The Beauty of All Things
Living in a world of duality—of light and dark, difficult and beautiful, decay and growth—we realize that we can’t love only the light and ignore the dark; we must embrace all creation.
In my early twenties, I spent a year in London abroad and was quite lonely that first semester while I was getting my bearings. Recently, a dear friend’s death had me looking through old photos when I came across a short story that I had written and saved from that time.
I was amazed at my former self—the thoughts displayed on the page allowed me to look back at the evolving self. I recognized the essence of me, yet also saw how much I had grown. In fact, the person I was in my 20s was very different than the one in her 30s and now late 40s. Our cells are completely different every seven years—renewing physical holograms with consciousness upgrades and downgrades along the way.
My eyes scanned to the top of the page where I wrote in black cursive a working title, “Idealism: The Beauty of Things.” How fascinating that my working title for my current writings on nature as a mirror to life is “The Beauty of All Things.” While I may feel different, that scribble on the side of the page reminds me of the continuous thread of my soul that carries the same essence, the same energetic signature, thirty years later.
Ironically, as I step into the new—graduate school, a workout routine, a new potential career, a new schedule, a feeling of freedom—I feel a soulful reconnection with who I was in my twenties: a student of philosophy with a strong calling to become a psychologist (I’m learning these are very connected), a student of Buddhism and other spiritual topics, and more in touch with my bright, playful, free-spirited self, albeit with much more confidence from surviving the dark.
It’s a new cycle beginning, but it mirrors an old one; that’s what cycles do—they renew, reset; they dont' repeat, but they rhyme.
And there are mini-cycles of dark and light within these larger arcs of time. The darkness often teaches us more about the light than the light teaches us about itself.
How do I define darkness? Darkness is ultimately the soul hidden from itself—cloaked in responsibility, burdens, our own subconscious shadows, negative people, and not listening to oneself–one’s true essence.
We must use any times of darkness to teach us about ourselves, to uncover, to till the fertile soil, to work through so that we can emerge, and harvest our true essence once again.
Soul-Prompt: How have I evolved and changed over the years? What remains the same about me? What is different? What’s my true essence? How can I appreciate and cultivate my essence, (which is most likely tied to my purpose)?
