Experiencing beauty intensely
Beauty has a profound influence on our psyche and our soul. Observing beauty affects each one of us. It is essential to respect another person's perception, because beauty is a variable and subjective notion.
Its influence on our being is remarkable: depending on what we contemplate, we can instantly reach peace, calm and joy.
“We nourish our bodies with nutrients, but our soul feeds on beauty, and in return it embraces us and cradles us in love and peace.” The soul is our best therapist.
It is crucial to realise that knowing how to observe, listen and feel joy is fundamental to nourishing our soul, learning to live in harmony with it and reserving a place for it in our lives. Experiencing beauty intensely, drinking it in with all our senses, is not always easy. On several occasions I have met people living in magnificent places—by the sea, near a forest or in the mountains—who rarely took the time to admire their surroundings.
Beauty when we live in a city
In a city, a multitude of artistic and craft expressions are available to us: works of art, remarkable architecture, performances, dance or music, all opportunities to appreciate beauty every day. Who realises that taking the time to observe all this is a key to achieving well-being and nourishing the soul? Living consciously with this beauty, so close to us, heals our wounds, repairs our cracks and restores our splendour.
Beauty is hidden in every scene of life, and your soul will help you discover it with ever greater ease. Drawn to this nectar, you will fly from flower to flower and share your happiness with others.
“Beauty is not a whim, but a vital need.” (Piero Ferrucci)
Contemporary life, with its technological stimuli, incessant communication and various means of transport, has made the world smaller and accessible. We are constantly bombarded with information, intensely and repetitively. We have become slaves to a frantic race, trapped in the stifling traffic of cities; like zombies, we wander through deserted shopping centres, becoming ghosts in our relationships, overwhelmed by a flood of stimuli that eventually distracts us to the point of making us absent.
“This is the poverty of the rich: the painful lack of meaning, values and beauty. It is the wasteland of the soul's exclusion.
“We think we can have everything, but ultimately we feel that we are nothing.” (Piero Ferrucci)
One of the keys to harmony and happiness lies in the art of perceiving the beauty around us and passing on to our children this attitude of observing every form of beauty: light, nature, but also gestures, words, music… So much beauty to discover.
And you, do you know how to soak up the nectar of beauty to nourish your soul?
Learning to observe beauty, to let it enter us and make room for it is an art in itself; it means intensely taking in this beauty so that we can then pass it on to our children. Beauty represents a door in consciousness that we must open each day, whenever we can, although we are too often absorbed by a thousand concerns.
Poorly conditioned
We are not conditioned to contemplate beauty: the child, naturally oriented towards a limited, adult world, seems not to be allowed to dream or look out of the window, except on those occasions when enlightened adults guide them in the search for beauty. Today's child has not learnt to honour beauty or express gratitude for it, and it is often considered superfluous.
Beauty and the golden ratio
Nature's architecture is built according to the golden ratio, that perfect and immaculate principle that offers rest and learning to the eye and brain. The soul finds peace in it through a soothing structure, while nature's colours and sounds relax the mind. Paying tribute to beauty means connecting to the almost invisible structure of our universe and repairing our miasmas, cracks and disturbances. Beauty connects us to the matrix of our being, to the mathematics of the universe from which we have been separated, yet which remains an essential part of the architecture of our body and mind.
Beauty is therapeutic.
Beauty acts right down to the level of our DNA and can redirect a disturbed system. It is true that it arouses emotions, often so intense that they become addictive. Conversely, ugliness disturbs us profoundly. Just as beauty heals, ugliness disrupts, destroys and undoes our inner structure, bringing disharmony and imbalance. It frequently expresses itself through acts of domination, aggression, the use of force, sexual violence or manipulation, thus plunging the individual into depression and shattering their identity and intimacy.
Recognising beauty is a form of intelligence that has developed over the centuries.
Further on, I describe Maslow's pyramid upside down. A desire lifts us towards values and beauty, opening our consciousness and connecting us to our soul. Indeed, the brain is programmed to recognise perfect aesthetics. Neuroscience studies carried out at the University of London have shown that contemplating objects and images designed according to the golden ratio triggers more intense neural activation than observing the same images slightly distorted. There is thus a strong correlation between what we perceive and our reaction to beauty or ugliness, with our entire nervous system reacting accordingly.
The sensitive (AS) person can find calm and structure by turning to aesthetic beauty as a form of therapy, whether by visualising images, recalling smells or appreciating colours, among other things. Neuroaesthetics, a new branch of neuroscience, shows that the empathy felt towards an object of beauty can be explained by the activation of our mirror neurons.
How does our aesthetic intelligence awaken within us?
Empathy manifests itself when we feel an affinity with the object or action we observe. For example, during a tennis match, the players' gestures can move us and allow us to experience the beauty of movement as an inner experience. Likewise, ballet or music makes us resonate in harmony with the beauty of the present moment. Once our aesthetic intelligence awakens within us, it unfolds, allowing us to experience moments of beauty every day.
Restructuring and restorative
Each of these intense moments may originate in different sources, depending on our personal tastes. For the AS person, these moments are restructuring and restorative. Depending on our progression through Maslow's pyramid (jp 2020), we are drawn to different expressions of beauty or ugliness: the object of our admiration can raise us up or bring us down. Experiences, inherent to human life, often explain our desire to move closer to beauty in response to dark and negative episodes. The solution lies in harmonising with what is luminous and light.
Encountering one's dark side is part of life, as is grasping its consequences.
The pyramid of dark desires
The inverted pyramid connects us to ugliness and the inability to fulfil our destiny in beauty. We embark on a self-destructive path, sometimes taking others with us, to erase the pain and frustrations accumulated through life's experiences. Ugliness and negativity then become a need, an insatiable thirst for vile acts. This destructive quest often originates in violence and wounds suffered in youth—or later—or in the inaccessibility of ardent desires.
We all have negative experiences at one time or another; they are an integral part of humanity and the world in which we live. These almost inevitable trials confront us with our own darkness, strengthen us, complete us and, ultimately, guide us towards a discernment that allows us to distinguish what is truly luminous and positive.