Beauty is Good

Here’s something that might sound obvious, but is actually kind of complicated: beauty is good. And so is pleasure. 

You can already see how we have to start qualifying that statement: 

“It depends what kind of beauty and pleasure,”

“Everything in moderation,” 

“It depends what you mean by ‘good,’” 

“It depends how you use it,” 

Etc.

All of the above are true, but there’s one fundamental question that all of this doesn’t address: what is beauty and where does it come from?

There is an entire sub-discipline of philosophy devoted to aesthetics and beauty, but in a mystical sense, we could say that the beauty of something is a revelation of its inner goodness.

In other words, things feel beautiful to us because we’re actually feeling Divine unity. How appropriately we use it is up to us, but in essence, it’s spiritual.

This was a pretty mind-blowing concept to me. I can experience a bit of deep consciousness every time I see beauty in something. Sure, I had a broad concept of Creation being beautiful and intricate, and I wrote poetry about aspects of nature, but I never realized just how intrinsically spiritual all of this is.

Beauty is a unified experience. You can describe a sunset in terms of its colors, lighting effects, atmosphere, evoked feelings, etc. You can’t describe the very essence of why it’s uniquely beautiful. It is greater than the sum of its parts.

Beauty, then, points to the essence, the Oneness at the soul of the experience that emerges from, but transcends, its details. Beauty is indescribable by definition.

Try that perspective out on the next (healthy) thing you like. Chocolate chip cookies, your favorite color, your most important relationship, a nostalgic memory, the most elegant theory. See if you can pinpoint exactly what makes it so good. If you can’t, take that in and feel the Oneness that transcends it all.

Your life will change forever.