Beauty

In Montana I was deluged with scene after scene of natural, true beauty: a mother doe and her fawns, wind through pine and aspen trees, the smiling faces of everyone else in that space surrounded by all of it. This particular photograph was taken by yogini Anne Jablonski of our friend Gayle Ross De Geurin last week. I'm calling it "Lady Hawk."

Back in Los Angeles I'm working on finding the beauty, maybe not as obviously green and natural, but nonetheless striking, in the city around me, buildings, street traffic, the faces of people not so obviously joyous as they go about their daily business in the city. I'm tuning into the feeling of myself and who I am here, now, back in my "normal" daily life.

In the meantime, there's this underlying insecurity with who I am that keeps coming up, emphasized over and over again by my teen aged daughter who keeps telling me that she is ugly. I may be biased, but she's got the most beautiful face in the world. And words whispered to me by the wind in Montana keep coming back to confirm that fact:

Blessed child, know that you are mine and you are beautiful.
Know that flowing from you from me into all is sacred, blessed, but ordinary at the same time.
Drop into the knowing with the safe assurance that you are home.
Allow yourself to be overwhelmed, swept away, and resurrected by your own loveliness.

I don't know why the wind kept telling me and everyone else that we were beautiful in Montana, but it sure is nice to be reminded that it is lovely out there, as we are lovely and loved inside.

Today I remember to remember the beauty.

Sometimes the search for that beauty can seem foolish. I am reminded of Herzog's intriguing film "Grizzly Man," but that search is always true.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/grizzly_man_herzog