, and I intuitively send this snapshot to my dear Aunty Sudha in India, along with this one, too:
Aunty Sudha says,
Aunty Sudha: Wow, is it spring or autumn?
And I say,
Mae: It is autumn outside and spring inside my heart, Aunty.
No wonder you can see both.
AS: Haha. Good to know that. God bless you.
M: Only very special people can see both at the same time.
God bless you.
AS: Love you.