So often in my life, I have often wondered what is it that we really crave? Aside from our basic human needs for food, shelter, and water, what else is so important and can keep us motivated, satisfied, and ‘in balance’?
I have always narrowed it down to three things:
Someone (or something) to love…
Something to create… &
Beautiful surroundings…
Perhaps these are only personal to me, and perhaps you will, therefore, disagree with me, however I fail to see what else there is after we have everything else we need to survive. Not only that, but love, beauty, and creativity are some of the key ingredients when we are working to improve our lives through the transformation of our own mental state. They are the three elements that are at the heart of any positive creation, and therefore we should pay attention to them and value their place in our lives.
Love is an incredibly motivating force, whether it is for a romantic partner, a friend, family members, a pet, the world, your purpose, or even life itself. It is one of the highest vibrational states of being and can put us in such a joyous and upbeat mood almost instantly. To wake up everyday full to the brim with the feeling of love is surely one of the best ways to live your life, and a state that will attract plenty of wonderful experiences for you. And yet, often it seems love is something that so many people lack, feeling that if they don’t have a specific person to love them back then they are unworthy.
However, it is important to remember that it isn’t always about looking for love outside of yourself, but instead about starting to cultivate it inside of you. This is why self-love is so important. When we learn to love ourselves and treat ourselves well, we are sending out a message to the universe saying that we are worthy of love, because we are already filling up our own cup, so to speak.
So, if you were reading this with a heavy heart, take a look at how you are currently treating yourself, and then start to make improvements to nurture that feeling of self-love inside of you.
Creativity, I believe, is such an important activity or pursuit that we should all have within our lives, in whatever form that suits us. Just to be able to learn how make something, whether it is an item, a piece of art, a piece of music, a literary exploration, or a brand new innovation, can be undeniably satisfying. When we create something from nothing, we are in some ways, aligning ourselves with Infinite Spirit. We are becoming creators, in a kind of miniature sense. Infinite Spirit, Universal Mind, God, created the world as we know it, and yet much of the time it works through us to create the art and innovations that surround us, be it a theatrical production, a mechanical machine, or the trajectory of our own life path. Pretty much everything we are aware of has been created in some way, so why wouldn’t we want to explore the possibilities of what we could create through our own unique perspective?
For me, having an array of creative pursuits is what keeps my life interesting and exciting. Not only do I enjoy the process, but I absolutely love the feeling of completion when something I have worked on for a long time is finished. Therefore, for anyone out there who isn’t yet ‘creatively engaged’, I would encourage you to give something new a try and see where it takes you!
Lastly, we come to beauty.
Beauty is such an interesting concept to me, because of course, to a certain extent, and certainly regarding the people in our lives, we all likely have a different opinion on what is beautiful. However, in this article, I am not specifically talking about the physical beauty of the self, but rather in the world around us.
To live surrounded by beauty is incredibly enjoyable, inspiring, and rewarding. To be able to look around you and be delighted in what you see is a pleasure, and something that can uplift your mood, stimulate your creativity, and help you feel at peace with your life. Yet, nowadays, it seems to have become a luxury, rather than the right that I think it should be. As we look back on photographs of different locations throughout history, it isn’t too hard to notice the degradation of the aesthetics of our surroundings. More and more buildings have been replaced with eyesores, cars, quite frankly, are dreadful, the maintenance of some urban areas is tragically poor…
I don’t want to go on too much of a rant, because I am thinking of doing a full article on this topic at some point, as it is an issue that does break my heart a little. Nevertheless, I still believe that beautiful surroundings are important and that we must make the best of what we have. If we aren’t currently living somewhere appealing to our own eyes, and are not able to move, then we can focus our efforts on the interiors of our homes instead, creating a little haven for ourselves. In whatever way we can, we should always seek to add some additional beauty to our lives.
I guess, when it comes to our manifestations, we should always be seeking out the beautiful as well. We want the things that we bring into our lives to enhance our experience and delight us in so many ways. We want to be seeking the good things in life, and beauty is very much a part of that.
I will leave you with this quote that inspired me to write this article. To me, it very clearly explains why Love and Beauty are so important for the creative power that is Infinite Spirit. It goes as follows:
What then can this original feeing of the Spirit be? Since the Spirit is Life-in-itself, its feeling can only be for the fuller expression of Life- any sort of feeling would be self-destructive and is therefore inconceivable. Then the full expression of Life implies Happiness, and Happiness implies Harmony, and Harmony implies Order, and Order implies Proportion, and Proportion implies Beauty; so that in recognising the inherent tendency of the Spirit towards the production of Life, we can recognise a similar inherent tendency to the production of these other qualities also; and since the desire to bestow the greater fullness of joyous life can only be described as Love, we can sum up the whole of the feeling which is the original moving impulse in the Spirit as Love and Beauty- the Spirit finding expression through forms of beauty in centres of life, in harmonious reciprocal relation to itself.
~ The Dore Lectures on Mental Science by Thomas Troward