Encountering Beauty
May 1, 2018 Kosmos Community News
The mountains are my bones, the rivers my veins.
The forests are my thoughts and the stars are my dreams.
The ocean is my heart, it’s pounding is my pulse.
The songs of the earth write the music of my soul.
– unknown
Aesthetic beauty is fundamental to human experience: a sunrise, a flower, the countenance of the beloved… However, beauty does not originate in such objects. Nor does it reside in the beholder’s eye. Beauty ‘arises’ when the qualities of a being or an object intersect with a felt-experience of emotional joy in the heart, mind and body.
When we see the beauty in a person or a thing, it becomes nearly impossible to judge that person or thing harshly. And if we look deeply enough, it is possible to ‘find’ beauty almost anywhere. Therefore, beauty can be regarded as a practice.
The ‘practice of beauty’ is central to the mission of Kosmos. Our founder, Nancy Roof has always grounded Kosmos Journal in aesthetic beauty:
“Expanding our consciousness may involve reflection on our own life experience, learning from nature, meditation, becoming one with beauty, and practices of nonduality that lead to Oneness or union with the Divine.”
VIDEO | Encountering Another Being II
Dr. Stephan Harding, Resident Ecologist at Schumacher College, shares a moment of magic in describing the idea of ‘encounter’. Viewed by millions, this is a segment of the forthcoming film about the radical economist and ecologist, David Fleming, ‘The Seed Beneath the Snow’.
Find out more here: flemingpolicycentre.org.uk/seed-beneath-snow/
David Fleming, On ‘Encounter’
Extract from the late David Fleming’s Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It chosen for Kosmos by the book’s editor Shaun Chamberlin
ENCOUNTER: The act of recognising something—a person, a practice, a system—on its own terms. The particular character and wholeness of the other is acknowledged. Encounter knows the limits to its understanding; acknowledging that the other has its wildness, its privacy, its own reasons, its defences against invasive explanation. READ MORE
In the Light | Kosmos Thought-Partner, Scott Lennox and The Beautiful Question
My personal mission is to work collaboratively with others in ways that will help transform and heal the planet and all life on it.
Scott Lennox is a writer and poet, painter, musician, counselor, consultant, and public speaker. His history of early childhood trauma, service as a combat medic in Vietnam, and surviving cancer led him to develop the program, Compassion In Action, through which, he has helped thousands of medical professionals and other to identify and put into motion what he calls “the measurable aspects of compassion.” Read his essay, Encountering a Flight of Birds, below.
His podcasts, The Beautiful Question, can be found on iTunes and SoundCloud.
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by Scott Lennox
It has long intrigued me how seemingly small things can cause life-altering shifts in us, encountering life in ways that help us to encounter ourselves. Sometimes, after the shift has taken place, there’s no going back.
By Sylvan Dieckmann
Kosmos Journal, Spring | Summer 2014
“My inspiration is in the myriad of forms I see in nature, the unending morphologies, solutions to encountered problems over billions of years. She is the ultimate engineer and I am ceaselessly amazed at her brilliance. I only hope I do her justice.”