Welcome to Journey of Beauty! I am glad you are here. I begin every Journey with a musing on the subject in order to prepare my mind for the Journey-at-hand. It’s sort of like a travel-guide, if this were a physical journey: “I want to go here, I want to see this, and I want to try this food…” But instead of experiencing physical things, it’s more like, “I want to understand this, I want to become more aware of that, I want to uncover something about this…”

I encourage you, before you continue reading, to think for a moment for yourself about beauty: what is it to you? What would you like to learn about or from the concept of beauty? How do you perceive beauty? How would you like to perceive beauty?

“God is beautiful, and He loves beauty.”  — The Prophet Muhammad

“He made everything that He created beautiful.” –The Quran (32:7)

“Act beautifully, as God has acted beautifully toward you.” –The Quran (28:77)

“God don’t like ugly.” –common American phrase, particularly in the Southern United States

“Now I walk in beauty. Beauty is before me. Beauty is behind me, above and below me.” –Native American prayer

“Beauty is not in the clothes one wears, the body one has, or the style of hair. Beauty is seen in the eyes, because that is the doorway to the heart; the place where love resides. True beauty is reflected in the soul.” –Audrey Hepburn (adapted)

About a year ago, I had the thought, “I don’t really know what beauty is; I want to live a beautiful life, inside and out; I want to be surrounded by beauty.” Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about how I can make my life more beautiful.

This is what prompted me to do a Journey about beauty. I want to know what beauty is more deeply, and for that I need to experience it. To experience it, I need to create it in my life. To create it in my life I need to give it thought and attention, thus: 40 days of contemplation on the subject of beauty. Viola!

Let me clarify: I can recognize beauty, especially in nature. The concern is that I don’t know how to create beauty in a way that I see and feel beauty in my life.

How do I “do” beauty?

This is as much a journey of discovery or exploration, as it is one of consciousness. Remember: awareness is the first step toward cultivating consciousness. I must first look for (explore/discover) what it is I am already aware of, and then use that awareness as a springboard for growth.

In addition, this is also both an inner journey as well as an outer journey; I want the inner beauty reflected in my outer world. This requires cultivating inner beauty, then expressing that (creating it) in my life.

I admit, I am not quite certain how this will go. I can imagine that for many of you, my lack of awareness about beauty may be laughable. I have this idea that everyone knows more about beauty than I do (I know that’s probably not entirely true). I am very much looking forward to this exploration, yet also feeling a bit shy and exposed with my inability to understand beauty.

You may see how Journey of Courage comes into play with this Journey: it takes a bit of courage to go head on with something which feels like it exposes me.

I am also seeing how this Journey will connect with the next Journey, Journey of Creation. If I am to create, and to learn that skill, I want to do it with a mind of beauty, with a mind connected to the Divine, Which creates all in beauty.

A logistics note:

This Journey is currently in Beta mode: this is the first time I have done a Journey of Beauty, and I am still developing this. There will be different media involved; this will not be like most of the Journeys with Guiding Thoughts and contemplations each day. Since Beauty is both a sensory experience, and a heart (feeling) experience, there will be a combination of sense-input, feeling exercises, and mental thought processes. It should be fun! (I hope!)