deep true beauty – Lisa Z. Lindahl

April 30, 2017

A Credo of True Beauty

photo by Lisa Z. Lindahl Diarmuid O’Murchu, a fascinating Irish scholar and social psychologist, puts forth one of the best descriptions/explanations of Bohmian of dialogue* in his excellent book, “Quantum Theology.”

I had always thought of this process (though I had no name for it) more as a way of being, really. When I thought consciously along these lines, it was in terms of “nonattachment,” or “objectivity.”

In my best moments, I strive to live life as a “dialogue.” I.e., unattached to any one point of view, deeply listening, open to all points of view without having to “have it” or “take it on” on a personal level, and being response-able — able to respond — hopefully with the greatest good in mind. At the same time to be aware of my own preferences and choices, and also responsible for my own condition in so far as I am consciously able (which one works at to continue to become more conscious). And always aware of beauty, supporting it, nurturing it, being surrounded in it.

This is the closest to a personal “credo” I have articulated in recent times. Deepak Chopra has said, “Quantum physics are the mechanics of creativity; reincarnation is the quantum leap of creativity…the soul takes on new expression.”[1] Until recently I considered Deepak’s comment to refer only to the life/death cycle. Today, I see its application to my own credo and attendant learning spirals: quantum leaps of understanding that leave me dying in one reality while popping into another – one that sometimes defies wordy articulation but can be summed up in a sweeping gaze while at the beach.

And, I have come to understand that I am endeavoring to practice beauty.

The dialogue between theology and science is not a dialogue at all;
it is a drama of the human spirit. ~Alexei Nesteruk

* Wikipedia definition: [Bohmian] dialogue has no predefined purpose, no agenda, other than that of inquiring into the movement of thought, and exploring the process of “thinking together” collectively. … allow group participants to examine their preconceptions and prejudices, …explore the more general movement of thought. … Dialogue should not be confused with discussion or debate, both of which, says Bohm, suggest working towards a goal or reaching a decision, rather than simply exploring and learning…

[1] Excerpted from a lecture in workshop, “Seduction of Silence,” April, 2005, Lake Lanier, GA

April 17, 2016

Whoopsies of this Life

So a lot has been going on.

Life has a way of creating cycles: months of humdrum and habits — sometimes soothing, sometimes boring. And then sudden huge waves of change, happenings, things you can’t say no to. Some things you have no opportunity to say no to; death is one of those.

So I’ve been juggling a few things; traveling a great deal, across the country, up the coast and down the coast and back again…and again.

One of the changes occurring during this time is switching where this blog lives, it’s host or whatever. A simple task you would think. Not so. The process, much more tedious and long than it should have been, is the reason I haven’t been able to post recently and the reason my more recent posts seem to have disappeared! Whoopsie!

Ah, I love technology! You can find the post “Spring” on our FB page “The Way of Beauty”.

And speaking of whoops!, a reader pointed out to me that nowhere on this blog page do I make it clear that what I am writing about is TRUE BEAUTY. That is a major whoops. The whole reason for this blog is to make a pitch about the importance of ditching what passes for “beauty” these days and reclaiming TRUE BEAUTY! (See the post “A Manifesto for True Beauty” waaaay back in the beginning). Well, and to make way for my book about it, coming soon…

So, whoops, I gotta change the masthead, or whatever its called here, to make it clear what I (mostly) go on about: deep, true Beauty and its importance in our global harmony.

So, change is good. We must perceive it as such as it is, after all, the only constant!

Ah, yeah…a lot of stuff going on! And whoopsies are only to be expected…

January 24, 2016

The Question of Taste …

To walk the Way of Beauty and practice True Beauty aspires to transcend our culture’s ingrained notions of “taste.”

Taste, as used here is defined in the dictionary as:

the sense of what is fitting, harmonious or beautiful; the perception and enjoyment of what constitutes excellence in the fine arts, literature, fashion, etc.;
the sense of what is seemly, polite, tactful, etc., to say or do in a given social situation
one’s personal attitude or reaction toward an aesthetic phenomenon or social situation, regarded as either good or bad
the ideas of aesthetic excellence or of aesthetically valid forms prevailing in a culture or personal to an individual

It is this last definition that concerns me, that I think of as the crippling aspect within the concept and the notion of ‘taste.’ It is this approach that I believe needs to be unlearned in order to disable our short-cut thinking and become more easily aware of True Beauty.

