The cliché goes: Beauty is the eye of the beholder. Implying that where I might see beauty, as in the moments when the exact mathematical middles of two passing cars cross on a highway, or as in the sound of heavy rain on old, soft knees, or in the attempted curvature of the upper lip of a man strapped down and dying for murder—you may not.

The cliché implies we differ on opinions of where, what, and why beauty is; but, that we agree that beauty is. We agree that there are moments whereupon we find ourselves captured, if only fleetingly, in a moment of awe, in a staggering ecstasy of reverence for some wholly unexplainable perfectness—a symmetry of the moment, an alignment of the heart with the hustle-bustle moments of man’s busy life. We find ourselves suddenly aloof, despite the current agenda of our mind. A pause, a forced halt from somewhere deeply mysterious in order to appreciate something mysterious.

We agree that these moments exist. We agree, generally, that these are filed under Beauty in the disheveled filing cabinets of our human experience. We agree that there is Beauty and that Beauty is subjective—“in the eye of beholder.”

There is, then, a pervading essence within certain subjective, personal experiences i.e. in music, in the sight certain people, paintings, landscapes, in the feel of something, in the alignment of all these things. An essence that we all acknowledge as existing, while remaining ambiguous as to where it exists.

Example: Say I were to find beauty in the sight a worn boot which has been placed crookedly adjacent to its matching pair, on top a freshly chopped log; and, let’s say, that I were to find someone else who found absolutely no beauty in that; but, who found beauty in the way an ant’s antennae seem to bounce to a hidden, festive gypsy waltz when searching for food on a maple leaf. Here we have both agreed that beauty resides in nature while disagreeing as to where specifically in nature that beauty resides.

If both of us, as beholders, find beauty in two different things beheld. Than those two things both have beauty, whether or not we both agree.

As years progress so, too, do our filing cabinets of human experience gather more and more stuffing--more and more labels. Suddenly files overlap, contradict, and replace other files, other experiences.

Picture our perception of Beauty as a pair of goggles which link to all our sense and are programmed with certain parameters in which they will recognize and experience Beauty within those senses. These parameters are established by gathering outside physical stimuli and relating those to past emotional experiences i.e. linking the sight of a rose to the feeling of romance which had previously been established through exposure to classic romantic symbolism via movies, books etc…and then linking that feeling of romance to a feeling of beauty arisen from the rose

At this point it would appear that the user of the Beauty Goggles has no direct, personal control over what the goggles pick up and register as beauty; however, we will assume that the goggles are in fact programmed to be directly controlled by the user through conscious awareness of said ability. In short, the goggles will gather stimuli, establish parameters of beauty and relay that to the user automatically until the user becomes aware that there is a “manual control.”

If and when the user becomes aware of this optional manual control he/she will be able to experience the feeling of beauty elicited from the goggles while viewing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or feeling anything that he/she chooses.

We all have these goggles, yet not all of us are aware of our ability to manually control them. We allow the automatic filtering, filing and processing of our goggles to control our perception of beauty. This is not to say that we are to blame for this lack of manual control—most of us are just simply unaware of the possibility of a manual control.

In fact, not only are most people unaware of the manual control option of their Beauty Goggles, they are also unaware of the automatic control and even more likely, they are unaware that they are even wearing the goggles.

So, the process of becoming fully in control of one’s Beauty Goggles is three-fold in nature.

1.) Become aware of the Beauty Goggles themselves.2.) Become aware of the automatic process of the Goggles.3.) Become aware of the manual control option of the Goggles.

These steps also imply an implicit need for the user to become more aware of their self, in that for one to become aware of the Beauty Goggles, one must become aware of the process of experiencing beauty; and, consequently, must become aware of their own momentary lack of perceptual control in relation to beauty. Once it has been established and understood by the user that their experience of beauty arises from an unconscious process (the automatic process of the Goggles), it becomes significantly easier for said user to establish manual control over the Goggles and in turn gain manual control over when and where their experience of beauty arises.

To say that this is an easy process would be false, if not counter-productive. In fact, the process of becoming aware enough of one’s self to notice the automatic function of the Goggles can be itself a long, arduous journey through love, loss and passion.

Generally the trigger cues of daily life, those of which incite within the self a desire to become more aware of self, arise from extreme emotional situations and more often than not, arise from extreme negative emotional situations. One must often be jolted into a path of self-awareness (though this is not always the case).

It is here where we come upon another cliché: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Which, in this context might be adjusted to say: What doesn’t kill you makes you more aware.

This subject of becoming more“aware” I will try and discuss more at length in future posts and essays.

For now I leave you with encouragement to explore the boundaries of your Beauty Goggle parameters. What things do you find to be beautiful? Why? What things do you not find beautiful? Why?

Think about this and remember: sometimes the lack of an answer can be as significant as having an answer itself.

In Love,

E. Gerald Oberman

Beauty pervades within everything, we, people, just have personal filters over what we choose to see as beauty. As I have been progressing through my spiritual development (through meditation, and both outer and inner research) I’ve come to see beauty in more and more things. I feel as if at one point in my life I had a very narrow idea of where I would find beauty.

In the face of woman, sure.

In the sound of Clapton’s guitar, sure.

In the feel of a lover’s finger, sure.

But even sexual beauty, for me, has changed. I remember when sixteen year old girls were the most gorgeous things imaginable. Soft skin, new and awkward female attachments young, smooth faces. Older girls had something about them then, a harshness, a roughness around the edges, where the younger girls seemed void of any edges whatsoever. Beauty was what I knew—innocence, youth.

In mid-December in on a hill in Central Florida, at exactly 5:53pm the sun reflects such a stunning minage est toius