leyline

Carol

I agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But that’s the challenge of beauty. Having said that it is also in the eye of the beholding culture too, because the ‘I’ is not separate from that either. Its all mixed up.

The more I reflect upon it I would say that physical beauty challenges our spiritual relationships like subjectivity challenges our rational ones. Many spiritual people generally do not like the effect of beauty. It seems so unfair. But to deny its existence seems a bit daft. The young are very different in their physical beauty to the old. Give me a break here.

As to your other writing I must admit I couldn’t quite see what you were driving at. I am a bit slow this morning.

andy_d

Personally i've alwasy found beauty extremely spiritual. It certainly doesn't stem for the analytical, rational side of us. I feel it flows more from the experiential, intuitive facets of our mind.

Take for example, an intensely beautiful piece of music. How is that anything other than spiritual? The rational mind says that it is just noise, but the effect it has on your heart is undeniable. If that's not spirituality, I don't know what is.

Carol Massey

leyline, you said this, but I doubt if you meant it the way I perceived it; nevertheless, I'll put it here:

"But that’s the challenge of beauty." I would say that beauty is not challenged by anything..it simply is.

Now the bit that was unclear to you, maybe I can state a little plainer:

We, meaning the individuals who form a society, create capitalistic democracy. We, again, the group, create beauty in myriad ways.....point being, we are doing this from our position of psycho/physical/spiritual being. To say that the culture is not spiritual enough simply is erroneous. We are fully capable of creating, and do so continually.....for the most part, we are simply unaware of it. When we realize the power and energy that resides within us, we can change the field (world) by the choices we make.

Carol Massey

Hi Andy, I agree with that wholeheartedly; however, I wouldn't say that the rational is without it's own beauty.

andy_d

Very true, Carol. Which just goes to show that dividing things into opposites is a very limited way of trying to understand them

leyline

ok

well i am not saying beauty is not spiritual, nor am i criticisng capitalist democracy and describing it as unspiritual. I simply said that it is not easy to relate beauty to the spiritual and as a side note in another post that capitalist democracy has aspects of it that seem rather profane despite the fact that women are generally treated better.

Personally i consider myself very lucky indeed to be born in a time and place of a capitalist democrat culture, as compared to what else is going on and went on before. I consider myself a postmodernist for example. But within that lucky context the spiritual has to be found. It ain't obvious within a culture that places a monetary value on just about everything from baby clothes to grave stones, from handel's messiah to yoga classes. Capitalist democracy is in danger of rendering all spirituality inauthentic by virtue of its extreme tolerance. By all means set up your yurt and pray to the earth goddess, .......but don't complain if the field next door is being developed by a petro chemical company. Capitalist democracy tolerates both.

WRT beauty this thread is about physicality and the spirit, so although i appreciate the beauty of rationality it is nowhere near as much a challenge as the physical. In fact the beauty of rationality is almost spiritual by the sheer fact that it isn't physical.

Music is interesting granted, but again it is not as personal as a beautiful woman or man. Beautiful people are blessed, and the blessed are usually portrayed as beautiful. eg angels, spirits, jesus, the madonna, ......

I have no problem with accepting beauty at all, far from it! But i have met many physically beautiful people that are really nasty and ignorant. Surely you guys can see what i am getting at? When you meet someone whose physical presence is breath taking........... yet they are spiritually dark or shallow. This is quite obviously a spiritual challenge particularily from someone who would write

" Personally i've alwasy found beauty extremely spiritual. "

and from someone else who would agree wholeheartedly and write

"We love things beautiful, we love to create things beautiful...."

After all when emotional wrote...

"the beautiful or intelligent person did not work to become beautiful or intelligent - he or she was born that way - so he or she should not be rewarded for a chance factor. It's like being rewarded for pulling a six on a dice.

The greatest spiritual challenge is the inequality of people worldwide...."

this is exactly how i see the challenge, particularily with respect to physical beauty.

Carol Massey

leyline,

I think I have a sense of where you're coming from regarding the beauty factor. As a young woman, I thought beauty was 'everything', as I matured, I began to see that my attachment to 'being beautiful' was to cover up my low self-esteem. If I could appear more beautiful, people would not see that I was very frightened and insecure. I don't think I was nasty during that period of my life, but I was very ignorant, as you say.

Now I can be nasty! And beautiful is something that has redefined itself as I have aged. It is no longer a quality that is 'skin-deep', but is the very essence of all life.

I think some of the difficulty in understanding others (via internet communication) is that we miss a lot of information that is being related simply because pixels are incapable of transmitting unique, and sometimes non-verbal communication that exists between people when they're face to face. Example: I am much more indifferent to tele-marketers on the phone than I would be if someone came to my door selling something.

The point I have been trying to make, and andy picked up on it quickly, is this: If we move beyond seeing things as 1) this is physical, and 2) this is spiritual, and embrace life as a unified continuim (makes no difference if we call it spiritual or physical) then we have placed ourselves in a position whereas we can change the current capitalistic system, because we can discern our unity with it. It is no longer, out there, while I'm at my spiritual best in here. By the same knowledge, it is easier to understand also that the enemy is never 'out there', but in me.