Think of what you have found beautiful, and perhaps sought to elevate, honor, call attention to – “Wow! That’s so…uplifting/breathtaking/ beautiful!”… fill in your word for the experience, for we have all experienced such a moment. Whether the “that” in question is a particular sight, color, sound, touch, flavor, fragrance, insight, understanding, experience or combination of some or all of the above…. it doesn’t so much matter.

Whole books have been written defending, attacking and/or defining the notion of “taste” in aesthetics. Immanuel Kant, in his “Critique of Judgment” (1928) did a fine job elucidating the subjective and universal nuances in the judgment of aesthetics. David Hume went so far as to create standards for taste, and “wrote the book,” literally. Taste, frankly, shouldn’t be much more than a hiccup in the cosmology of True Beauty. Beauty in our new operating paradigm here is not concerned with ideas of rigid standards of “taste” except in so far as it becomes a stumbling block or a barrier for those attempting to practice True Beauty. Hence, we must attempt some unlearning.

At some points along the way this has been difficult for me. Because believe me, I was brought up with a healthy dose of one must have Taste with a Capital “T.”

This concept of taste is worthy to bring to the discussion because it is an eminent example of the kind of breach that can separate us from (true) Beauty. Separation occurs when there is the Observer and the Observed, the Maker and the Object as Other. When the idea of “taste” goes beyond simple discernment for personal choice and becomes an ethos that defines a group — indeed labels one as belonging to a certain class or level of education — then it is a very effective tool of separation.

True Beauty connects, unifies — it does not create separation.

David Hume was writing in the 1700s. There is much worthy observation and philosophy in his treatise. But his exploration into and need to develop standards for taste instructs me in the degree to which our understanding of Beauty had become departmentalized, rationalized by then. And, eventually, trivialized.

Why? I think it is because Hume’s stance, in essence, is that one’s level of taste is based on class, education, and experience; that without these one is most likely to be vulgar and – the worst – common. That through educated experience one learns judgment and discernment. There is truth in this; it reflects the evolution of understanding. In my ethos, however, this would be just fine if the discourse and its implications were strictly limited to the individual and the individual’s own choices, and not broadcast as a levels of societal worthiness, acceptability and – Beauty.

I take exception to shortcuts of perception, recipes – “standards of taste” that have in practice become “coda of beauty.” While I can appreciate the probable intention behind Hume’s book, the resultant elitism and narrowing of aesthetics have had consequences that have proved to be at least equally counterproductive.

The concept of Taste as a Definitor is the child of a civilization that has become so dependent upon appearance, the surfaces of perception and comparative values, with little to no regard for intrinsic and/or deeper values so it can no longer rely on the honest and intuitive senses of its individuals.

Further, such “standards” can be a code to create and preserve a static and deadened place-holder, so there is mere repetition of “beauty” based on a long-ago Hellenic discovery — a sad, time-worn standard. The freshness of beauty no longer exists.

Suffice to say for our purposes, Taste as an arbiter of Beauty does not need to enter further into a discussion of True Beauty. If my reader disagrees, I would love to hear from you.

Well, Lou has just come in and has been reading over my shoulder again. “Jeesh!” he says, “What I photo by Lisa Z Lindahl want to taste is my lunch! You still sitting here hitting those keys?! Come eat something with me!”

I laugh and tell Lou I will, I will. And I silently bless my own good taste that brought his bright light into my life.

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart
~ Kahlil Gibran

January 10, 2016

Raison D’Etre of the Universe?!

True Beauty is the Raison D’Etre of The Universe?

I am not alone in my suspicion that Beauty is the raison d’etre of our Universe:

True Beauty is both the cause and effect of harmony, of empathy, of community. Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things. It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have harmony, Beauty.

