Bombs in stadiums, houses reduced to rubble, children with limbs blown off, whole nations displaced, toxic chemicals in our water stream, politicians who plot to skim off all the cream, brutal bashing of our closest partners, drug addiction through the roof, sex trafficking and child abuse. One look at the world today and it is clear things aren’t going so well.
This beauty.
Whilst we might live in peaceful suburbia with our widescreen TVs, pretty gardens and nice neighbours, if we are honest there’s a knowing underneath that somewhere else there’s great pain and distress for other people who are our brothers. Yet this chaos has gone on for so long… all of history it seems. What possibility is there to end it?
This beauty.
No charity, movement or leader has ever been able to change this warring world and those that tried have typically been hung, drawn and quartered.
So we proceed to ‘make the best of it,’ to keep a stiff upper lip and look after our own patch of dirt, as long as we have our entertainment, sport and technology. All the time – chaos reigns.
So where on earth to from here?
This beauty.
Yesterday I met my son. I’ve seen him on video screen two times before but back then he was pretty much a big-headed blur.
But yesterday, as my wife lay down and the scan was done of her body, my son’s 21 week old physique appeared up on the monitor. I heard his heart beat rapidly and saw his perfectly formed arms and hands move about. He wriggled as if to say, “Look, can you keep this photo shoot quick?” and “I’m not a fan of paparazzi.” But as the nurse moved the scanner around, I felt myself welling up, so deeply touched inside.
This beauty.
Like a picture of the universe miniaturised into a human form, this young but ancient being looked back at me from the TV screen and said, “Hey Dad!” As I marvelled at his gorgeousness, I began to cry. I worried for a moment about what the nurses might think of my seeming weakness, but I couldn’t contain the tears inside. It was beautiful and such a relief to let them out. And then it dawned on me.
This beauty.
Since finding out I was going to be a dad four months ago, I’ve found myself getting easily upset, feeling distant, hard and overwhelmed. During what seemed like it should be a time of joy, I was struggling on. As my wife was sick, I dedicated space to focussing on her, on organising everything she needed and keeping the house in order. And yet I seemed to be in a permanently bad mood.
I talked to friends occasionally and got some support of sorts – and was encouraged to consider my secret fears about this great new responsibility. Yet this distance in me remained. What was going on?
This beauty.
Things started to occur: our internet connection went down, the central heating failed, and my car was crashed into – as if something or someone was trying to get a message to me. But I didn’t have a clue.
I met with a friend, Michael Benhayon, and he suggested there was something I hadn’t let myself feel. But what terrible thing could this be I wondered?
This beauty.
As I sat crying in the scan room it came to me. I had been holding back from feeling the absolute beauty of my son, being pregnant and us all being one. As this sank in, I cried with my wife in the waiting room – just standing there with my heart.
As I did, it became clear to me that there’s no strategy or political program that is needed to fix this world, no ban on armaments or world summit to solve drug abuse. All of it, every last bit is not coming from horrible human beings but from us fighting and denying our beauty.
This beauty.
It’s not a physical or intellectual thing or what clothes you wear, but a quality you can feel – a grandness that connects us to the universe. It’s the ‘wow’ you get when looking at the sweetest flower, a vast landscape or array of stars – something you feel in your heart. It’s like a magnetic pull for me.
I’m starting to see we feel it all the time, but do not let it be at all. We wait till those close to us are nearly dead to reveal how much they have meant to us; we dismiss the subtlety of our sensitivity and think we need to toughen up. We hold back the pure poetry of our sweet dear heart in case its preciousness is not welcome in this world. But in doing this we perpetuate the very hurts and hardness that we hate.
Even as I write this here, I can feel myself battening my feeling down in case it gets out of hand – how ingrained we are!
For too long we have subscribed to a view of ourselves as wicked, flawed and vicious beings. There is something in us that wallows in this. But it’s all just a game to let evil reign. This is the biggest case of mistaken identity known to man, like a delicate bird that is trying to be a bull. It’s quite absurd.
This beauty.
Is it possible that terror need not exist if we just cease and desist from holding back our heart?
Yes, this world is full of examples of horrors that we create and it’s revolting to feel how far from that beauty we live. But the way forward is to reconnect to our true nature, not to bludgeon it.
As I lay with my wife in bed last night and I placed my hand on her belly, it felt like I could hear my son speak. He let me know that the beauty that I felt with him is there in everything, in me too, and all I need to do is live knowing this is true.
Yes, we have frail imperfect bodies but our beings are so much more than that. I figured he should know as he has come back to do it all again in another lifetime. I went to sleep holding him, holding me, appreciating what he is teaching me.
This beauty.
