Build a Life Based on Beauty

Butterflies, wild flowers and swallows, one by one come into my consciousness. All is awakening.

These are signs of spring, of renewal and rebirth that I have noticed a lot lately. This morning I spotted a small flock of cliff swallows flying about outside my window. And now they’re back. They swirl and swoop. They arrive with the vital energy of spring. Maybe they will take up residence in our terraced neighborhood, nesting under the clay tiles of our rooves.

In these days of transition between winter and spring, we get to witness many firsts and great flowerings. These liminal days are powerful times in which we can, if we become very still, catch a glimpse of the beauty that underlies all we see.

This beauty lives in us, but so often we’re too busy, too clouded and clogged to recognize it. But it is here that all life truly begins. It is what holds us even now though we may see nothing but disharmony and ugliness.

To build a life based on beauty is to realize it right where you are. When swallows rise up from the south to fly outside your window, notice. When butterflies flicker at the edge of your field of vision, notice. When wild flowers rise in the desert, notice. The weed that breaks through a crack in the sidewalk, the moonlight glittering on late spring snow, the smile from a passerby, notice all of it.

We are walking bundles of awareness, creating our world from within. We notice beauty, because it is what we are. When we see death and decay, it doesn’t have to be ugly. They are merely stages of transition. All is becoming. In the in-between-moments we come face to face with our own becoming. We realize transition is always happening. Spring is not static; it is on its way to becoming summer. In these days before spring, I see beauty just as I see beauty in the darkest days before winter. It is because beauty is the basis of all life.

Take a few moments during this liminal time to slow down and feel the wonder of being alive. Catch sight of the beauty that wants to break through every fiber of being. Let beauty become the path. Open to it and you will discover exactly who you are.