“Walking in beauty” is a Navajo phrase that symbolizes a cosmically attuned and responsible way of life. Coping with hardship or gathering in celebration, our fulfillment comes as part of nature, through the arts, with others in society, and in relationship to the divine. At its best, every culture in its particular beliefs and practices realizes universal values.
Walking in beauty symbolizes for me a facet of living divinely. Truth places an accent upon thinking, beauty upon feeling, and goodness on doing. The three are intertwined, and none of them can be achieved in isolation from the others.
I will never forget a class on aesthetics in which I was struggling to get across the concept of the beauty of truth. They were an unusually strong group in their intelligence and sincere motivation, and for a couple days, I tried my best to make the concept clear, and they tried their best to understand. Tension was building. And then I came into class with a new approach. I asked whether they had ever found some truth while studying science and thought, “This is cool” or “Awesome.” People nodded. They were all with me. And then I said, “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the beauty of truth!” Immediately I saw forty people with smiles on their faces, relief in their bodies, and joy coursing through their souls. I might have gone on to state that they had just achieved insight into a truth of philosophy, and that their joy in that discovery was a response to the beauty of that truth. But in that moment, the main point was about language, interpretation, and communication. The words we choose matter little. What counts is experience and insight.
I use an expanded concept of beauty (and the same for truth and goodness). In the history of the West, beauty came to be identified with a particular style in painting and other arts. That style went out of fashion, and then it became fashionable to denounce beauty. But the expanded concept of beauty embraces every aesthetic excellence, from the humorous to the sublime. The traditional theme of harmony of contrasts remains productive, but the kinds of contrasts and harmonies are not stereotyped.
Neither are emotions crystallized. I speak of joy as the response to the recognition of beauty; but the concept of joy must also expand to correlate with the concept of beauty. Joy may grace a time of peaceful solitude or an energetic social event.
The wide freedom implied by the expanded concepts of beauty and joy does not mean that everything is beautiful. Something things are ugly. When selfish impulses and material urges motivate people to deceive and manipulate other persons, what they do is ugly, regardless of their celebrity, commercial success, or political power. Rebellion against the spirit of the Creator is ugly, regardless of the individual’s talent or technical skill.
Beauty is first and foremost a quality of divinity. Whenever we recognize a truth in its fullness, we experience its beauty; and whenever we are inspired by genuine goodness, we are responding to its beauty. We find beauty in nature and the arts. And there is a way of living it, walking in beauty. It is a partly matter of sensitivity to the beauty around us and within us. It also includes our soulful response to situations where sense a lack of beauty and find it timely to do something about it. We walk in beauty by our attitude to the cosmos, embracing the universe as ultimately friendly; by recognizing when our emotions are unbeautiful and doing what is needed to cooperate in transforming them; by doing things to add beauty to others’ lives; and by rejoicing in the beauty of the goodness of the truth of God, the universal Father of the universal family.
Brother Jeff,
Would like to share this if it fits within the framework;
The Perception of Spiritual Beauty
Today in our discussion we shall examine the value of spiritual beauty. We shall define what it is; how it is perceived; how it is related to truth and goodness. To facilitate our comprehension, we shall look at the example of material beauty. Even though material beauty has some severe limitations in our attempts to use it for illustration purposes, nevertheless, we require a starting point for our grasp
of spiritual beauty.
The concept of what materially beautiful is varies from culture to culture and even within a culture. And this is because the perception of material beauty depends upon the depth of appreciation. When children are very young, their parents, particularly their mothers begin to introduce them to the concepts of beauty, telling them what looks pretty and what does not. Based upon this foundation, the growing child goes on to construct a concept of an appreciation of beauty based upon the concepts derived from their parents, as well as their interactions with their peers as they continue to grow and develop. Now we can see the basis for the appreciation of beauty right away, for if the
parents have a insufficient concept of beauty, then the foundation for the child’s concept will be insufficient. And we know that as these concepts emerge with the larger society, we have different concepts of what beauty means. The appreciation of material beauty can range from almost no concept at all to the heights of material beauty where they merge with the border of spiritual beauty.
