Today media wants to tell us what beauty is. It is everywhere; magazines with pictures telling us what to find beautiful and “how to”-articles to comply to outer standards. People see these glossy images and feel badly and even guilty. They often feel they don’t comply with those standards. Articles might also be geared towards selling you something, so that there is a benefit for the industry if they make you feel you need something more. They often don’t tell you how to be your real beauty.
There are so many really good books out there showing how these outer standards imprison us with fixed worldviews and keeping especially women in their roles. Instead of listening to your intuition and doing things that would make you feel empowered, would actually make you more beautiful, letting you be wild and free, most mass media messages hinder that freedom. My two favorite books in this regard are “Women who Run with the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés and “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are used against Women” by Naomi Wolf. It is healthy to be wild and free. Not crazy but wild, as my teacher Natalia Rose would say. Wild is a very clear-headed mindset, trusting your instincts and not becoming crazy from a confused mind. If you take the wildness out you will take the life force out. You can lead a “normal” life and be wild – the wildness and your inner beauty (and finally also outer beauty!) comes from how loving, compassionate, connected to your loved-ones and self-reliant you are!
Compare the feeling that you have when you read glossy magazines with “perfect” models with spiritual texts about beauty and consider how each makes you feel:
Excerpt from “Love Consciousness” by Roger G. Lanphear
“I am grateful to my lovers for teaching me Truth. They each in their own way gave me pieces of the puzzle of life. Of course, that’s the real underlying reason we mate up. Our closest ties unveil for us the hidden wonders of the universe.
To see beauty around us is to see the beauty in our Selves. To feel our own beauty is to feel the beauty in others. To recognize our own beauty is to salute the beauty in all of creation.
Within us lies all the beauty of the cosmos. We are love. We are the unified field. We are matter, energy, time, space, and gravity. When we see our own beauty, and when we voice gratitude for it we are paying homage to the consciousness everywhere. Actually, we are worshiping God in the simplest and most meaningful way. ”
Seeing Beauty at the basis of all things gives us power and enables us to strip away the confines of a society that actually hinders us to shine our true, wild beauty. Societal norms want to keep you small instead of empowered. Coming back to a simple lifestyle that cleanses you from past mistakes and rejuvenates your cells and reverses past mistakes you might have done to yourself, e.g. through a poor diet, will empower you. There is nothing wrong in being “beautiful” as society sees it, but be beautiful for the right reasons: because you love yourself and owe to yourself to be your best version of yourself, not because you think you will be loved once you are “beautiful”. Being loved and being beautiful are your birth rights and you are already that at the core of your being.
Practice from Roger R. Lanphear from “Love Consciousness”
Voicing the Beauty that you are
Bellow beauty with these new four habits:
- Say “Good morning, beautiful” to the first person you see each day.
- Think “You’re beautiful” for all life forms.
- Think “You’re beautiful” for strangers that pass by you.
- Say the equivalent of “You’re beautiful” with compliments to everyone as often as possible.
When you think or say “You’re beautiful” or the equivalent, feel that you are affirming your own beauty because we are all one. Know also that your thoughts and words of beauty return to the grace of your own experience.
Beauty carries the keys to every heart: “We can’t see beauty without broadening our awareness. Our vision is awakened in so many ways with this experience. As a man thinks, so he is. Think beauty, and your experience becomes beauty. Think beauty, and you radiate beauty for everyone. Think beauty, and your heart opens to touch the infinite. In your mind the infinite may remain a hazy abstraction, but in your heart, the infinite will paint the feelings of joy, and bliss, and happiness. This is our gift to ourselves by simply saying “You’re beautiful” to someone. Your relationships of all kinds will improve with this one habit. Beauty carries the keys to every heart.” – Roger G. Lanphear