There’s a monk who spent 30 years on a mountain, meditating to find inner peace and enlightenment. When she found her inner peace, she joyfully descended the mountain to share her insight and freedom with all of humanity.
Standing on a noisy street corner, with cars honking, people yelling, and construction banging, she freaked out because she lost her peace! So she anxiously turned around to ascend the mountain to find it again.
There was a time in my life where it seemed that the only logical destination for me would be a mountain in Nepal or India, where I could somehow find inner peace. Yet, when I had my first transformational experience at 24 years old, I realized that the only thing between me and inner peace was what I was already bringing to my life - a fierce cocktail of fear, judgment, arrogance, and insecurity.
Mostly what we do is seek experiences, material objects, people, places, and validation - all in hopes of achieving a state of being that we deeply want.
We look for what we can add to our lives, and we don’t realize that inner peace, love, joy, authenticity, and effectiveness aren't as much about what we add to our outer lives as it is about what we subtract away from our inner lives.
To create something beautiful in our lives, we first need to create space. It’s much easier to paint something raw and creative onto a blank canvas than it is to paint on a canvas already full of another painting.
One of my daily self-creation statements is this:
This moment is perfect. I see beauty in everything. I create incredible value from all life’s experiences.
This wasn’t just a nice positive thought I decided to add to my morning routine. In fact, there wasn’t much room in my life for such a statement until I got honest with myself about how judgmental and at the effect of my circumstances I had been living.
It’s really been in my relationship to my challenging emotions that I’ve been able to create more space within myself. Emotions that I resisted for so long - like fear, anxiety, regret, and sadness. Emotions that I reacted from for so long - like frustration, disappointment, and self-righteousness. Emotions that I avoided for so long - like anger, doubt, and alienation.
By making room for those emotions, finding beauty in them, and falling in love with each of them, I created space within myself for more love for more of life.
Last week, I saw the Grand Canyon in person for the first time.
I walked up towards it from the parking lot. I’d heard that it’s a holy moment to behold the Grand Canyon for the first time, so I had high expectations as I walked up that path!
The canyon is so large that it took me about 10 minutes of simply observing to begin to make sense of what I was seeing. It initially looked like a painting, and then depth and shape and detail started showing up.
When I got to the canyon, I didn’t feel a particularly strong sense of awe and wonder…
It's not that I was disappointed with the Grand Canyon - it was amazing! It’s simply that my first look at it was actually a reminder to me of the power and beauty of my constant, conscious practice of seeing beauty in everything - the vehicles that brought me there, the hills and valleys and architecture and people and air and color and shapes I saw along the way...
There’s much more truth to this old adage than perhaps we’re willing to admit: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
So is love. So is kindness. So is forgiveness. So is ease.
I don't see beauty in everything all the time yet - and it's my favorite practice worthy of my daily intention, attention, will, and commitment.
Much Love. ❤️
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