I find so much evidence in the literature of quantum physics, general sciences, philosophy, folk wisdoms and mythologies that points to the elemental and essential nature of Beauty’s role in our Universe.

For instance, from the Science and Math camp – via a theologian, no less — comes this little tidbit: “’Symmetry’ is one of the most frequently recurring words in contemporary scientific literature” (Fr. Diarmuid O’Murchu in Quantum Theology). I would add that “elegance” and “beautiful” would pop up repeatedly on the screen if anyone took the time to do a computerized word scan of current scientific and mathematical lectures and texts. Indeed, one of Brian Greene’s most popular books is entitled “The Elegant Universe.” Was it Einstein or another mathemetician who said “if an equation is not beautiful, it cannot be correct.” And tell me: do the Mandelbrot Set—or any fractals– reveal ugly, jarring, disharmonious patterns? Chaos and nature make Beauty. The quantum potential first makes Beauty. Or, and here’s my question: is it that Beauty births the Implicate?

I also find much anecdotal evidence simply by observing the world and its peoples: Beauty is the essence, and is manifest everywhere. It is the mother, daughter and holy spirit, to mess a bit with Christianity’s Trinity.

To again paraphrase O’Murchu, only the heart can intuit the unmanifest level. Our current science will not prove my hypothesis that the vibration that we call “Beauty” is the source of the Universe. Many religions, on faith, believe in Love. My “faith” tells me that love is an outcome, a reaction to, Beauty.

And so to leap to a new, rather poetic definition, of the verb: Beauty is a dynamic process of becoming in the continuum of the expansion of the Universe, expressed in cyclical waves, rising into harmonic being, falling away and disintegrating into entropy, chaos, discord before resolving again into the orderly harmony of True Beauty, only to spew forth again, the Universe expanding, creating itself.

Over and over and over again.

After reading process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, I understand how closely this vision of Beauty tracks with his concept of “prehensions” and their processes. This is evidence, to me, of intuitive, collective knowing of the Is-ness.

For this is how I understand the action of Beauty. This is why it is a universally recognized entity among species, especially in the consciousness of man, and why it is the motivator. It is the essential cycle, the essence of not only survival (maintenance), but birth (creation and expansion), and clearance (death). It is the reason to expand. The Universe’s raison d’etre. Or, to make a joke: as the memetics might like to have it: the original, the Main Meme.

original art by Lisa Z. Lindahl — Midnight Serenity

November 15, 2015

It’s Everywhere!

The Ubiquitous Presence and (Yay!) Appreciation of True Beauty

I have stayed in the homes of people living in Russia, Sri Lanka, England, New Zealand, France, Italy, Turkey, and Peru. I have also traveled in Ecuador, Tahiti, China, Canada, Hong Kong, Thailand, Wales, Germany, Puerto Rico, various islands in the Caribbean, several amazing ancient sites in Mexico (as well as a couple of rather modern fun ones hecho en Mexico). And, of course, the United States. While what constitutes “common beauty” varies from place to place I have yet to encounter a people who weren’t in some essential way aware of and concerned with True Beauty.

Here is a simple for instance: flowers and gardens are to be found everywhere. I like them, so I look for them, and I haven’t been in a town anywhere that I haven’t seen pots planted with a flower on doorstoops, windowsills – even in the surreal cave homes of Turkey and slums in Puerto Rico. Flowerpots in windows might be serving more than one purpose (edible plants, herbs), but the satisfaction of the need for everyday natural, visual beauty is definitely a purpose, often a primary one.

There are some constants in Beauty that transcend every culture, that persevere through every version of man’s suppression of himself – culturally or personally — to his own inner resonance with true beauty: the light as it strikes the earth; a body of water, especially when sparkling; fresh vegetables on the table; a loved one’s laugh; bird song; and the comforting sense of “safe haven.”

Like laughter, or a smile, natural beauty is the recognized and universally experienced expression of True Beauty — happily familiar all over the globe.

October 25, 2015

True Quotes re True Beauty

In my travels on the Way of True Beauty I have, of course, come across some wise and pithy statements about beauty, true eternal beauty. Here are some I’d like to share with you:

All contemporary crises can be reduced to a crisis about the nature of beauty.

