Beauty

This article originally appeared on my personal Substack, Clinsightshere. I have added, edited, clarified and expanded the original post for publication here in The BoldBrush Letter.

Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from the original post. You can always read the entire post here.

We are sharing this essay in The BoldBrush Letter because the underlying idea applies to all artists. Please enjoy.

Beauty. When we see True Beauty, transcendent Beauty, we are moved, we experience wonder, we feel something.

Beauty, like Truth and Goodness, is something that breaks through the shell of trauma around our hearts and lets divine outer light in and divine inner light out. It allows the diamond light of our soul to merge with the divine light of that which it is made. It allows the drop to briefly become possessed by the ocean.

Beauty is not “prettiness” or “attractiveness.” We may have a desire to possess that which is attractive, but Beauty is something we hunger for, because it is something that we cannot possess. Instead, beauty possesses us and we can’t help but feel the pleasure of that possession¹.

Whether he admits it or not, man hungers for God, and Beauty is a portal to God and, so, man hungers for Beauty. Beauty is a trumpet call of God: It crumbles the “walls of Jericho” or our ego.

“Man is hungry for beauty. There is a void.” — Oscar Wilde

Beauty turns a mere image into an icon. By that I mean that an image is only a representation of something – it is “skin deep.” Mistaking an image for reality leads to vacuous sayings such as “Beauty is only skin deep.” Only modern capitalist marketers have the hubris to suggest that beauty can be something as pedestrian as an “industry.”

Unlike an image, an icon contains power. An icon empowers us to transport ourselves into a deeper reality – it bestows us with the power to leave the shadowlands of outer darkness and enter the true reality of inner light.

If you have an image on your computer's desktop, you can click it all you want, but it will never be more than an image. However, if you click an icon on your desktop, what happens?

It turns out that the icon wasn’t just an image but is instead a wondrous doorway that opens up into a deeper reality of a full application, a rich experience that allows you to use your creativity to accomplish something, to experience something, or to enter another world.

Beauty can do that for us in the real world, transporting us to the more real kingdom behind all. In many ways both art and science are the result of man’s longing to know the transcendent reality. Science is attempts to model the transcendent truth of reality through knowledge while Art attempts to model it through Beauty. Both fields are capturing but a piece of the whole truthful picture. Beauty reveals Truth because it is Truth.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” — Keats

Since beauty reveals truth, that makes it dangerous to those who prefer we remain asleep. Ted Gioia, a culture writer who calls himself The Honest Broker, called Beauty the most dangerous thing in culture; not dangerous to you and me, but to those who prefer to perpetuate the current hellish status quo for their own profit.

We don’t always all find the same things Beautiful. Attractiveness might be nearly universal, but Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder. Actually, Beauty is everywhere, but it is up to the beholder to recognize it. So in a non-dual way, Beauty is quantum in that it is both universal and in the eye of the beholder. It is both the wave and the particle.

It is within our power to beautify our gaze and determine how deep we will go into any one object of our awareness. Our attention, our most important divine gift, is an amplifier that turns up the volume and intensity of the things upon which we focus.

If you give your negative thoughts attention, you will amplify them into a hellish reality for yourself. But if you deny them your attention and instead amplify the beautiful in your life you will create a beautiful reality. Many a spiritual guide have reflected that something as simple as a flower may serve as an icon that can transport us to God.

Yes, turning the image into an icon is something that we do. When we beautify our gaze, we are tapping into our divinity to co-create the experience of Beauty.

And, when we feel the wonder that Beauty kindles, it is a feeling of recognition. That’s why it’s so arresting. We re-cognize our true self. We realize we are something different from what we had assumed. Or more correctly, we remember that we are something different, something more noble than what we assumed.

When we focus our attention with a beautified gaze, we recognize our divinity and the divinity of the apple of our eye. In other words, the experience of Beauty is God experiencing himself/herself. And Beauty is around us at all times, if we will but look with our spiritual eyes to truly see and listen with our spiritual ears to truly hear.

Seeing, hearing, and sharing the healing transcendent Beauty, in which we all swim, is the job of the Artist. This re-cognition of our divinity, our Beauty, is one reason Art brings hope.

And it is one reason Art can save us.

“Beauty will save the world.” — Fyodor Dostoevsky

This ability to share Beauty, Truth and Goodness is why Artists are far more important than even they themselves might think.

Beauty explains why making Art can be a calling of God just as much as a mission trip to feed the poor.

If Art is your True calling, your True Name, then making Art is your ministry; a ministry that reminds others to re-cognize themselves and remember their true birthright; for The Artist, like the Saint (who’s very life is his art), is a guide that points the way into The Kingdom.

“A single smile of Beauty can bring about greater transformations of character than all the frowns of Righteousness.” — Sangharakshita

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PS — This topic is explored in my forthcoming book The Sovereign Artist: The Liberating Power of the Creative Act. You may sign up for the waitlist here.

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No AI Zone: Everything written in this post (and all my posts) is written 100% by me, Clint “Clintavo” Watson, a flesh and blood human seeking to grow my soul and come home my truest self; for that is the essence of creativity. I do not use AI to assist me with writing — that would deny me the very growth of my world through writing that I seek.

I only rarely use AI images with my (non-AI) writing. On the rare occasions I do use an AI image (usually fiction), I also feature at least one artwork by a human artist with image credits and links to their work or, if I can’t find a suitable image, I donate a free month of website service to one of our artist customers at my SaaS company, FASO Artist Websites.

Poetic expression, spiritual ideas, and musings upon beauty, truth and goodness should be free to spread far and wide. Hence, I have not paywalled the work on Reflections of the Sovereign Artist. However, if you’re able to become a paid subscriber, I’d be eternally grateful. It would help, encourage and enable me to continue exploring these topics and allow me to keep it accessible for a world that is in desperate need of beauty, truth, goodness and love. — Creatively, Clintavo.

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I highly encourage you to watch this short video by Dana Gioia in which he explores the topic of beauty more clearly and deeply than anyone else I’ve watched or read. His video inspired parts of this piece: