Inquiry - on beauty - and a story

What is your own personal relationship with beauty?

Describe your relationship with beauty within these three broad perspectives:

* the beauty you see in yourself
* the beauty you see in other people you find yourself attracted to
* the beauty you see in the world around you

Do you find that you relate to beauty differently in each of these perspectives?

Finally, how much of your sense of beauty is shaped by your cultural embedment, and how much from your own personal tastes? Is it even possible to tease apart the two in any meaningful way?

from "Integral Life"

and a story:

Happy Friday All,
Back in the middle part of the last century, before i understood anything about passive aggressive behaviors, it was my practice to cut high-school class on a regular basis. I did it like tithing, 10% of the time or every other Wednesday, i often stayed on public transportation and went past the stop for school. Some part of me did so in the vain hope that the proper authorities would catch me and i would then have an opportunity to explain that i was doing so as a form of protest with what struck me as dehumanizing behavior on the part of the system. But as a practical matter this meant that a 16 or 17 year old, was now loose in a big city, almost penniless but armed with a student 1/2 fare bus pass.
So one day it happened, that i found myself in Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo, somehow innocent in spite of my truancy and standing next to where the large plains animals were kept. Nearby was a buffalo; a creature whose need to consume foodstuff was equal to its bulk. And things being what they are, what goes in an animal at one end tends to come out the other. Suddenly the buffalo shat! And while it's inelegant to speak about such things, the creature's stool was deposited on the ground in a very specific manner. A wide based conical form took shape before my motiveless eyes, gradually coming to a peak, in a shape similar to that of soft-serve ice cream.
What surprised me was the astounding perfection i saw in the fitness of the form. It was beautiful! Later i came to understand that these satori-like moments of insight arrive much faster than more common thought; but after the insight, thoughts did begin to enter my consciousness. Yes, that was beautiful! But it was also a pile of shit! Followed by another thought. If there's beauty to be found in the lowliest of the low, in a pile of shit, it must be everywhere!
Years later returning to the depth of that momentary insight i wondered; if it's true that beauty is everywhere why don't we commonly see it? The answer to that question i suggest has to do with the eyes of the beholder, and whether or not the vision is clouded by fears or desires, or will the innocence of childlike youth be allowed to pierce the warp and woof of their veil of distortion.
Warmly,
Charles Bowling