~ John O’Donohue

…the perfection of Beauty is defined as being the perfection of Harmony…

~ Alfred North Whitehead

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.
~John Muir

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart
~ Kahlil Gibran

The individual human’s aesthetic response would alter the very course of history and the shape of things we live among. ~ James Hillman

We feel most alive in the presence of the Beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul…. we come to glimpse behind the shutter of appearances the sure form of things…. Beauty brings a sense of completion and sureness. Without any of the usual calculation, we can slip into the Beautiful with the same ease as we slip into the seamless embrace of water; something ancient within us already trusts that this embrace will hold us. ~ John O’Donohue

Luminous matter is the most rare stuff in our universe. At only 4{d26b639eb74f8edb8884074db06109d949b84d3d1d14796b516693be64172811} it is precious. It is what we and our world are made up of. Everything is sacred. Every thing. Every one. ~ Lisa Lindahl

And finally, another person that believes as I do, that True Beauty is the raison d’être of our Universe:

For the world is not painted or adorned, but is from the beginning beautiful; and God has not made some beautiful things, but Beauty is the creator of the universe.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you have started to integrate the Way of True Beauty into your life, you might take one or some of these — whichever resonates strongly with you — write them out in your own handwriting and pin them up where you will see them each day. As I am known to say, “can’t hurt, might help!”

August 30, 2015

Disassociating from Beauty

Losing touch…

How is it that we get separated from our engagement with True Beauty? How does it happen and what replaces it?

One example might be as simple as our eating mode. These days we are so separated from our food sources that children think chickens come from plastic boxes or buckets and spinach from a cellophane bag. What a shocking experience for a city kid to cut a wad of spinach from a plant or pull a carrot out of the earth, with dirt hanging from its orange self – and call each fresh and healthy! A quick wash and ready to eat! What is dirt? What is dirt-y? What is all that cement and blacktop? What is it covering up? What is ugly? What is beautiful? What is potential? Who cares and why?

The role of Natural Beauty

The natural world is often a human being’s first introduction to and relationship with external beauty – beauty without. And in our current urban-centric, agri-business culture, most people are on a “nodding basis” only with our natural world. It is something driven by during the commute, a lawn to be mown, the subject of an ETV documentary about an exotic place, a tree in a park. While gardening is a giant industry, and ranked a top hobby of American households, still too many souls receive and participate in too little of nature’s beauty, let alone pay attention to and participate in the magic of its cycles.

Aside from the obvious simple Beauty that a garden creates, the relationships one forms while creating and tending it – with the soil, the plant, the animals, birds, bees and insects, the weather and cycles – are enriching and enhancing. And sometimes annoying and frustrating. Can I put that bit under “character development?”

Some small but powerful practices that help re-introduce us to the rhythms of Beauty might be: turning off the TV (or getting rid of it), ceasing to get your daily “news” from the fear-mongering mass media, or making dinner for a friend once a week or so. Sitting quietly each day (preferably outside) also ranks right up there. The 18 Practices of Beauty review all of these possibilities.

I believe we must help ourselves and others re-learn to consciously connect with the harmonies in our lives. With True Beauty. It is all around us, all the time. Look up. Feel out. Enjoy.

August 23, 2015

True Beauty and Epilepsy

One of the oldest chronicled disorders, Epilepsy has been steeped in stigma and myth. Those who have it are described as “afflicted” and often face very real forces and forms of discrimination and ridicule. I believe this is due in great part to three basic characteristics of Epilepsy:

The first characteristic is its episodic nature; it remains hidden, “invisible” to others for what can be long periods of time. When a seizure occurs, then, it can feel like a betrayal to both the person having it as well as anyone viewing it. This can erode confidence.

The second is its lack of uniformity: with seizures taking so many forms it is hard to categorize and simplify. To know “for sure” what it looks like, feels like or how it will “present” to use medical parlance. Even in one person’s life his or her seizure type can evolve and change over time. This undercuts predictability.

The third characteristic is its resistance to being known: there is no cure, in 80{d26b639eb74f8edb8884074db06109d949b84d3d1d14796b516693be64172811} of cases there is no known cause (called ‘idiopathic’ epilepsy) and too often medication is only partially effective. Epilepsy refuses to be controlled; it is very mysterious. This can create fear.

Betrayal, unreliablity, unpredictable, mysterious…

These characteristics are, I believe, the primary contributors to epilepsy’s stigma. People distrust what they cannot understand. They don’t like to be fooled (“She was fine just a minute ago!”) or surprised (“It all happened so quickly”) or frightened (“That convulsion was the scariest thing I ever saw; my friend looked positively possessed!”). Further, doctors and parents don’t like to be defeated when they try, repeatedly, to help. As a culture we are uncomfortable with the mysterious. And no one likes to be afraid.

What has all this to do with Beauty or a possible practice of True Beauty in everyday living? Bear with me while I try to share the connection as it occurred for me.

After selling my entrepreneurial business to big biz of corporate America, I had a bit of time on my hands.

It transpired that I came to volunteer with the Epilepsy Foundation of America, serving on their National Board of Directors. Prior to this I’d lived quietly, privately with epilepsy all my life. It was a surprise, therefore, to discover that there was a whole community of people active, interested and educated about epilepsy. A patient advocacy group, even! They actually talked about it! And I had so much to learn about epilepsy, which felt odd; a condition that had so circumscribed my life, my being so out of the loop — not even knowing there was a loop!

It also came as a surprise that I had so much to contribute to this community. Back then the Foundation’s Board was made up mostly of medical practitioners, businessmen and some lawyers. It turned out that I was the first “consumer” — person with epilepsy — to be elected to the board.

I loved my work there. As a representative of the Foundation I traveled around the country as a public speaker, sort of Epilepsy’s “poster girl of success,” to educate others and raise money for various local Foundation affiliates. Unemployment and underemployment are major issues for people with epilepsy. My story of starting a business, working long hard hours, work-related travel, managing and inspiring employees both in-house and across the country — it was a story that flew in the face of the idea that it was difficult to employ a person with epilepsy or work around their issues.

This proved to be an important puzzle piece for me — my public participation in what had been a very private circumstance; public revelation of a private struggle.

Action, not abstraction. Being visible, not invisible. Vocal, not silent.

It was not easy, at first, to find and publicly tell my “real” truth. I came to be able to articulate what I had inherently known: while not pretty, or convenient, and sometimes brutal and deadly, epilepsy nonetheless transfers its own gifts. It can confer a kind of wisdom through its particular perspective. As an alternate way into knowingness, epilepsy can be pretty efficient. To acknowledge this was a significant milestone in my spiritual perspective and development. And I was saying out loud what many others with epilepsy inherently knew. In facing epilepsy we become strong. We are capable. We are not perfect, but who is? We are often sophisticated problem-solvers…we have to be.

In my universe, it revealed the connections as well as the distinctions between Truth and Appearances. And this distinction is a key component of True Beauty. It was through the topic of epilepsy that I was able to make the leap from inner truth to outer connection, between revelation and the dispelling of despair. Around the topic of this ancient and misunderstood disorder I was able to articulate — first for myself, then for others – the integral uselessness of “appearances” in the face of strong self-knowledge.

It may seem obvious, but to the person struggling with the stigma attached to a seizure disorder, it is not at all obvious. Nor does self-knowledge come easily; especially when the doctors don’t have many of the answers for the physical or emotional side of the equation. Do you know that certain types of epilepsy are believed to effect personality? Try that confusing discussion/possibility on for size when you are a hormone-ridden, answer-seeking teen-age girl.

I hope many get it: their assumptions about epilepsy, the appearance of epilepsy need not be its truth, their truth. The eventual truth/outcome. When delivering speeches I would see eyes light up; hope enter in; parents laugh. The dismantling of that assumption, that “automatic pilot” sort of thinking helped create the connection for others, I believe, between Truth, Appearance, and yes — Beauty.

It was humbling to realize that it was in part my story, my experience that held power for others. That to hear me — one of “them” – gave hope and inspired courage. Further, my marketing and communications expertise, garnered over the years in the business world, now allowed me to help the Foundation re-frame and re-tell the story of Epilepsy; undo some of the preconceived notions that have been handed down generation after generation.