I know that the way I’ve written here is normal and equally felt by people all around the world. Imagine if all 7 billion of us started to share the beauty that is within us all. There surely would be no room for petty arguments and squabbles. Just because we have ignored our divinity for aeons past doesn’t make the mundanity true – who we are. Our hearts are full of so much love. Holding it back is poisonous.
We are this beauty – can we handle that?
Published with permission of my wife.
By Joseph Barker, Beautiful man, Designer, Drawer and soon to be parent, Melbourne, Australia
Inspired by ‘I am Beautiful’ by Bianca Barban (1), Michael Benhayon and the teachings and presentations of Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon.
References:
1. https://womeninlivingness.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/i-am-beautiful/
Related Reading:
I am beauty-full just for being me – a message from the author
Opening my heart to love again
Building love in our life
Words on Serge Benhayon 
Reading this today, Joseph, I feel what you are bringing to the world with This Beauty is even more relevant. Thank you. With Love.
What I am beginning to understand is that by holding back what I know in my heart is true in some misguided idea that I can protect all that I hold dear I am in the illusion that truth needs protecting. Truth needs no protection of any kind. It may seem that the truth has been sullied by the lies we perpetrate about God but nothing can touch God who is our universe. I am beginning to understand that as hard as we try to bury truth it rises to the surface and exposes the rot we live in.
“the way forward is to reconnect to our true nature,” The magic is knowing that in the inner-heart of all is a shared beauty and love.
I have felt recently just how easy it is for us to cover up the beauty that we all innately are. I have felt bad about the way that I have behaved on a couple of occasions, not only do I feel bad about the way that I have behaved but I also started to feel self doubt as well as a liberal sprinkling of comparison. There’s no point cognitively ‘knowing’ that we are the beauty of God if we can’t feel it because feeling the fact that we are the beauty of God is the only way that we can ever truly know it.
Alexis, We have been lied to on so many levels and denied through the many and various religions that we espouse to that God is some sort of vengeful ogre that can only be communicated with, via some sort of priest or special person who has the ear of God. We have fallen for all these lies and so buried the feelings that we have of God so that he is not part of our everyday life. Yet he/she should be because the very air we breathe is the body of God that we live in. We are as much a part of him as he is of us. And that to me is incredibly reassuring that in this chaotic world there is the beauty of God that surrounds us and holds us all.
No one ever found God in institutionalised religion, nor will they ever find Him there.
“Our hearts are full of so much love. Holding it back is poisonous.” and hence why we find so much illness and disease in our world.
We have so normalised living in disconnection that we are not awake to the enormity of the beauty that is there to claim. I remember being so touched at the sight of my own baby in a scan that suddenly in that moment of sighting, everything aligned. I melted and cried too. There is nothing more touching than being reminded of what we actually belong to.
We have normalized having a baby we have lost the magic of when the sperm meets the egg and what takes place is nothing short of the ‘big bang’ suddenly cells appear and keep dividing they have a plan and a purpose all the cells know exactly what they have to do to make this human- being. Cells are being switched on and off it’s like a vast orchestra being played. How do the cells know exactly what to do? How do the cells know to grow a foot with toes and hands with fingers where is the blue print held to do all this? When we lose the magic of life we have separated ourselves from God, when we separate from God we make life all about function, to get through life, ticking boxes.
Holding back feeling our beauty. Simple is powerful, this blog is such an example.
Appreciation of the beauty within of what can came through us, along with the intimacy that comes with an open appreciative-ness and thus we are letting people in so we then also share this with everyone, and this is a simple thing that should be taught at schools.
Appreciation is the bridge to the Soul.
It is crazy how desensitised we have become – with the amount of information constantly being fed to us, all of these things have become our normal. We’ve learned to accept it as the way it is and are just focusing on living our better lives – more money, better material things & holidays further away from where we live. In all of our connection with the globe we are ensuing disconnection – we are all saying it but how many of us have truly felt the ramifications of our movements away from one another?
Thank you Joseph, there is something so moving about what is written here, it’s a universal truth expressed, the voice of the heart, and deeply touching. I found myself having a cry tonight from what you have written, I know in my heart the truth of the beauty we are and can live together, and the pain of seeing it and experiencing it as it currently is.
Melinda I agree with you that what Joseph has written is deeply touching because as you say it is written from his heart. We do know that we are so much more than we are led to believe, it is as though there is an unseen barrier that prevents us from connecting back to the grandness we all come from, which is the grandness of the universe. The unrest we all feel is the testament that we do know and the unrest will always be with us until we eventually reconnect back to our inner heart again and know that nothings else matters more than this connection.
This is such a beautiful article Joseph. “I had been holding back from feeling the absolute beauty of my son, being pregnant and us all being one. As this sank in, I cried with my wife in the waiting room – just standing there with my heart.”. Its so true – we don’t allow ourselves to feel the beauty that does exist all around us and in our hearts.