Me and my shadow have become one...

Hope this helps, leyline.

leyline

Carol

“If we move beyond seeing things as 1) this is physical, and 2) this is spiritual, and embrace life as a unified continuim (makes no difference if we call it spiritual or physical) then we have placed ourselves in a position whereas we can change the current capitalistic system, because we can discern our unity with it. It is no longer, out there, while I'm at my spiritual best in here. By the same knowledge, it is easier to understand also that the enemy is never 'out there', but in me.”

Hmmm… well as I have said before I am strongly against the extremism of ‘oneness’, while recognising it as a very necessary spiritual outlook. To be able to move outside dualism is a rare and valuable experience I agree, but to try and remain there is foolishness IMO, ……………..and impossible anyway. On this physical and social plane that is.

What you wrote about beauty as being more than skin deep I agree with, but again I would not trick myself out of thinking that some aspects of beauty are indeed skin deep. Sometimes skin is very beautiful indeed.

While thinking about this subject I remembered the following true story, (some minor details and names changed to protect identity.)…..

…. I went to a school reunion some years ago, it was ok, but the best thing was that I met up with an old friend, William, that I hadn’t seen for many years. We now live quite a distance from each other but nevertheless he made the effort some weeks later to visit me. Nice guy. Slightly eccentric, was besotted with my sister at school, (not eccentric for that!….. although I didn’t get it at the time of course. ) and now a single parent father. He brought his son with him and later when the child fell asleep he told me his worries.

William is a physical guy. Not a classic good looker but a chiselled bright face, short and stocky. He was always a gentle guy who never got into fights, but Geeez was he strong. He could lift his weight by the tips of two fingers and scale ‘flat’ brick walls with ease for a laugh. He became dedicated to rock climbing and is now widely respected for his abilities amongst his peers, renaming climbs as he tackles them by using fewer holds and such, and he has travelled the world doing it.

Then one day he had a very bad fall due to equipment failure in a remote place and was lucky to survive. He was told that he might just be able to walk again and not be totally confined to a wheelchair if he was lucky. After a year of following medical advice he could manage the garden path, but not back again. Then, because he was so bored and restricted he decided to attend a meditation class. There he met the teacher and felt an extremely strong emotional attraction to her. He had been in love before and was no duffer with the girls. In fact his girlfriends had always been ‘fit’. He loved the physical beauty of women and his attraction was strong. There was one problem however. Although he had never felt like this before for a woman emotionally and spiritually,….. she was grossly overweight. This meant that he just couldn’t bring himself to fancy her, and worse he couldn’t tell her what he was feeling when she got close. It really upset him, even more so because she was also great with his son who had lost his mother to leukaemia. It was tearing him apart…..

…. so much so that one day he decided to ignore all the medical advice, stopped the physiotherapy and literally walked himself everyday through the pain barrier, until remarkably and against all the odds he completely recovered his physical fitness. He is now climbing again.

But what he walked away from still hurts him inside. He just could not bring himself to be sexually attracted to this woman or deny that it was important to him, and yet he felt something very deep inside and he knew that she felt it too.

I can understand that situation because I know how genuine the guy is. I went through all the possibilities that I could think of that night, trying to help him out, but nothing that he hadn’t already seriously considered himself. What he feared the most was hurting her and himself by having a sexual relationship with someone else…….. while deeply loving her. He loves the physical beauty of women too.

andy_d

Ah, so you're talking about beauty in people! Now i'm with you. I thought you were refering to beauty in general...

Personally, I don't believe that your physical appearance has any impact on your personal potential, besides whatever blocks you project onto yourself.

I also believe that as people become more advanced spiritualy, they definately become better looking.

As for your friend, well everybody has an image of their "ideal" partner stored in their head. It's a trap caused by our ridiculous Western notion of romance. Many, many people pass up wonderful opportunities simply because they meet a real live human who differs from the artificially constucted fantasy in their heads.

leyline

andy

"It's a trap caused by our ridiculous Western notion of romance. Many, many people pass up wonderful opportunities simply because they meet a real live human who differs from the artificially constucted fantasy in their heads."


you have gone from saying "Personally i've alwasy found beauty extremely spiritual" to saying that the physical beauty of a person is an artificial construct, a trap and a fantasy. Then you even contradict that by saying "I also believe that as people become more advanced spiritualy, they definately become better looking."

Physical beauty and indeed romance (which i don't think is exactly the same thing but granted is related) is not confined to the west. Other cultures have their celebration of physical beauty as well ........ including the 'east'.

"Many, many people pass up wonderful opportunities simply because they meet a real live human who differs from the artificially constucted fantasy in their heads."

Well as i tried to convey to you through a sympathetic story, the reason they do this is because beauty is far from just artificial. It is physical and spiritual too.

Moreover you are ignoring the biological influences too. Is a peacock a ridiculous lifeform? And if not then why should we be considered as such with our celebrations of beauty?

I agree that beauty has a spiritual context, but its not a black and white, either/or clear cut relationship. It appears to me that you are trying to maintain a purely spritual relationship to beauty, and i applaud that. But you are willing to go to the extremes of denial and self contradiction in order to maintain it.