Through the experience of having seizures I have been exposed to and learned so much. To name a few: altered states of consciousness that led to deeper understandings; the ephemeral nature of my own existence; confrontation of one’s own fears – real, imagined and a combination of two; the poignant beauty of existence; the hierarchy of importances – personal and otherwise.

The expression of my truth and being as a person with epilepsy helped to dispel stigma, brought new hope and created realizations for others. It brought light, a truth, into a dark and ignored corner. This was, to me, a form of the beautiful. How? It was contributing to harmony, where before there had been discord.

Then, this sharing my life story with others and having it be meaningful to them – what a gift! It got me thinking about how to “universalize” the lessons, about my conviction about Beauty, and how it was present elsewhere in everyday life. Had others thought about this? Written about it?

Circuitous though it may seem, it was my first inkling that Beauty could, indeed, be a practice, like meditation, or running, or…

The nine years at the Epilepsy Foundation gave me back so much more than I gave. Not to be hyperbolic, it transformed my “profane” success in the consumer-goods world into a tool for a more sacred work. I experienced a non-visual expression of Beauty on another sort of canvas. And it was powerful. It was a deeper understanding — and it has led me into what I am now calling The Way of Beauty.

Yahoooooooo!

July 5, 2015

Forgiveness

The concept of forgiveness is in the forefront of virtually everyone’s mind where I live — Charleston, SC.

What is forgiveness? As life’s more bitter events deal their blows, the nature of forgiveness rises in importance, as does the “how to” of the actual act of forgiving. To truly forgive is not an intellectual exercise; it involves one’s viscera.

Charleston’s newspaper, The Post and Courier, ran an article on July 4th about forgiveness. The article, “‘I forgive you.’ Could you forgive someone accused of killing someone you loved?” asked local religious leaders that question. In so doing their thoughts about the nature of forgiveness, the act of forgiving, the forgiver vs. the one being forgiven are expressed. Regardless of your religious affiliations or lack thereof, they are thought provoking and worth repeating:

Excerpted from The Rev. Cress Darwin’s response (of the Second Presbyterian Church, Charleston):

What forgiveness is not:

Thinking that what happened was OK.

Condoning the unkind, inconsiderate, hateful, or selfish behavior of someone who hurt you.

Forgetting.

So what is it?

forgiveness is the experience of peace and understanding in the present moment.

forgiveness does not change the past, but changes the present.

forgiveness means that though you are wounded you choose to hurt and suffer less.

Forgiveness is becoming part of the solution.

Because of what it isn’t, and what it is, and who we are, we must forgive.

“Hate is a cancer that is capable of destroying the person who hates. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.” ~ The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

From The Rev. Isaac Holt Jr., Senior Pastor, Royal Missionary Baptist Church, North Charleston:

“…In forgiveness the benefit is greater for the forgiver than for the forgiven….It’s not even about them, it’s about you.

… Until you forgive, you stay hooked to them and under the control of what they did.”

From Rabbi Yossi Refson, Chabad of Charleston and the Low Country, Mount Pleasant, SC:

“As a wise man once said, ‘Walking around with resentment is allowing some of your least favorite people to live inside your head rent free!'”

From The Venerable Calhoun Walpole, Vicar, Grace Episcopal Church, Charleston, SC:

“People who have the capacity to forgive recognize that one forgives in order to be free–free from hatred, bitterness, and anger–free to love and to be loved. We forgive because we are forgiven.

Forgiveness is, of course, distinct from reconciliation. Archbishop Tutu has taught us that there can be no reconciliation without a proper confrontation–a proper confrontation–not a violent one….Forgiveness requires empathy, and the ability to see ourselves and others as members–together– of the human race. When we separate ourselves forgiveness becomes more difficult….Forgiveness may need to be as much or more an act of the will as of the heart, which is why it may be necessary to forgive more than once…”

From The Rev. Dr. Don Flowers Jr., Pastor, Providence Baptist Church, Daniel Island, SC

“When you forgive someone, you slice away the wrong from the person who did it…You re-create him. At one moment you identify him ineradicably as the person who did you wrong. The next moment, you change that identity. He is remade in your memory. You think of him now not as the person who hurt you, but a person who needs you….Once you branded him as a person powerful in evil, but now you see him as a person weak in his needs. You re-created your past by recreating the person whose wrong made your past painful.”

