Finding Beauty in the Breach
Encontrar la belleza en la grieta
The teacher explores how finding even one point of beauty in a difficult moment can pierce through the mind's narrative that everything is not okay, and how even painful sensations can be savored with the same appreciation we bring to a fine espresso.
Finding Beauty in the Breach
The teacher explores how finding even one point of beauty in a difficult moment can pierce through the mind's narrative that everything is not okay, and how even painful sensations can be savored with the same appreciation we bring to a fine espresso.
In any moment when things seem not okay, look for something beautiful. That beauty is the crack in the mind, in the belief system that paints everything as not okay. There is always going to be a crack somewhere.
If you can find something you see beauty in, that crack opens the veil that puts gray on everything. It splits apart, and suddenly you can see that everything is beautiful. Everything is peace. Everything is divine creation.
The crack can be anything
It could be as simple as a sensation of touch, even while everything else feels like it's falling apart. It could be art, music, or work. It could be something as immediate as the taste of a very delicious, well-made espresso on a morning where everything seems to be going terribly. Not just tasting it, but really savoring it.
What I'm offering here are small ways we can acquire the habit of looking through thought, piercing through thought, and tasting reality as it is.
Going to the sensation directly
When we truly are not okay with what is happening, when there is a "no" to the moment, there is always some experience being rejected: a sensation, a feeling, a pain. And then there is a big narrative built around it. But if we just go to that sensation, that pain or whatever it is, and taste it as if we were tasting a delicious coffee we have the habit of appreciating, something shifts.
Personally, I can genuinely appreciate a really well-made espresso. It's not hard for me. The appreciation just flows naturally. But when we are not appreciating the things that are hard to appreciate, it is like an acquired taste. Give a really good espresso, or a fine liquor, or a glass of wine to a four-year-old, and it is going to be a disaster.
Shame as espresso
That espresso, as a metaphor, could be shame. There comes a point where, after a year of savoring it, you think, "Here it is again," and you can sit with it and have the deep human experience of truly knowing shame. It becomes completely inseparable from the experience of the espresso, or a symphony, or whatever is most beautiful to you.
Think of the freedom in that. That which you have been running away from all your life, you can now taste and know as a symphony. Not only with no reaction, but with the enjoyment of knowing that experience: the fleeting experience of deep human shame, or deep human heartbreak, or deep fear for something your heart is open to.