Perception Is Everything. 

Really?

Yesterday as I snapped pictures as I walked. I was determined to capture images of the gosling I have been watching for weeks. These goslings were not longer cuddly and cute. They had grown into that pre-teen gawky gangling. Although they were older, the younglings were still protected by their parents. In fact, those parents directed a hiss or two toward me.

Even though the goslings were in an awkward phase and had lost their cuddly cuteness, I was aware of their beauty. The down invite me to touch, but I respected the hissing parents and did not! A bit further down the path still deep in my reflection of their beauty, I spoke with another walker. Her comment? “I now understand the term ugly duckling.” I marveled at how the two of us could look at the same thing and perceive such different images. One saw beauty, another ugliness.

Her words weighed heavily on me as I walked. I thought about the times that I saw only the ugly. I envisioned the goslings and my mind’s eye was drawn to their awkwardly endearing waddle. Not only was beauty in the eye of the beholder, but, with conscious effort, I could transform the ugly into beauty. It was all about my perception.

Today I watched a family of geese prepare to cross a busy street. In just a day the goslings had grown ever larger. Today I saw an elegance in the elders and the younglings. Even in this gawky unevenness there existed an amazing symmetry. In that symmetry I saw beauty and natural rhythm.

The woman’s comment about the goslings call me to search for the beauty hidden amid life’s ugliness. I peer deeply into the many facets of my life. I seek the parts I name as ugly. I search beyond the veneer of the uncomely for the beauty within. As I rest in the silence, allow it to encircle me, I feel the shift flowing deep into the marrow of my spiritual bones. I am drawn to the beauty in the unevenness, the gawky, the ugly. I hear the music, feel it’s rhythm. And I dance.

Within this dance I discover not rough edges or song out of sync. Instead, I find the path that flows around those edges, and I am led by the song unknown. This path leads to my awakened awareness of non-traditional beauty that is often accompanied by roughly hewn features. I feel the elegant beauty existing untapped in the rawness of our innate nature.

Perception is everything, but I choose how I perceive. My perception can and does shift. In those moments when I engage my hyperawareness, beauty is revealed.

Shift your perception. Where does beauty exist where before there was seemingly none?

Into a New Way of Seeing, Vanessa

www.healingwillow.com