In my own wanderings through life, I came upon this definition of the how to of forgiving: Accept [the offense], let it go, move forward. Each step far more easily said than authentically done. Then there is that other niggling little prospect that faces so many of us in day-to-day life: how to forgive oneself?

I will leave you with that thought for now.

June 28, 2015

Practicing True Beauty – Honoring Entropy

“Oh this is the joy of the rose:

That it blows,

And goes!” ~ Willa Cather

Rejoice, even in entropy…in darkness, in the entirety of the cyclical nature of birth, death and regeneration. It is easy to find Beauty in the part of the cycle that is about coming into existence, growth and discovery — less so on the other end: decay, dissolution and non-existence. But that does not mean the harmony and serenity of Beauty are not there.

When a truth rusts, a companion betrays or your sanctuary crumbles it is time to dig into your well of courage and recognize that the cycle is evolving. Call it Winter, transition, shadow or death — whatever resonates with you. It is a necessary part of the only constant: change; what I think of as the order>chaos>order cycle.

Our modern culture has tried to bury this inevitability in layers of illusion. In earlier centuries humans tried to tame change with things like “tradition” and “norms.” In our current techy times, change occurs so rapidly that our collective head spins, societal illusions fade and new ones form on our screens.

And, as chaos theory teaches, it is not chaos that falls from some mysteriously previous order, but order that spews forth from the primeval chaos. The Isness gloriously and unashamedly starts with a messy, unorganized clamor.

In our lives we cycle through various versions of this many times before the death of our physical bodies. Our spirit and personality grows and stretches, withers and shrinks at turns. We succeed, we fail. Sometimes we just coast. Martial arts teach us: to not be broken we must bend. There is cacophony that amazingly returns to harmony. Our bodies begin to decompose. Some believe this only happens to each individual human once, others believe it happens repeatedly.

Whether you believe in reincarnation or salvation, the real struggle is to do all of this messy part of living with grace, to honor the entropic nature of systems, and find the Wabi Sabi elements in the transitional tableau of degradation, impermanence, change, uncertainty and the eventual emergence of what will be.

If we honor the entropy that occurs in our lives rather than resist it, if we befriend it rather than demonize it we will take a long step away from fear towards serenity, toward harmony and the Way of Beauty, in the here and the now.

photo by Lisa Z Lindahl — November’s sunflowers

To Practice Honoring Entropy:

1) Expect it. Since the cycle of birth-death-rebirth is inherent in all living systems, don’t pretend ti will not be an integral part of your experiences. Plan for it even!

2) Think compost, not mere garbage. If it is your life circumstances that are decaying and beginning to stink, look for ways the situation might be fodder for the future. If everything is collapsing, is it time to build anew — or plant trees?

3) Allow for “liminal space.” The transitory time between then & now, before & after. It is that healing time, for scarring over. For the field to lie fallow. Don’t try to repair/rebuild/reconnect right away. The result will be weak and/or ill-conceived.

4) During the sweeter parts of the cycle, practice honing your abilities to be responsive and flexible in the face of change. Notice those circumstance requiring dissolution of some sort (even if it is simply a gardening cycle or refreshing something in your home) and be mindful (oh, that word!) of how you respond and handle it. (For instance: I hate tearing out plants to make way for a new gardening season; it doesn’t matter if they are weakly blooming, way dead, or what — I resist that part of the process. Hmmm…)

There is no doubt that entropy is also a gateway to true Ugliness (which we have not yet discussed in this blog yet). But we cannot allow our thinking and perceptions to fall into “auto pilot” on the nature of decay, death and ugliness any more than we can about birth, life and beauty. Learning to truly appreciate the full cycle is part of The Way of Beauty.

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” ~ Pierre Auguste Renoir