One dark, gloomy, urban night, a person looked up towards the sky, past the tall buildings and the dreadful light pollution. To his dismay, he found not one star. The sky looked like a morbid void, devoid of all beauty.
But oh! There was this one star, he noticed it's faint glimmer. He looked around and after a while, saw another tiny star, glimmering feebly against all the light in the city. 'I never knew the stars could be seen in such a gloomy night.' He wondered.
Such is also the mind.
Between where we are, and the beauty we so earnestly seek, there may lie layers and layers of distracting things. One cannot deny those things or their existence. One cannot refute the trouble they create in perceiving the magic beyond. However, with a little bit of focus, one could attain what one seeks.
Focus, on the other hand, comes with faith and patience. True faith (as opposed to fear based following) comes from love.
And love comes from the ability to perceive the beauty that we were seeking in the first place!
So you see, it is a cycle! THIS is the trick! The more beauty you see, the more you will find!
Compare a circle with a spring. A circle is two dimensional. It isn't progressive in anyway. If we start tracing the boundary of a circle, we would keep going round and round. A spring, on the other hand, is progressive. If we start tracing the lower most circle of the spring, slowly we would find ourselves going upwards. The slight height that converts a circle into a spring is the most crucial thing for its progressive nature.
In our quest for attaining that what we truly seek, we must know what structure is 'analogous' to that 'height': the one component that could convert our non progressive cycle of daily struggle into a spring.
In most cases, this component is gratitude.
Whether it is lack of joy in your daily life or excess of slander, note that things are only as we perceive.
Should we start focussing on the good things? Absolutely! Does this mean we ignore fruitful discussion and communication? Absolutely not!
By all means, do both! Or follow a third approach, if you will. What is essential is that no matter what we follow, we must at all times, remember 'the importance of gratitude'.
Gratitude leads to love, love and patience to faith, faith to focus, and focus leads to the 'alchemy of our minds', and beauty is perceived!
