Lesson 9

A short lesson on beauty

When I was a little girl, my favorite movie was Mahogany, starring Diana Ross. I loved this movie. I thought that Ms. Ross was so beautiful and regal. She played an up and coming fashion designer. She made a beautiful life for herself and had lots of beautiful things, but she was so unhappy; all she wanted was to go back to her simple life. Growing up, I cannot say that I felt beautiful as a young woman, even though my mom always told me that I was. I had sandy hair, green eyes and caramel skin, ( my legs were skinny as sticks and my dad always told me I was straight up like 6:00, this was not consider beauty in my neighborhood. Consequently, I felt very insecure about my appearance. Thank God I do not have these feelings of insecurity today. Now I may have a bad hair day, but I feel beautiful just the same.

God has taught me what true beauty is and this is the truth I live in each day.  This truth has made me feel more beautiful than ever.  God’s love makes us beautiful! God’s love unveils the beauty from which we were formed; we were created with the threads of beauty. To me, everything about God is beautiful, and I was made from that beauty.  I was stitched together with beauty. My very essence is beauty. If God used a whisper to create us, it would have been beautiful.

So we are not made beautiful–it is what we are, period. I know that I do not always feel beautiful inside or sometimes outside.  I have to ask myself what I am connected to. Am I connected to my ego, my looks, and my accomplishments? Will this new dress or these new shoes make me feel beautiful? If my false sense of beauty comes from these sources, then I am connected to ego and not to spirit.  These things disconnect us from our Source, (God) and that feeling of being beautiful will fade just as those things fade.  My beauty originated from my Source (God).  My beauty is not in my physical appearance, but in the beauty of my spirit.    When I am teaching yoga, I watch my students, and those who allow themselves to flow with their spirits look so graceful and beautiful, even if the pose is not perfect.  It doesn’t matter how fit their bodies look; in this moment they are living from the authentic self, and no matter how that is communicated, it is beauty to me and I believe it is beauty to God.