Beauty

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The following talk was given in the Triangles webinar on July 2, 2018:

We have moved now into another cycle within the spiritual year--the cycle of the outbreath, a time of exhalation following upon the long pause and intensive period of inner work done during the higher interlude.

In the northern hemisphere this is generally a time for a break, for recharging and assimilation after the stimulation of the preceding cycle. During such times the seeds of creativity,that were germinating during the higher interlude  can flower, just as in the natural world there is a bursting forth of the Earth’s bounties.

Humanity’s role in the planetary life is as a linking agent and therefore all that transpires in our world happens through its medium.  We undertake this linking work because of our creative intelligence which builds bridges and facilitates the flow of energy. For Triangles workers this creative activity is a defining aspect of our daily practice.  Together we are creating a new world overlaying it upon the structures of the past.

In the familiar ancient mantram we ask to be led from darkness to light, from the unreal to the Real and from death to immortality, But there is another, less well-known, stage upon these revelatory steps in our collective journey back to the source.  This phrase is, ”Lead us from chaos to beauty.”  In a commentary upon this phrase it’s said that the spiritual workers of the world are subtly creating a beauty amidst the chaos of objective reality.  Working behind the scenes they are building in new and subtle colors and emerging patterns that reflect the beauty of the inner planes and bring them to bear upon the inchoate mass of garish and bold colors that too often define our world today.  Triangles workers, composed of people of all different nationalities and temperaments, are collectively contributing to this creative, imaginative work.

The coming age will see the entire earth covered with small groups of people joining together to invoke and evoke love and light and through this means we’re told they will symbolically cover the Earth with verdure, with the freshness of lush green vegetation.  Green is the color of this creative intelligence and so as we capture and seize our creative potential we become part of this newly emerging paradigm which will release a fuller livingness on the planet.

We are living in an age when this urge to create, to bring beauty out of chaos, is innate in a growing number of people who are responding to the Aquarian impulse.  The resultant creative forms are increasingly simple in design, , a simplicity that reflects a spiritual potency. In fact it’s said that the inner light is veiled in a multiplicity of forms whereas it is revealed through simplicity.

With the growing urge to create and to bring order and beauty out of chaos, humanity is demonstrating its ability to tap into what’s known as the fourth great purpose of divinity.  This emerging purpose is said to be a function of the pain that is so characteristic of the human experience on this planet and which is not felt in the same way in any of the other kingdoms of nature.  As a result of this pain through which the human species is passing something truly amazing is said to be unfolding on this planet.  We are learning to be redemptive agents, to cooperate with the greater Lives in processing and purifying pain and releasing love and beauty in its stead.

The pain in which humanity is encased is due to the fact that we are trapped within the confines of time and space, and are able to distinguish cause from effect.  This boundedness to the material world leads to fear and foreboding, to pain and regret, to unskillful states of consciousness, as the Buddha would say.  As we free ourselves from the confines of past and future, from regret and fear, from pain or joy, from the pairs of opposites, then the inner spiritual sun appears, and we are free to realize our destiny in the present which is to be a collective vehicle whereby the Plan of love and light can work out on Earth.

This will lead to creative living, which we’re told will be the defining creativity of the coming age. This creative life is realized by the effort to render oneself sensitive to the world of significant realities and the effort to reflect that reality in the daily life.  This idea resonates with a teaching from Plotinus. the great Neoplatonist teacher who lived in Alexandria.  He said,

“Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue” ― Plotinus

Someone who went about realizing this to great effect was of course Socrates upon whose life this teaching from Plotinus was surely the great example.  And there was an interesting story from his life regarding his process in realizing this.

Socrates defined himself as a philosopher, someone who loved wisdom but who isn’t wise yet himself.  But Socrates didn’t begin his life as a philosopher, he was from his youth taught by his father to be a stonemason and sculptor and he worked in the construction of the Parthenon.  Socrates learned to make beautiful buildings and statues. And although he worked really hard to make his sculptures perfect, he was ever dissatisfied with the results.  No matter how beautiful the outer forms were, they never displayed the qualities of virtue and wisdom for which he was striving.  He asked all the more experienced sculptors for help but could not find the answer he was seeking. He thought these sculptors were really like blockheads, They were experts at creating the appearance of virtue but they didn’t really embody it in their own lives.

So Socrates quit his job. He ceased sculpting and began sculpting himself, developing the virtues and wisdom he had been trying to imbue his statues with.  He said he wanted to make himself beautiful, at which his friends laughed hysterically because he was described as a man who looked half man, half goat--one of the ugliest of men.  He said he was now following the profession of his mother.  She was a midwife, only he said he didn’t want to bring children into the world but rather to lead people into wisdom.

Socrates helped people by asking them questions, difficult questions about the nature of their lives and their work.   He always pretended to not know the answers.

And it seemed as though Socrates achieved his goal of wanting to make himself beautiful, because all who knew him came to agree that although he was the ugliest of men, that which shone forth from within him made him the most beautiful of all.

Kathy Newburn