LET YOUR HEART LISTEN TODAY
Conscious Instalments of Beauty!
As I walked the beach early this morning, with a cloudless sky above me, and Venus was shining brightly in the Eastern sky and Jupiter almost as bright in the Western sky and seeming like they were joyfully conversing with one another, and a beautiful soft pink hue forming in the Northern sky, and the ocean looking almost motionless with the exception of a small ripples falling onto the shore, and then seeing the houses and trees on the foreshore silhouetted by the dawn light rising in the East behind them, I felt as though I was right in the middle of this cosmic Beauty that seemed to embrace me with wide open arms. The sheer beauty and experience of it all was breathtaking.
I have walked that beach on countless occasions and I always look at the beauty around me, but more often than not my thoughts, concerns, worries, fears, planning and other preoccupations seem to demand a greater part of my attention. My thoughts often distract me from what I am truly absorbed in. The extraordinary beauty around me can so easily be bypassed and I can look without truly seeing. I was reminded of this, this morning.
I suspect we are all the same or similar – we so easily miss the gifts all around us as we become more and more consumed with the concerns and responsibilities of daily living. As I listened to the news this morning with the Federal Police raids on the ABC and NewsCorp and the fall out of all that, with our emissions rising and listening to the shocking political spin trying to justify it, with politicians getting a two percent pay rise at the same time as our battlers have to face a cut to their penalty rates substantially decreasing their weekly wage, as we investigate further the four killings in Darwin, as our democratic liberties seem to be at increasing risk, as increasing numbers of us are sleeping rough in these cold winter nights, as some families struggle to pay shocking rents and feed their families, and the stories are endless – I was reminded that even in the midst of all this we must learn to make time daily to notice the Beauty that still surrounds us all in the middle of this chaos.
Too easily we slip into the negative and forget to consciously breathe, and even if it is for a moment in time, to stop and purposefully notice the Beauty around us. This stopping to notice the Beauty around us can be like someone offering us a coat on a cold day, or a cool glass of water on a hot day, or giving us a listening ear when we feel alone or troubled – they offer relief for those few moments. When we stop to consciously absorb the Beauty around us, we can slowly become more conscious of EVERYTHING around us. Then we might find ourselves writing letters of protest to our politicians, we might become more conscious about how we treat the Earth and each other, we might become more conscious about the plight of others, we might begin to pull our heads out of the sand and ask questions and demand answers to the injustices we see and experience happening ……
When we consciously open our hearts to notice the Beauty around us daily, it mysteriously connects us more deeply into everything including the beauty within ourselves and others and it reminds us of what is possible. When this happens, we become more conscious, more compassionate, more just, and more AWAKE, more WHOLE.
Our conscious awareness of the Beauty we are absorbed in, has the capacity to change ourselves and our world, and all it takes is a daily conscious act of a few minutes. Are we prepared to engage such a daily commitment?
© Annemarie Reiner