Is It Beautiful? A Journey from Separation toward Unification

Separation and Unification

   I walk the beach yet again. It is the day after I felt

separated from Beauty by my own doubts and confusions.

I want to imagine the scene again in search of some

understanding of my image of the caged beings on the

shore.

   I sense my rational mind taking its well-trained scientific

approach. I ask how questions such as these: If there is

one Light of Beauty always present, how can there be

confinement in the midst of freedom or suffering in the

midst of joy? How could Beauty seem to come and go—to be

present and then not? How can there ever be a “no”

answer to the presence of Beauty?

   I wonder if my perspective is distorted by being too

close to or too far from what I view. I recall when I thought

the whole idea of a viewpoint was very limited and should

be replaced by a viewspace in which one could see in more

dimensions. Perhaps then I could see how beautiful and

ugly could coexist, how they might be actually connected.

I want a diagram or a chart or a set of data of probabilities

of connections.

   I pause and decide that asking how questions, though

they may lead to some interesting speculation, is the wrong

approach for me right now. So I sit awhile on a beached log,

my eyes on the ocean waves, and ask different questions,

questions from my heart: What does my heart feel like

when I imagine the prisoners in the cage on the beach?

Why is a wordless experience more revealing of the truth?

I can ask no more, for I am overwhelmed with emotional

intensity. I start to sob, tentatively hold it back. Inside my

head, I scream in agony, No! No cage! No cage anywhere!

   I feel compassion, abundant compassion, filling my

whole body and all the space around me. It is compassion

both for myself and for all other living beings. The

compassion is connecting me with them! Compassion

arose because of cages. It is because of all those cages

seen and unseen, cages within myself, cages inside

others, cages made by those who mistakenly believe they

own what they can confine. I sense one huge sphere

of cages scattered across the Earth, holding individuals,

groups, any life or what is needed for life! I weep gentle

tears of compassion for all of us in such cages, regardless

of their size, strength, reason, or time spent.

   My rational mind speaks to me with a thought: Beauty

is everywhere connections are freely made. In places

where such connections are prevented by confinement,

then compassion is required to create the connections.

Compassion becomes the Beautiful within those situations

that are ugly otherwise. When the answer to “Is it Beautiful?”

seems to be “no”, one must offer one’s gift of compassion

before answering.

   I then wonder if being a more aware human means

realizing my responsibility to offer compassion whenever

or wherever I sense the absence of the Light of Beauty.

Such speculations swirl in my head and heart! Why? Why

now? I wonder if I might be breaking out of one of my own

cages right at this very moment. Am I birthing my own

liberation as I watch the ocean that birthed life itself?

   I breathe. I breathe again. I breathe in the ocean mist

and exhale to all. I allow myself to be vulnerable, open.

I am less fearful. Something confining me is dissolving

away, washing back into the waters.

   I don’t feel so separated by my own cages any more.

Answering the question “Is it Beautiful?” has led me along

an evolving pathway to this new awareness of unification

with the Light of Beauty. I realize that the process of

my human path has always been alternating between

separation and unification, but with different intensities

and at different times.

   These experiences walking on the beach have been

teachings for me. I am reminded of a line of my poem

“Stuck” from high school: My feet take turns along the

shore between the sand and sea. I am moving toward

an expanded awareness of the unification to which I am

already connected. Yet, I doubt I am fully out of my cages.

Someday I may ask of myself, “Is it—the human who is

me—Beautiful?