Questions

What is inner Beauty? How do I recognize it in others? How do I recognize it in myself? How does one cultivate inner beauty, especially when there are questions about what it is and how to recognize it?

Reflection

Yesterday I said about feeding the birds, “Each day when I perform this task, I really feel care and love, for all of earth and nature through this simple task.”

So far, this feeling–care and love–is the closest I’ve come to making a recognizable link between the feeling of beauty, and an action. When I do things with care and love, I am acting in beauty.

This means I have a clue to the answer to the question what is inner beauty. Inner beauty has to do with feeling care and love. But I think there is more to it than “just” care and love.

In my imagination, I see it this way: Inner beauty shines. It’s always gentle, soft, glowing, yet powerful enough to pierce the bodily exterior. Inner beauty is like a radiant smile of a beloved, intimate and personal, yet filling a room with its brightness, so that anyone within its radius feels the warmth.

Inner beauty is intangible, one of those things that, “you know it when you see it”. But too often, physical beauty gets conflated with inner beauty. Too often, modern humans look for the beauty they can see easily.

Seeing inner beauty requires some work. It requires someone to be attuned to the subtle vibrations of love, care, patience, genuineness, peace, harmony, and more! Modern humans are currently disconnected from much within themselves that resonate with these vibrations. If people are not attuned to these vibrations within themselves, they will not attune to others who have them…and thus will not be able to “see” the inner beauty of those people.

Yet, beauty-vibrations cut through some of these perceptual illusion. This is the feeling of beauty, the subtle emanation of beauty. Beauty you see in an open, honest face. Beauty you see in innocence. Beauty you see in nature.

As far as cultivating inner beauty, it seems to me that this is simply a matter of cultivating the qualities that I’ve mentioned already: Love, care, patience, genuineness, peace, harmony, openness, honesty, innocence, and a connection with nature.

At the moment, beauty feels complex, yet simple. Like… you know it when you see it; that’s simple, right? Yet, to cultivate it requires attention to many (potentially) neglected characteristics within oneself, and that can feel complicated.

So far, I would say round 2 is off to a good start.