But let us see if we can survey some of the general characteristics of material beauty. First of all we know that a sense of order appeals to our aesthetic sense while disorder fills us with a dissatisfying perception. Now what is about order that appeals to our esthetic sense? Well, order we know displays a pattern. A pattern has repeating units within in it, and these repeating units are what gives us a sense of order, and appeals to our esthetic sense. We must keep in mind that at the bottom of the appreciation of beauty is the inherent ability given to us by the Creator to appreciate beauty. And
this appreciation is triggered when we see order and perceive pattern. When we have disorder, or chaos, no pattern is present. Things follow no order. There are no repeating units.
Now we also know that when we have order, things in general move in harmony, and this harmony creates a sense of well being in society, for the maximum of progress takes place when we have order or when we are striving for harmony. So we see another factor in the appreciation of beauty is harmony. Harmony is always composed of underlying parts. It is the unification of these parts that produce harmony. We are all familiar with the harmony of music. When voices are separated and are expressed without any order, than we have a mass of conflicting sounds which we find unpleasant to the ear, but when these same voices are arranged and blended together by the individuals than we have a sound that we recognize as beautiful and pleasurable. The unification of contrasts is beauty.
Still another factor that goes into the perception of beauty is the growth of the appreciation. When we first began to listen to classical music, unless we were reared with it being a part of our development, we are unlikely to find it appealing along side the more popular music with its simple rhythms and paucity of instruments. Popular music appeals more directly to the physical and sometimes emotional. This music makes you want to move, and does not require the activation of the higher centers of the intellect where the true appreciation of music lies. Classical music on the other hand requires activation of the higher centers in order to appreciate the beauty of it. And this
appreciation is based upon the recognition of the complex interaction of the sounds and the themes.
When classical music is created, the creator has a story if you will to tell, and the different
instruments, and their interplay with one another, their blending in harmony, their chasing each other and different other complex pattern appeal to our sense of beauty. And when fully appreciated, classical music fills us with pleasure, a pleasure that we can recapture when ever we listen to it, and like all objects of true beauty, the meaning continues to unfold in ever enriching layers. Now having laid the foundation for the appreciation of material beauty, we would make the quantum leap to the
appreciation of spiritual beauty.
“The discernment of supreme beauty is the discovery and integration of reality: The discernment of the divine goodness in the eternal truth, that is ultimate beauty.” Now we must look at this statement and seek to discern the meaning of it. We know that the basic reality in the universe is spiritual. Therefore the basic beauty in the universe is spiritual. So how do we discover and integrate this reality? To discover the beauty of spiritual reality, the discovery of truth, beauty and goodness, is the pursuit of the Father’s will. It is in the pursuit of the Father’s will which has promulgated the fusion of the human soul with the divine spirit that leads to the perception of spiritual beauty. These two realities are separated by the widest amount of contrast. This unification
of the soul of man with the spirit of God is the supreme unification of contrasts, the supreme beauty.
To appreciate this beauty, we must appreciate the oneness of God with its unification of infinite diversity.
When we discover the antipodal of self, the divine spirit, then have we discovered spiritual reality. The only thing remaining to do is the integration of this reality within ourselves. And we do this by the force of our decision to do the Father’s will. By force we mean the degree of dedication and consecration to doing the Father’s will. When there exists no competing desire, no emotional longing, no conflicts or barriers to doing the Father’s will, when the mind and soul both desire to do the Father’s will, then has the decision to do the Father’s will reached supreme levels. And when our decision to do the Father’s will reaches supreme levels, then have we become one with the Father,
and may behold the supreme beauty-the oneness of God and man.
This oneness of man and God is the truth of God, the observation of the relationship of the Father with his sons. And this is a true relationship, and all truth is good, and all goodness is true. Truth and goodness are related in eternal oneness. As we observe the relationships of the Father with his children, we also discern his goodness in relationship to them. And this discernment of goodness in the relationship of the Father with his sons is the discernment of divine beauty, even ultimate beauty, that beauty that transcends time and space. Spiritual beauty is one and the same as the unification of truth and goodness. This is the satisfying reaction, the aesthetic reaction to the unification of truth
and goodness, man in God and God in man to both their mutual satisfaction, the creature worshiping the Creator and the Creator basking in the love of his children. Spiritual beauty once grasped allows the grasper to appreciate all beauty, even that beauty of the spiritual character that displays for all to see. Let him who has an eye, see the beauty of truth, and he who has an ear hear the melodious chords of righteousness-goodness- as they are played on the instrument of divine truth, and perhaps
both-the eye and the ear may be able to penetrate the absolute beauty of divine love.
Dr. Perry 4/21/07